What Cert gave you the biggest pay bump

I am in a situation where I am quite happy with my job, although it can have large periods of inactivity that gives me more time to study.

Problem is the pay, I moved overseas to be with my girlfriend and needed a job pretty quick, but wasn't going to settle for something below my skills, I was lucky and received this role.. the pay was nearly half of what I earned back home, I accepted that different costs of living, different economies etc I would not earn as much, despite the huge pay cut I live a similar life style, my rent and bills are much cheaper here.
But I thought I will give it a year and see how my annual review goes, fast forward a year I had my annual review 2 months back and my director was very happy with me, but I only received a 1.5% pay rise.
The economy isn't great, I get it.
But now that I have been here a year and have been actively chased on LinkedIn by recruiters I have seen that I am being underpaid by about $20-$30,000 per year in my role, while still not the kind of pay I got home, I would be in a fantastic position financially.

Right now I have my 2008 MCITP:SA

However through job experience I feel with a bit of study I could do the Sharepoint MCITP, and also Lync.
Ideally it would be great to get both of them, but I simply don't have the time to study, I am more confident with Sharepoint.

The other thing is networking is my weakness, I can configure switches, VPN, routers etc, but I don't know the intricacies that a CCNA would know.

My opinion is, Sharepoint is a much better option to pursue, I am already confident in it have the experience as an Administrator for it, just lack the formal certification that some of the higher paying jobs look for.

CCNA is pretty common now days I don't think a CCNA alone attracts the big bucks it once did, and even if I take 3 months and study hardcore to pass my CCNA, I don't have that hands on knowledge a hardened network engineer has.
Juniper I think I may do the JNCIA simply because the exam is $50 and the Lab at home is easier to setup, but that is not quite as well known as a CCNA.

Sorry for the long ass back story, but would appreciate some input, maybe other suggestions for certifications that could get me a nice pay bump.

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Comments

Essendon

The VCP (or VMware Certified Professional for the un-initiated) has the potential of getting you noticed but may not get you a pay hike at your current role. If you switched jobs, I reckon you could. But then again, do you want to work on Virtualization and have you got any experience. Just the cert alone wont get you more money, but if you could couple that with experience, you should be good to make decent money.

The other certs you mentioned (on SharePoint/Lync) arent well-known and there arent many jobs asking for those certs.

Do a search on the job sites in your area and see which certs show up the most.

StussyNz

Very good question, I would also like to know this..... Just to clarify which may help others, What country are you living in at the moment?

sieff

CCNP Voice. USA.

discount81

Essendon wrote: »

The VCP (or VMware Certified Professional for the un-initiated) has the potential of getting you noticed but may not get you a pay hike at your current role. If you switched jobs, I reckon you could. But then again, do you want to work on Virtualization and have you got any experience. Just the cert alone wont get you more money, but if you could couple that with experience, you should be good to make decent money.

The other certs you mentioned (on SharePoint/Lync) arent well-known and there arent many jobs asking for those certs.

Do a search on the job sites in your area and see which certs show up the most.

Yeah VCP was another candidate, I have a lot of experience with VMware and Hyper-V already, spent the last few years on mostly virtualization projects and this is usually what recruiters contact me about, and I'm trying to move in another direction, I could of had a VCP a long time ago but the cost to benefit never seemed worth it (most job ads simply ask for vmware experience I rarely see a VCP as a requirement) and aside from this current role I've almost always been a contractor so nobody else was going to pay for it.

To the contrary in regards to Sharepoint, if you go on Seek (I'm originally an Aussie) and search Sharepoint you will see a lot of work coming up, and quite a bit of it wants certification.
Likewise here, most Sharepoint jobs now want certification, whether it be developer or admin.

