Do your employers pay for your certifications?

I've been at my current job for just about five years now (systems administrator). My employer will not provide any money for certifications, which means I have none at this point in time. Are the certifications valuable enough that I should pay for them out of pocket? I only make $16.50/hour so paying for the exam fees and books is possible, but hard to do financially.

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Comments

Basic85

Some employers will pay and some won't. Some will tell you in the job description if they'll reimburse you for exam while others you'd have to ask on a case by case basis. Has anyone gotten an employer to pay for an online university like WGU?

tedjames

blargoe said:

mav2005 wrote: »

IT in my area just doesn't pay much. A systems administrator for the county government only makes about $20 to $24 per hour.

Around here, county government doesn't pay squat regardless of what is going on in the private sector. Not sure if it's like that everywhere.

Texas state government pays sometimes. It depends on each agency's budget. My last agency wouldn't pay for my certification training and testing. However, I really wanted to move out of there for several reasons, money of course being one of them. I knew that the only way that would happen was if I did it myself. Sure, I ran up a little debt, but it certainly paid off. Not only did I get a better job, but I also got a better PAYING job, which made my expenses totally worth the while.

My advice to you: Start a certification/training savings account. Drop $10/$20/$50/whatever you can afford into it monthly and don't touch it until you've saved enough to pay for the exam that you want. In the meantime, figure out which certification you want to earn, download the exam objectives, and create a study plan. There are tons of free resources online for just about anything you want to learn. You might even find a cert guide in your local library or for cheap in a used bookstore. Or maybe a co-worker can lend you a copy.

Here's a good, free source: https://www.certmike.com/

cyberguypr

Let's take a minute and talk about the 10 year respawn of this thread. Impressive.

LonerVamp

I love thread necromancers!

beads

Usually have one paid class and maybe one offsite seminar a year. As far back as the dot com days I said I'd pay for any work related cert you past. You pay for the failed certs and that worked out well.

- b/eads

jumblerr

I run the budget so...yes

PC509

If it's job specific for my role, yes. I had to pay for some of mine as they were out of scope of my job (eJPT, CISSP, other security ones), but they did pay for my Windows cert (Windows 7) and my current training and certification attempts (Microsoft 365 Enterprise Administrator).

UnixGuy

wow..I posted in this thread...10 YEARS AGO

E Double U

My current employer pays for training, books, and exams with no questions asked. They also cover annual maintenance fees and cert renewals. My two former employers paid for training and reimbursed for passed exams. I was a contractor in the beginning of my career and paid for everything out of pocket.

kaiju

Previous employer paid for certs, cert maintenance fees, provided free online training for certs via LMS, paid for degrees associated with job field up to Masters Degree.

Current employer pays for absolutely nothing but the pay is damn good. I also have no qualms about paying for my own certs.

mmanager

My company covers 75% of such spendings.

iBrokeIT

Taking the PenTest grad cert from SANS.edu, just completed my 3rd class in just under a year. Company covered all of it via tuition reimbursement and training budget.