Study: Proliferation, Lack of Experience Req. May Be Hurting Certs
3/19/2003 -- According to Thomson-Prometric's third annual "Global IT Training and Certification Study," while managers overall support IT certification, the sheer number of certifications available combined with a lack of experience prerequisites "has led some managers to discontinue using certification as a way to judge the skills of job candidates."
This could be an indication of larger backlash in relation to an "everyone is doing it" trend, the study states.
In a section called "Challenges and Opportunities for the IT Certification Industry," the study's authors write:
"Following its debut as a measure of skills assessment and technological competency, IT certification has grown to take on a life of its own, with many candidates pursuing certification as a means of standing out from the crowd in a tough employment market. The impact of this trend is that...certification may be in danger of being viewed as a commodity."
"While managers appreciate that a candidate has invested time and effort in becoming certified, [managers] want more assurance or proof that a certification translates into the skills and abilities necessary to function in day-to-day IT life."
According to the study, certification does appear to be losing some power in terms of bringing monetary benefits to IT professionals. Those rewarded for their certifications with salary increases dropped 4 percent in 2002 to 18 percent. Those rewarded with a promotion stayed flat at 9 percent.
The study also says that there's a "gap" in what certified professionals see as value of certification and how managers perceive it, "specifically what certification delivers in terms of performance and competence on the job."
To combat this, the study's authors recommend that certification vendors structure exams so that they measure "both the theory behind the technology and its practical, hands-on" application as well as focus more on tying experience to specific credentials.
The study also found that managers who have less experience in the IT field (15 years or fewer) are "significantly" more likely to see the value in having a technically certified staff member as compared to more experienced managers who have been in the field for 16 years or more. The study attributes this gap to an "age of certification" -- e.g., younger managers are more accepting of certification "because it was part of their career development experience."
Other interesting findings in the study, which examines a wide variety of behaviors and attitudes toward certifications by both candidates and managers, include:
- Top reasons for IT professionals to achieve certifications in 2002 were increased credibility, assessing skills and increased compensation.
- For those already certified, there was a 4 percent point drop in those seeking certification to increase salary, and a more than 50 percent drop overall in those seeking certification in order to get a new job.
- The top benefits of certification as seen by IT managers are higher level of service (22 percent), increased productivity (20 percent) and increased credibility with clients (19 percent).
- The perceived value of certification varies by region. In China, the top reason cited by IT pros to become certified is to increase productivity (33 percent). The top reason in India and the United States is to help find a job (22 percent and 19 percent, respectively). The top reason in Latin America is to increase credibility (36 percent).
- Overall, candidates in India are the most positive toward certification, and those in Europe are least likely to reap financial benefits from certification.
- Younger candidates (under 30) are more likely to see certification as a "stepping stone" than older candidates, but less likely to take an exam due to financial considerations.
- Use of all training methods is up across the board. The use of self study products rose to 87 percent, up from 61 percent in 2001. Seventy seven percent of candidates used a self-assessment test in 2002, up from 46 percent in 2001. The use of instructor-based remained fairly stable at 47 percent, up one percentage point from the previous study.
- Instructor led training is much bigger in China (88 percent) than in other regional areas.
The 2002 study uses results obtained from more than 8,000 IT professionals, including surveys of 3,036 test-takers at worldwide Prometric centers, 5,207 survey respondents who had previously taken exams at Prometric centers, and in-depth interviews with 23 IT professionals in Chicago, London and Singapore.
A PDF of the results can be downloaded from Prometric's Web site here.  -B.N. with Mike Domingo, MCPMag.com.
