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Emmett Dulaney
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I'll Pass on the Mulligan |
| Emmett's got a few misgivings about Microsoft's "Second Shot" program. Plus, Novell debuts a new engineer certification, and "Book of the Week" shows you how to build your career. |
| by Emmett Dulaney |
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10/17/2007 -- I confess to having mixed feelings about the "Second Shot" promotion that Microsoft is currently offering. If you fail an exam you registered for between now and Jan. 30, 2008, the promotion lets you have one free retake. Second Shot is applicable for any IT professional, developer or Dynamics exam.
As Microsoft's marketing piece says:
"Microsoft certification is a great way to set yourself apart with hard proof of your skills in the most current and specialized technologies and tasks. Now Second Shot doubles your advantage by giving you a free retake of a Microsoft Certification exam. It's your extra shot at success -- and it's only available for a limited time."
On one hand, I'm in favor of anything that's free. If you want to offer me the chance to take an exam without studying properly, fail it so I can learn what types of questions you ask, study for the test and pass it -- how can I be against that? I just saved the time it takes to read the whole study guide.
On the other hand, however, Microsoft talks about "hard proof of your skills"...but then tells you that it's OK to fail; just try again, take the do-over without penalty. I'm not sure that's a world I want to live in. Imagine arriving to work Monday morning to a down network. When you grab the junior administrator by the collar and ask why they did nothing, they respond that they just didn't know what to do in this particular situation. It's their mulligan; they'll fix it the next time it goes down.
Of course, I'm being flip, but the truth of the matter is that there aren't many do-overs outside of children's games. Not only do I think that there shouldn't be free do-overs on exams, I also think that your certification transcript should indicate the number of times you had to take an exam. I'd much rather hire someone who passed the first time through as opposed to someone who had to take it enough times to learn every question in the pool.
Novell's Newest Engineer Certification
Novell has announced a new certification to help Certified Novell Engineers (CNEs) migrate to Linux: the Novell Certified Engineer (NCE). This isn't just a simple reshuffling of the acronym; the NCE is intended to further cement the move away from all NetWare platforms in favor of Open Enterprise Server.
To become certified, you must pass a single exam: NCE Enterprise Services (050-709). While not currently available, the exam is expected to be practicum-based and priced at $195, the same as similar Novell exams.
For those new to Novell, four courses are recommended in preparation for taking the exam:
- Novell Networking and Services for Linux
- Administering Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 for Linux
- Implementing Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 for Linux
- Deploying Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 for Linux
For those already certified as CNEs, only the latter two courses are recommended.
More information about the upcoming NCE certification can be found here.
Book of the Week: 'The IT Career Builder's Toolkit'
Though it's going on a couple of years old now, Matthew Moran's The IT Career Builder's Toolkit is still relevant and useful.
The 23 short chapters are divided into five parts where you're bound to find information applicable to you if you've never had a job in IT, or if you've worked in the field for years. The five parts telegraph the content within: An Introduction to Career Building, Filling Your Toolkit, Putting Your Toolkit to Use, More Options to Build Your Career and The Value-Added Technologist.
While the book is small, don't dismiss it as a quick read. You should spend time pondering what it says and working through the exercises that conclude each chapter. It will be time well-spent.
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Emmett Dulaney is the author of several books on Linux, Unix and certification. He can be reached at .
