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Greg Neilson
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Certification Ethics 101 |
| Two exam preparation shortcuts that true IT professionals should avoid at all costs. |
| by Greg Neilson |
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9/12/2001 -- It wasn't that long ago that certification exam preparation products didn't exist at all. You either took the vendor class, or you knew the material anyhow and took your chances with the exam.
Since then, certification has become a huge boon to technical book publishing -- a myriad of test preparation tools keep springing up. In most cases, we pay the money for these products to shorten the time taken to prepare for the exams and also to improve the chances of passing that exam. However, there's a couple of shortcut approaches I would advise you not to take.
The first shortcut I feel you need to make a decision NOT to use are braindump Web sites. The word "braindump" has a variety of meanings, but in this context it means someone has written down the test questions they experienced together with their suggested answers. Sometimes these can be quite organized with a number of test takers putting their thoughts together, resulting in a fairly large pool of questions for each.
To put it simply, braindumps are cheating. I guess some people rationalize this away by declaring that certification exams often ask about obscure product features; but, at the end of the day, by using these resources you are cheating yourself and also everyone else who has or wants to hold that certification. We've seen a model for this with Microsoft's NT 4.0 MCSE exams. Unfortunately there is now a common perception that braindump sites have been used all too often by participants, so it is often felt that the certification itself is not worth as much as it used to. There have been many steps taken by Microsoft to reduce the effectiveness of these sites for Windows 2000 exams, but undoubtably some devious people will eventually find ways to get around this.
Another area that concerns me is that so many test participants seem to view Transcender exam preparation software as freeware. (This happens with other products as well, but I see it most often with Transcender.) I must say that I don't use Transcender's products myself, and I don't have any stock in their company, but these are licensed products and I feel that they should be treated as such. People who wouldn't dream of using pirate operating systems or office suites seem to have no qualms about swapping pirate versions of Transcender's offerings. I've heard people say that these products are useful exam preparation tools, and I'm assuming that people justify the piracy because of the high price of the products, but that's a pretty poor reason. A few years ago I used to get many unsolicited e-mails from people wanting me to share pirate copies of Transcender (although I'd never bought any!), but now I think people are more suspect about making this piracy known. With the completed certification in hand, we have the intention of showing the world that we're capable IT professionals (stress on the word "professional") and not pirates.
Please give some thought to your ethical situation as you prepare for your exams. You may not agree with my opinions here, but it's a good idea to at least make up your own mind on where you stand on these issues. What do you think: Am I too idealistic, or are there other areas you think need to be avoided in order to ethically prepare for exams? Let me know by posting your thoughts below.
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Greg Neilson, MCSE+Internet, MCNE, PCLP, is a Contributing Editor for Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine and a manager at a large IT services firm in Australia. He's the author of Lotus Domino Administration in a Nutshell (O'Reilly and Associates, ISBN 1-56592-717-6). You can reach him at Attn: Greg.
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More articles by Greg Neilson:
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There are 45  user Comments for “Certification Ethics 101”
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Page 4 of 5
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| 10/2/01: Fatboy says: |
Some people in IT have weird ideas that there profession is different than other professions. In every profession experience is the most important criteria for hiring. But this is not to say that many professions require other criteria such as education eg degree, cert whatever. I am in one of those 20 thousand dollar programs with overpriced books but I am there to learn and I dont expect to get a $60,000 a year job. (im canadian so 25,000 american would be great) But I do feel that with regards to my career goals I would like to have the educational background in IT and then build up my experience. Do my opinions sound off base? Let me know? Greg? Sorry for getting a little off topic but I wanted to put in my 2 cents worth. |
| 10/2/01: Big KB says: |
Fatboy, you are 100% on. I am a Training Director and I tell everyone that there is 2 ways into the IT field, a degree or certifications, others have posted that certification comes after experience, this is not true. I would like someone to tell me how to get exp. without a cert or a degree. You can study all you want, but if you don't have a cert you won't even get an internship. Certs carry more wieght than exp. in many ways. A certification displays a known baseline of knowledge. Experience varies and can be misleading to a potential employer. If you have no exp. and truly understand what you studied to gain your cert. than you will gain your exp. rapidly. |
| 10/2/01: Big KB says: |