I understand a certificate is not going to automatically give you a dream job, luckily I have 12+ years of IT Administrator experience with my original cert being an NT4 MCSE so I am never questioned on my past experience, but I've also been denied jobs in the past solely on the basis that I did not have a certification, despite my experience.

discount81

I am in Montreal, Canada

StussyNz wrote: »

Very good question, I would also like to know this..... Just to clarify which may help others, What country are you living in at the moment?

discount81

That is a fairly specialized cert, out of curiosity how much extra did you get percentage wise with a CCNP voice over CCNP ?

sieff wrote: »

CCNP Voice. USA.

jibbajabba

None of my certs gave me a pay bump until I proved myself ..

sieff

I was already working with Cisco voice products, but when I passed CCNP Voice I got a title change and increase of 18%. The CCNP R&S was seen as a fundamental cert, an expansion on the CCNA topics. I got a kudos email, but no promotion, no raise. I think CCNP Voice is more specialized than the CCNP R&S. Not taking anything away from the CCNP R&S, I just think it was the companies perception - the bill rate for a voice engineer is typically higher than R&S work.

dave330i

Essendon wrote: »

The VCP (or VMware Certified Professional for the un-initiated) has the potential of getting you noticed but may not get you a pay hike at your current role. If you switched jobs, I reckon you could. But then again, do you want to work on Virtualization and have you got any experience. Just the cert alone wont get you more money, but if you could couple that with experience, you should be good to make decent money.

The other certs you mentioned (on SharePoint/Lync) arent well-known and there arent many jobs asking for those certs.

Do a search on the job sites in your area and see which certs show up the most.

It's VCP5-DV now.

it_consultant

The economy in Canada isn't that bad. Are you a French speaker or (as they call it) an anglophone?

Secondly, you said you moved overseas, was that from Australia or from a European country?

discount81

it_consultant wrote: »

The economy in Canada isn't that bad. Are you a French speaker or (as they call it) an anglophone?

Secondly, you said you moved overseas, was that from Australia or from a European country?

Yeah I am anglophone from Australia, my french is not great but to be honest that hasn't really been an issue, the company I work for now is mostly francophone and I get by, I am only applying at Anglophone based companies though.

The economy here is alright, but the company I work for is American owned, and my salary is paid for by the American side of the company, things over there are still not great so I have 0 chance of getting a bigger pay rise than what I was already given.

VAHokie56

Once I got my CCNA and had 6 months experience on a network team I went from 30's/year to 70's/year . My CCNP and work experience,over a year later has helped me break into 6 figures

darkerz

CCNA took me from 25k to 45k overnight.

A year later, 75k with CCNP level knowledge.

I plan on getting my:

CCDA
CCDP
CCNP
CCNA:Voice
CCNA:Security

In the next year.

I work with all of this stuff full time in a pure networking environment for an ISP.

I plan on 6 figures by 22 or 23.

~

Aldur

The cert that gave me the biggest paybump was my first JNCIE. I went from making a little less than 50k/yr to making well over 100k/yr. Definitely the best decision I've ever made cert wise.

Also, I know that most major service providers in Canada use Juniper equipment (I was a Juniper resident engineer at TELUS a few years back). So the market is there for Juniper/Junos skilled people.

it_consultant

discount81 wrote: »

Yeah I am anglophone from Australia, my french is not great but to be honest that hasn't really been an issue, the company I work for now is mostly francophone and I get by, I am only applying at Anglophone based companies though.

The economy here is alright, but the company I work for is American owned, and my salary is paid for by the American side of the company, things over there are still not great so I have 0 chance of getting a bigger pay rise than what I was already given.

The salaries should not be radically different than in North America as a whole. I think you were onboarded too low and they are taking advantage of you based on your experience and MCITP. I concur with the others that Cisco and Juniper certs tend to put you in a different salary class; so that would be beneficial to you. Are you getting a lot of responses from your resume so far?

QHalo

No cert got me to my pay level. It's been all experience.

paul78

Hard work and commitment to my craft got me to my compensation level. I did not have any certifications for the first 23 years of my career. Certifications play no role in my salary.

That said - getting a certification is a demonstration of someone's willingness to commit to their craft. It takes hard work to the obtain the knowledge and absorb it to pass certain certifications. And I personally have a high degree of admiration for those people that continue to learn and hone their career.

A certification doesn't automatically increase someone's total compensation but it dimension to continual education related to one's career.

VAHokie56

QHalo wrote: »

No cert got me to my pay level. It's been all experience.

so you don't give any credit to you certs and think they have zero to do with where you are today?

blargoe

The Hard Knocks cert.