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More articles by Emmett Dulaney:
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There are 5  user Comments for “I'll Pass on the Mulligan”
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| 10/17/07: Pete Calvert from Adelaide, South Australia says: |
OK - I'll bite on the mulligan Emmett - I'm not sure how many certification exams, you've done, but from your bio line I'd assume quite a few - so you should know better. Doing exams isn't only about knowing your stuff. A large proportion is in handling the exam itself - the style of questions, the time limits, the nonsensical non-real-world scenarios that are sometimes presented. I've done lots of exams and in prepping people who haven't done exams before I urge them to consider their exam techniques in addition to knowing the content. I know a lot of people who really know their stuff and yet bomb the exams because they get flustered with the format or frustrated with the lack of real world options or don't have easy access to Google. Studying for exams is a good way of learning things that we otherwise might never encounter in the real world and exposes people to the concepts and frameworks behind the bricks and mortar we get from experience, but because of the bad experience or expectations of a bad experience many good people forgo on doing the exams. Note that it is in Microsoft's best interests to have people pass the first time - otherwise the "free" retakes start to cost real money in MS payments to Prometric. But MS also want to remove a common objection to getting people certified in the first place (and by doing so they can also learn things about MS products and technologies that they didn't know before). If it encourages people to learn and develop their skills rather than just rely on on-the-job experience then I'm all for it. Who knows - you might not have to collar the junior administrator because they will have proactively stopped the network going down because of things they had learned while studying for their exam that they are now not afraid to take. |
| 10/18/07: Joe from Washington DC says: |
How about raising the passing score for subsequent attempts at the same certification. If passing is getting 3 out of 4 questions correct on the first try the second try should require 4 out of 5 correct. I also whole heartedly agree about having the number of certification attempts (along with the dates) available to anyone who wants to verify an individual's certification. Of course Microsoft wants more people to be certified on their products. It makes for very good marketing material. |
| 10/20/07: Dale from Oklahoma says: |
I think the free retake is a great idea. I have never failed any of the certification exams I have taken but I have had to work way to hard on the exam rather than on skills. Microsoft claims their exams represent real world skills assessment but it only tests Microsoft's view of the real world. All of the answers lie somewhere in Technet for admin exams and in MSDN for developer exams. The problem is, no one in the world can learn everything in either product. When you look at the skills list in the online information for any Microsoft exam, you'll see that none of their training courses, not online, classroom, or books, cover all of the skills being tested. In fact, for many exams, you could take every single course, online, classroom, and books, and still have gaping holes in the exam coverage. So who is to say where the real world component of the exam comes from? People could work real world for 20 years and have completely different real world experience from others. Real world, in my opinion, was only Microsoft's way of making their exams difficult in order to provide a false sense of value to the certifications. When I did my Novell certifications in the late 90's, I never did attend any Novell classes; I just couldn't afford it. I did buy some 1000 page books to study and studied them for months. Finally, someone loaned me some Novell white books. I was shocked to find that everything in the test is covered in the training courses for that test. That is exactly how it should be. Teach what you test and test what you teach. Microsoft owns the certifications and can, and should, define the set of skills required to pass the certification exam. But not clearly defining all of the skills in their training program is just being sneaky. The free retake is nothing more than what it says, a free retake. The smart certification candidate would take the exam early in the process even without a free retake. The time that would be saved by intentionally taking an exam with only a couple week's preparation, fair or not, is huge. The only problem is, a lot of candidates cannot afford the failure. Now they can. It opens up a wise preparation path to a lot more candidates. When I started taking certification exams, it was to break into the IT industry. At the time, I couldn't even afford to pass an exam, let alone to fail one. I made huge sacrifices in money and time to take those exams to make sure that I never threw away the hundred dollars they cost at the time. |
| 10/26/07: jp from hoboken says: |
It's pretty simple-minded to compare an on-the-job problem with a test question. I've been an MCSD since 1998, have taken a lot of tests, kept up my certs from VB5 through Csharp, SQL6.5 through 2005, with Access and Office 2000 tests thrown in for good measure. I've failed a few and never had to pay to retake them, courtesy of the Second Shot. I wouldn't have taken some of them if the Second Shot wasn't an option. But by failing some, I was able to study some topics that I neglected to cover adequately (or at all). There were an inordinate number of questions on Async Remoting in Csharp on one test. I knew it cold by the time I retested. On another test (one of the Solution Architecture tests) I was prepared for SQL Server questions. The focus of that particular test was Indexing Services, which I knew nothing about. I learned as much as I could for the retest (and as a result put together a great app in work using Indexing Services). The retest was all about SQL Server. I'm not a fan of memorizing for a test. Memorizing syntax of a function call is a silly way of testing your knowledge, particularly when MS changes the language while you're working with it. I leave most of those questions up to dumb luck as to whether I get them right or not. I just turned 50. My memorizing muscles don't work the way they used to. Unfortunately, recent tests are all about memorization and reading comprehension. Neither test your knowledge and problem-solving skills. There's not even a hint of testing "hard proof of your skills". I've never studied to the test - never used study guides, cram courses, or brain dumps. I say keep the Second Shot going. If you don't study to the test, having to take it a second time is a real possibility. |
| 11/21/07: Dan from Austin says: |
I'm going to use your idiotic analogy to illustrate how inane it is. I live in this world where a High and Mighty writer believes second chances aren't allowed and this world is difficult to live in. Should I point out to you that your use of pronouns is incorrect? You should have learned that in elementary school, middle school, or even high school. "They" refers to something plural not an individual. Oops, I'll give you another chance. Also, your use of an idiom is incorrect. Next time (shoot there I go again) use "Not only... but also" since it's correct. You know what. We shouldn't ever have second chances especially if people just make a few mistakes here and there. Shouldn't we throw out the entire article rather than simply correct the mistakes? Now go write the entire article again. |
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