Are certified networking skills less valuable?

Premium pay for certified networking skills not as valuable as before

Does it pay to become IT certified? That question is under examination again as figures from Foote Partners’ latest quarterly skills pay report show a 1.4% average increase for the quarter ended Oct. 1, in the value employers are willing to pay for non-certified skills. This compares with a drop of 2% in the value of certified IT skills – the largest quarterly decline since 2004, according to the researchers.

First published in 1999 and updated every three months, Foote Partners’ “Hot Technical Skills and Certifications Pay Index” surveys 55,000 IT professionals and tracks the skills pay for 253 certified and non-certified technical and management skills and certifications. Skills pay is the premium that employers offer workers for their certifications and/or technical expertise.

When the company published the results of its second-quarter survey, the researchers noted that “the gap between what an employer is willing to pay for workers with certified skills vs. those without certification will narrow to near-parity.” It appears that that trend is continuing.

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Does it pay to become IT certified? That question is under examination again as figures from Foote Partners’ latest quarterly skills pay report show a 1.4% average increase for the quarter ended Oct. 1, in the value employers are willing to pay for non-certified skills. This compares with a drop of 2% in the value of certified IT skills – the largest quarterly decline since 2004, according to the researchers.

First published in 1999 and updated every three months, Foote Partners’ “Hot Technical Skills and Certifications Pay Index” surveys 55,000 IT professionals and tracks the skills pay for 253 certified and non-certified technical and management skills and certifications. Skills pay is the premium that employers offer workers for their certifications and/or technical expertise.

When the company published the results of its second-quarter survey, the researchers noted that “the gap between what an employer is willing to pay for workers with certified skills vs. those without certification will narrow to near-parity.” It appears that that trend is continuing.

Of the 129 certified skills surveyed, the networking sector experienced the highest drop in the percentage of premium pay in the third quarter of this year, compared to the year-ago quarter. Skills pay for networking certifications - which includes the usual roster of Cisco certifications and SNIA storage networking certs - in Q3 2006 was 8.9% of base salary, compared to 9.3% in the year-ago quarter.

Meanwhile, the average premium pay for non-certified networking and communications skills in the third quarter was 7.2%. The researchers count such skills as network project assignments, storage-area networking, radio frequency identification, and VoIP, among non-certified networking skills. Although the 7.2% figure remained flat compared to the year-ago quarter, non-certified messaging, e-mail and groupware skills pay increased 7.3% to 6.2% of base pay.

The biggest jump for a non-certified skill was the enterprise business applications category, which rose 13.1% to comprise 8.1% of base pay. Not a single non-certified skills category saw a decline in the average skills pay as a percentage of base pay.

The certified networking skills category was among the five certified skills sectors, out of the eight surveyed by Foote Partners, that saw declines in skills pay. After the networking sector, certified database skills experienced the second highest drop in the percentage of premium pay, decreasing 4.6% to representing 8.4% of base salary.

However, it was not all bad news for certification holders. The certified skills categories that saw positive annual growth in the level of premium pay were general and training (15% increase to 4.6% of base salary), applications development/programming languages (4.9% increase to 8.1% of base salary), and Web development (3.6% increase to 6.3% of base salary).

David Foote, CEO and chief research officer for Foote Partners, notes in a statement accompanying the latest figures, that: “It’s not that employers aren’t willing to pay a premium for [certifications], but instead that the prices they are willing to pay vs. non-certified skills is nowhere near the levels of one or two years ago, or even six months ago.”