QHalo

VAHokie56 wrote: »

so you don't give any credit to you certs and think they have zero to do with where you are today?

For the first 10 years of my career I had none and I'm a senior engineer. I only really picked them up because they're requisite for the job I want to pursue. I already had the experience, but you have to prove it to someone else beyond a cursory look at your resume. Sure I learned lots of nuances about the technologies but really those are only good for solving problems created by people who got too 'cute' for their own good. So I'm not discrediting them all together, that would be silly coming from someone with nearly 900 posts on a cert site. I just don't give them full credit for where I am. Hard work, dependability and the innate ability to pickup new technologies quickly is how I am where I am. Now that I'm at the level I'm at, I'm using them as a structure to learn new technologies past cursory knowledge.

And to the more on topic, my 7 years of Altiris experience got me my highest pay increase and I don't even do that anymore. No cert in that area either.

Aldur

Experience is without a doubt very important, however, certs can help for the lack of experience. And you really can't say that there is nothing to learn from certification. You might be able to get experience without certification, I got my first networking job with no certs or experience, but most people are not that lucky. The IT field is not typically a "learn on the job" field, like many other fields. Lots of people have to take unpaid internships just to get experience. Certification gives a leg up for most people, so when they walk into that interview they have some sort of idea what they are talking about.

Along those lines, I've known people who have those 10 yrs experience who can do their current job well, but they really don't have the wide breadth of knowledge. They get the interview and fail miserably. If they had gone through some certification maybe they would have known enough to get through the interview.

Granted some people can make it in this field with no certifications/certification study, but I suspect those are very few. Myself personally, I was able to get in without certs or previous experience, but there is no chance I'd be here now at this point without those certs, or the knowledge I gained for them. Maybe I could have done it in 15 years with no certs, but I broke into the 6 figure salary range when I only had a 1 1/2 yrs experience because of my desire to gain the necessary certs and knowledge.

I view it this way. If you want to accelerate your career, get heavily into certs. If you don't like certs/don't want to do them, then you can get your dream job too, it'll just take much longer.

it_consultant

I always learn something I didn't know when I do a cert. Even if I am really familiar with the technology.

Psoasman

I picked up some basic certs, when I switched careers to IT. They gave me enough foundational knowledge to earn a position in a call center, which I then leveraged into my current position. The other certs I hold now just allow me to do my job better, with the knowledge I've gained from them. Working on certs keeps me in the mindset of never stop learning.

UnixGuy

No cert gave me any pay bump.

networkjutsu

I envy the people who got pay bump when they earned a particular cert. I never did get a big pay bump because of a cert. I am sure it was a combination of my experience and cert.

Aldur

I think most of the time pay bumps come from changing jobs. My biggest pay bump did.

VAHokie56

Ya agree with this my big bump I mentioned in thread was because I moved jobs. The employer I was with when I got my CCNA only gave me a $2/hour raise...hey better then nothing!

Repo Man

Aldur wrote: »

I think most of the time pay bumps come from changing jobs. My biggest pay bump did.

Agreed.

I have never received a raise from getting a cert. My biggest pay jump did come from a new job after getting a bunch of certs while I was unemployed though.

W Stewart

At the moment I honestly couldn't credit a cert for any pay bump I've gotten. Every pay bump I've gotten in my short IT career has been from moving onto a better job. My certs may have helped me stand out, but no particular one gave me a bump. I got my previous job by learning linux from the command line on my own and being willing to learn. That job was actually more of a pay cut but the pay was more stable than the job before it and it offered valuable experience. My current job gave me the biggest jump in pay that I've had so far. The job posting metioned that CCENT or CCNA would be nice and I had to provide them with that along with copies of my other certs but I believe what really got me the job was my linux and sql experience.

Falasi

I've recieved an offer few days ago with an increase of 50% more then my current salery along with +2 more grades. all due to my CISSP, they didnt bother much about ISSMP or CISM (although most questions in the interview was about CISM related areas ; risk).

there is also another offer with almost double the salery however its on the next city and I'll have to shift there. still thinking....and oh .. all thanks to CISM for this case.