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Face-off: Certifications are not important for career enhancement

Experts disagree on whether formal certifications still matter
Face-off By David Foote , Network World , 04/16/2007
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David Foote, Foote Partners

Countless IT workers have risen in the ranks, many as high as CIO, without having earned a single vendor certification.

But let's set that aside for a moment and explore why, in my firm's ongoing IT-skills pay survey of 62,000 North American IT professionals, average pay declined 0.1% in the past 12 months for certification and rose nearly 8% for noncertified IT skills. And let's see why the number of new certifications received in the United States was down 18% last year, according to Brainbench's 2006 Global Skills Report.

Certifications are losing their luster. We speak regularly with more than 1,800 employers in our IT workforce research, and they tell us that not being certified isn't a big deal if a job candidate has proven technical skills and other important strengths -- business, customer and interpersonal -- in the right proportion to the job. Moreover, employers want workers experienced in their industry and with specific systems, software and solutions, and who can quickly deliver what customers want. They're especially keen on workers who flourish under tough deadlines and can handle a certain amount of organizational discomfort.


Face-off:Certifications remain important for career enhancement

IT career advancement has become like a jigsaw puzzle. Certification is only one piece, giving way to clusters of critical attributes that define the modern IT role.

Certifications are more concentrated in networking, systems administration, database, and security jobs and careers. How are they doing in the certified vs. noncertified pay sweepstakes? No different: Noncertified networking skills grew 2.5% in value in 2006, but pay for more than 40 networking certifications declined an average of nearly 4%. The value of systems-related certifications dropped 2%. In the last half of 2006, pay for 27 IT security certifications fell 2.1%.

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Comments (16)
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Certification face-offBy Inbox on April 16, 2007, 10:45 amWhat do you think? Susan Underhill, vice president of HP Global Certification and Partner Education, argues certification is still needed. David Foote, CEO...

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IT CertificationsBy Richard Ellis on April 16, 2007, 12:38 pmAs a manager, I value IT certifications as one measure of a potential employee's value to the organization, but certainly not the only one. For current employees,...

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Certifications no longer required.By Elaine Peters on April 16, 2007, 3:28 pmSorry Mr. Foote but in the Telecommunications industry where Suppliers such as Cisco, Nortel, Avaya and now Microsoft all require Product Certifications to maintain...

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Certification face offBy Gregory Coats on April 16, 2007, 4:03 pmAs I read the articles - both are right. Certifications are important, but they have their limits. Part of the problem is there are so many certifications, from...

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Nothing new. Read my article from 2002.By Anonymous on April 17, 2007, 9:14 amSusan, In 2002 I have written an article that was intended for all my future students and for those who wanted to pursue the certification path. I don't want...

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Nice Work RomanBy Alliance Datacom on April 17, 2007, 12:10 pmRoman, Nice work on your articles. Do you find them to still be 100% relevant today? Alliance Datacom - Your Used Cisco Resource Center

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