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There are 63  user Comments for “Study: Proliferation, Lack of Experience Req. May Be Hurting Certs”
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| 3/27/03: Dick from Massachusetts says: |
I was fortunate, I made the swap in 1999. I took the MS courses through a major university, and passed 2 tests, and was hired, 5 weeks out of training. Been at that company since. We will hire someone in about 9 months to increase the department. I will be looking for someone with little experience, but education and 1 - 2 tests complete. We will use them for entry level work, and bring them up to speed on all of our functions over about a one year time frame. That person will need to do a lot of learning in a short time, and can expect entry level pay for the first year. It WILL put another experienced person into the field. The company is small, about 100 folks, so if you are newly job changed, partly certified, focus your efforts in the smaller comapnies. You may need to search awhile, I got lucky, and the market was hot when I did it. Look in the smaller local papers for local smallish companies. I found my job in a local county paper, and got hired right away. I have had my hands on every thing from desktop support to planning and executing the change over to Windows 2000 active directory. Do not give up. |
| 3/27/03: Anonymous says: |
I would agree that certifications without experience are worthless unless you are trying to break into the computer field. In this case they "may" serve as a door opener, but that is all. |
| 3/27/03: Bobby Mak from NYC says: |
Certifications are extremely valuable for 3 reasons: 1. If you're an experienced pro, you will learn a lot of useful background theory as to why your troubleshooting techniques work or don't work. Many seasoned veterans of IT who learned on-the-job or on-the-run have, through the years, accumulated some blind spots and pockets of ignorance, which get filled in the process of studying for certification. 2. If you're a newbie studying for certification, you will learn important technology basics that will make on-the-job training more comprehensible and make your advanced studies a little easier. 3. Even if there are a lot of inflated certification holders out there, the fact that you passed one or more certification exams acts as a kind of "bozo filter", however small, for prospective employers. |
| 3/27/03: Anonymous says: |
It's difficult to get any job in this economy, especially in IT. In my experience, certification was what got me a job. I got my MCSE in 2001 and found a job as a Network Admin with no experience in IT. There is no way that I would have been able to find an entry level job in IT without getting certified. Being female and only having work experience as a secretary made it that much difficult. At one job interview for a help desk position, I was asked if I knew that the job required me to handle computer equipment! Getting certified does help especially if you don't have any experience. |
| 3/27/03: Unemployed 1 yr mid level tech from Ohio says: |
I have spent 25 years working in the computer and IT industry as mainly a repair technician. I've worked on almost everything except for mainframe computers. The first 20 were spilt between a service company that had 3 service people and the other half I ran the service office alone. Management only showed up when something important came up. After being laid off from both of these jobs (lack of work) I found a job with a service provider that had a large presence in my city. Most of my previous experience had been taking care of end-users with a small amount on the server end. The new employer had said that if I wanted to get more invovled with the high end support I would need to be certified. After spending almost a year doing more end-user support and getting my MSCE I went to management and asked when I would start to get invovled with more high end work they said soon. This all took place in the late 90's. Soon turned into later and later. Y2K and you have lots of desktop experience. And so the story goes. People talk about the value of certs and if they are valuable or not. I think that certs are the most valuable for are the employers especially the service providers. They go in to sell services and they say look how many certified people we have. Then when the sale is made the same 2 or 3 people that they always use are put on the project and the mid level people are told sure your certified but you don't have enough experience to do this. When you tell them that you don't expect to head the project and just want to be on it to get the experience they say we need you to stay available for something else we're working on getting. Then the IT bust and they say. We hate to lose your experience but we need to cut our budget. What about the uncertified employees. We don't expect to get any high end work for awhile and they can fill our needs. Code for you make to much money. Certified with 25 years of experience and unemployed for almost a year. I have even applied for many entry level positions. I don't even get any responses from those. I know 3 people for whom IT is a second career. 2 of them have no certs at all and they are employed. Certifications are useless. |
| 3/27/03: Toumani from London says: |
I do understand how employers feel,but also sympathise with candidates, as certification exams do not come cheap,especially if one has to sit to more than one module to attain a qualification. My suggestion is that Companies should utilize full product simulations instead of multiple test questions on all exams. This serves two purpose, it gives creditability to the certification process,secondly it would save both money and time of candidates. This might not be great news for vendors lucrative certification revenues, but the corporate end user of IT services would finally be able to start taking the ramshackled IT profession seriously. |
| 3/27/03: Toumani from London says: |
Just in case certification vendors are wondering what guidelines they should use in relation to my earlier comment. Then follow CISCO's CCIE exams as a yard stick,no matter how basic the product. Apply no more than two tests, one theoretical the other a practical business problem, which must be solved on a simulator or real product. |
| 3/31/03: Paper MCSE says: |
Who cares, not me.. |
| 4/17/03: pastyhermit from Vancouver BC says: |
It is interesting to see the different views, the way I see certification is its all political requirements, the best IT people that I know dont have past high-school! And they own but there is news for everyone, you simply cant do that anymore, if an HR person looks at your credentials and sees no papers, guess what, if he hires you, it will be for less because the guy with papers meets politcal requirements and has papers so he can ask for more. I know MCSEs that dont know what the 'ping' command is and get stuck when they leave a disk in their floppy drive. I am certified, I am working on my LPIC Level2 and it is the best way without experience I find to get to know linux (linux is the example I am using). No, Im not the best, yes I do need lots of experience but I find with certifications, there are those who braindump and learn nothing and there are those that study hard, do all the labs, learn all the stuff they can inside and out and pass their exams fair and square. LPIC I think is a good example of a certification, it is not vendor-based which means you are learning technology as opposed to a companies products and services. MCSE for example is a Marketing course, they teach you enough technical knowledge to deal with a technical crowd. This is in my opinion the epidemy of vendor based certifications. For the most part they all are political requirements but some people learn and take the oppurtunity to do that well and some people pass it by. I dont see any value in certifications other than merely politcal requirements, thought there are some that are good and that you learn alot from, given you get out what you put in. |
| 4/21/03: Certs & Job Market says: |
The problem is a shrinking job market, an IT field that covers too many areas that really need specialised skills and experience. Its not the college degrees or the certifications that are the problem but rather the lack of jobs now available. In times of reduced job availability, people with years of experience are usually taken over the rest to fill the positions available. |
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