Those who used braindumps and similar materials drive down the value of the certification that they hold. To me personally this is the equivalent to taking the SATs and knowing every question and answer because you have already seen them. This can lead you to something that you don't want. There is not much worse than holding these certifications and being an idiot. it will come to light. STUDY HARD. |
| 10/2/01: Rex says: |
Remember no one passes the certs on dumps alone. Most who read the dumps already know what they're doing cause you gotta know the concepts or it's a hell of a lot of data to just memorize. It's people who are green and don't have a clue that get sucked into 20k programs. I don't want one of those in my company. |
| 10/2/01: Big KB says: |
I have seen a group pass CCNP (the entire track)in one day, most of theses individuals had NO exp. They just used materials (which i won't name)that were a carbon copy of the test, there is alot of materials like this out there |
| 10/3/01: Milan says: |
I think it will be sufficient if Microsoft just increase the number of the questions in the question database. I saw people who just memorize questions from braindumps and they are way bellow of the (by my opinion) necessary minimum level of understanding the real stuff. If questions are only little bit different than the one they already saw, they are lost. So, I'm definitely for at least 10 times larger question database - at least as the first step. It is also possible to more frequently change all questions with the similar one, but not the exactly same. |
| 10/3/01: Japhy says: |
My two-cents. I am a college graduate with two B.A's Psych and English. Worked with computers as a hobby thru days of DOS and 20MB harddrives. I decided to pursue IT as a career about a year ago. No jobs without certs. Understood, I was a rookie. Paid way too much at the local tech school for an A+ that was mostly taught with braindumps. This was at a time when CompTIA was changing their tests around. Meaning that there wasn't bupkis around to help in studying. The hardware portion consisted of putting together and taking apart a system TWICE. And forget about the software portion. So as far as real world experience, the only thing we knew how to do was put PCI cards in and use the Control Panel. Easily 65% of the software section was braindumps for the Internet. What's more frightening is that in my class were tech support guys who needed the cert to keep their job. They HAD to use braindumps. I just today passed my MCP without focusing on any main source. I used many books on the market and found them to be less than adequate. I used three test simulations and found these to be a bit better but still did not reflect the actual exam. The reason I passed was from experience ( I am lucky to have an IT mentor) and test taking skills. My point (yes there is one here), is that with the economy, the pressure of keeping a job and the lack of any decent testing material, it isn't any wonder that so many turn to the braindumps to help themselves out. I know I am making the assumption that the majority of test-takers are already in the industry, but rest assured, the "paper MCSE's" show their true colors real soon. I have seen many new MCSEs from the local tech mill come into the office walking the walk and spewing all kinds of acronyms at the boss. But once he tries them out and they don't know the difference between AD and IIS, he sends them down the road; in pain but a bit wiser (we hope). I believe Rex touched on this same point. Is it a question of morality or fairness or is it about profesionalism? Most people don't seem to have a choice in some cases. They need all of the assistance they can find to help them through all of the muck that is certification testing. I am neither for nor against braindumps. But having had to use them as part of the curriculum I see their value. Any smart IT manager will be able to see an experienced MCSE v. a paper MCSE. I see this whole CompTIA/braindump controversy as a wake-up call to the Microsofts, Ciscos and any other computer industry certification that if they want the value of their certs to be regarded, they need to look at their training materials (or the materials that bear their name) against their tests. I guess my two-cents has turned into about 50 cents. |
| 10/4/01: Big KB says: |
People will always find a shortcut to the end, Some have suggested having a hands on lab like the CCIE requirement, but does your MCSE mean enough to you that you will fork out $2,500 for a single test, I think not.People cheat in college and in every other imaginable enviorment where there is something to gain why should we think that this would be any different. |
| 10/8/01: Anonymous says: |
I like the braindumps because they give insight into Microsoft's psychology of questioning. Real world if I ran into a situation where someone I worked for was having continual problems with IIS the solution would be to remove IIS and install a real web service like Apache. Funny, Microsoft doesn't like this answer and it will never appear on any test. In cases like that the test does not examine real world experience, it's testing Microsoft's ideal of what they wish the real world was like. |
| 11/24/01: Nok says: |
I really don’t care what people say about Braindumps. I just like them. They give me a spirit of life. Good point Big KB, “people cheat in college and in every other imaginable enviorment where there is something to gain why should we think that this would be any different.” PEOPLE CHEAT EVERY WHERE !!! .It is people nature from they born. No body perfects, so don’t be naive...hypocrite. I have spent for 3 years to try to pass their exams and always failed !!!, until Braindumps shown. So it is back to people again, before they take a real job they should be prepared….Certificate first and study later….easy though. You only know what you know, you don’t know what you don’t know. |
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