Certification v College Degree in the Job Market

I earned my A.A.S. in Computer Network Technology. In addition I'm a couple of semester away from earning my B.S. in Computer Network Systems. I'm currently working on my A+ Certification (Passed 701 exam, taking 702 on Saturday). Is there a need for certification if you have a strong educational background? Does the job market look at education and certifications or Does a strong educational back ground make certifications optional..

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LarryDaMan

It depends. Many sectors of the industry require benchmark certifications for you to even qualify for consideration. A lot of help desks don't hire anyone without at least an A+, same can be said for networking and security positions and other certifications.

While a technical degree can be a requirement, it is somewhat common in my opinion for a highly certified person to succeed with a degree in Business or English or Psychology.

Play it safe. Get both.

nosoup4u

Most employers will honestly want both.

networker050184

You can guarantee the people you will be competing against for jobs will have both so why handicap yourself?

DonM34

You can guarantee the people you will be competing against for jobs will have both so why handicap yourself? VERY TRUE

SteveLord

I work in state government and our jobs never have certifications on the listings. Only degrees and/or select skills (Java, .NET, etc)

N2IT

Your situation is a tad bit different. You have a networking centric degree, and while A+ is a great certification to start to crawl, I honestly think obtaining the CCNA would be huge, IF you wanted to pursue networking. You will probably still need to start off somewhere as a tech but should be able to move up fairly quickly with your degree and the NA. This is just my opinion. The good news is once you get the CCNA that can take you very far. I've seen senior network engineers with CCNA's.

powerfool

Others have touched on it... why settle for "or" when you can get "and"?

W Stewart

SteveLord wrote: »

I work in state government and our jobs never have certifications on the listings. Only degrees and/or select skills (Java, .NET, etc)

You're talking about development positions. Certifications aren't in demand on the programming side of things like they are on the support side. Likewise, a degree seems to be a requirement for most programming jobs.

shodown

it depends on the company and the job. I can tell that since we are small, we look for the best people we can find and afford. Degree's don't even come into play when we are looking. With that said, our best engineer has a Computer Engineering degree. Another one has a masters in Computer Science and the other has a IT degree. I'm actually the only person running around these parts with no degree. However we never looked for them, they showed up with them, so that shows some value in them.

SteveLord

W Stewart wrote: »

You're talking about development positions. Certifications aren't in demand on the programming side of things like they are on the support side. Likewise, a degree seems to be a requirement for most programming jobs.

They do the same whether it is for developers, support or any job really. Those were just the first ones I could think of. They pull from a generic list of skills they call "Selectives." Emergency Preparedness is an example of one for some management position I saw.

Otherwise, they usually lay out what the duties entail on the description itself.

FloOz

I went for my A+ and Network + in my free time during my senior year. It did give me a nice advantage over other students when it came time to apply for jobs. So yes I would say both are worth it.

DonM34

Thanks a lot guys