Which certifications would you remove/add if you had the chance

In retrospect what certifications would you have passed up and which ones do you wish you had done or done sooner?

Any that you did that were right on the money?

I'm just hoping to shed some light and share the experience of others on this community.

A lot of the new people are overwhelmed and see all these certifications and get caught up. Thinking they need to get X Y Z and Q along with L and maybe T R AND V.

I won't go through them all but the ones that provided no value for me

MOFV4

ISO/IEC 20000 F

ISO/IEC 27002 F

Project +

Server +

MS Project 2010 Managing Projects

Ones that really helped out IMO

ITIL V3 Foundations. This helped me land my first lead position.

A+ (This was extremely helpful when looking for jobs). It was practically a requirement for a 1/4 of the jobs I applied for.

MOS 2007 Master (MS Office) Believe it or not his has really helped a lot. People laugh at this but it get's the attention of a lot of recruiters and it's not that terribly hard. Of course I would starting eyeing 2013 or 2010, but depending what you role is this can be very helpful. **When I was struggling to find a job in Rochester MN this was one of main reason I was picked up on a tier 3 software support position.

CAPM - Certified Associate Project Manager is a neat one to get. Has it helped me get a job, NO, but it has helped me understand the PM world a lot more and that body of knowledge that is associated with it.

Out of my ~15 certifications I believe those 4 listed above would been more than enough to get the jobs I wanted. Experience ends up winning out in the end.

What certifications have you found valuable and which ones not so much?

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Comments

melissa7779311

Yeah your probably right

N2IT

Paul I agree - I would go so far to say most people don't have the aptitude.

I think there are other means to get to where you want to go but in IT the CS is the most perferred. CS is the most asked for in job requirements and has the most substance as far as I am concerned. I think certifications are nice auxillary education some having more weight than others of course. It seems that security and networking are the two job fields that really hold certifications highly.

Back to the original piece, certification you regret or now review as having no to very little value. Of course on the flip side certifications that you obtained that proven to be more valuable than you ever imaged.

MOS Master Office 2007 falls in that category. ITIL has been big as well.

dave330i

My most valuable cert is VCP4. I knew it was going to be valuable when I obtained it. Just didn't realize at the time what a fast track it would place me on.

paul78

N2IT wrote: »

Back to the original piece, certification you regret or now review as having no to very little value. Of course on the flip side certifications that you obtained that proven to be more valuable than you ever imaged.

I guess that would largely depend on how you define "value".

I define value as the process of learning and preparation for whatever certification exam that offers the most value. By that definition - I would hope that most people consider all certifications to be of value.

As for certifications that have proven to be more valuable than I imagined - I would have to say none at the moment.

In some ways, I still consider the actual certifications to be superfluous. But I will acknowledge that holding the actual certification provides a great sense of accomplishment - so nothing wrong with that in my book.

I think that if part of the objective of this dialogue is to help guide people who are newer in their career (which I would define as less than 5 years of experience) - then I would say - don't chase certifications - instead try to be the best at your job. As a secondary effort, look for the certifications that make the most sense for you to be better at your current job. As a tertiary effort, if you have an interest in other aspects of IT, then look at IT certifications outside of your immediate job. It's always been my opinion that having certifications mean nothing if cannot be good at your job (no matter what that job is).

For me to even think about the next level, I need to be able to do my current job with competence. (hey didn't we just have a discussion about the Peter Principle -

blargoe

I think of the logic from my CS classes makes me better at stepping through troubleshooting, and the exposure to programming helps me grasp automation/scripting more easily. Personally, I'm glad I stuck with the CS degree, but I don't know that it necessarily gave me a leg up compared to those with a different degree (from the viewpoint of it being a more sought after degree for, say, infrastructure admins).

N2IT

This right here is money my friend - "As a tertiary effort, if you have an interest in other aspects of IT, then look at IT certifications outside of your immediate job. It's always been my opinion that having certifications mean nothing if cannot be good at your job (no matter what that job is)".

@ BL - "I think of the logic from my CS classes makes me better at stepping through troubleshooting, and the exposure to programming helps me grasp automation/scripting more easily". BL I am not sure what type of environments you have worked in, but it has ALWAYS been my assumption and have witnessed on numerous occasions this guy -->BL AKA CS AKA Scripting Guy to deliver solution outside the box usually requires some sort of scripting, development to automate or at least understand if automating something makes sense or can be done with little effort or a certain amount of effort.

Maybe I have become jaded, but anyone who is viewed as valuable in our IT department usually can script to a certain degree if not flat out program. We have our stud storage DBA's and network engineers, but in most of the environment if you can script you are golden. This synchs back to the CS degree, most graduates can deliver code.

I don't care if you are architect team, asset management (software hardware), system administration, access management, security, business process operations, etc. It really helps and moves you along. Even in the business side, financial analysis, business analysis, accounting, HRIS, CRM, PMO, etc if you can automate via scripting you can deliver at a much higher level than the guy without these skills.

To boil it all together, it would be more advantgous to learn powershell or VBA (or some development language) than A+ or Network + in most environments.

Okay it's a stretch but I like to see what people have to say. I am sorry but I doubt anyone can convince me that being a expert at fixing OS or building servers will get you more money and add more value than someone who can write strong powershell scripting against WMI/AD and pull information. Or bulk update or remove accounts or automate an Excel report everytime someone opens it.

Psoasman

I am normally very selective about what certs I want to work on. At WGU, I did earn some certs that won't be on my resume: CIW web design, database, and javascript specialist. After going through those courses, I would hardly call myself a specialist in any of those. I did learn some valuable skills from them, but not enough to have them grace my resume.

All of my desktop / server certs have come in handy over the years.

paul78

N2IT wrote: »

We have our stud storage DBA's and network engineers, but in most of the environment if you can script you are golden. This synchs back to the CS degree, most graduates can deliver code.

Not to sound like a snob but I don't necessarily equate scripting with programming. The ability to write software with the skills that someone would learn from a CS degree and working as a software engineer is very different that the ability to script.

Designing software which is scalable, maintainable, and secure is usually not what someone who scripts powershell or VBA is typically able to do. I've worked at way too many places where "write-only software" was written by developers who were really just cobbling a bunch of scripts with very little regard to the supportability and maintainability of the code. And only the person that wrote the software can debug and understand it.

dave330i

N2IT wrote: »

Okay it's a stretch but I like to see what people have to say. I am sorry but I doubt anyone can convince me that being a expert at fixing OS or building servers will get you more money and add more value than someone who can write strong powershell scripting against WMI/AD and pull information. Or bulk update or remove accounts or automate an Excel report everytime someone opens it.

What you're talking about is O&M stuff. Architects usually make more than O&M.