IT certification pay continues to drop - but some faster than others

It's been well-known for some time that IT certifications are becoming less useful when it comes to raising your salary.

Some certifications are dropping in value much more quickly than others, though, reveals a new report from the Foote Partners. 

The value of certifications related to applications development and programming languages has dropped 11.9% over the past two years. Database certifications dropped 10.2%, while a drop in value of more than 9% was seen for Web development, and systems administration and engineering.

Networking certifications dropped in value by 8.3%, while project management and architecture fell 6.1%. All in all it was a bleak picture for IT certifications. Overall, the value of 164 IT certifications measured by Foote dropped 4.9% the past two years and 1.6% in the six-month period ending April 1.

“In general, when you talk to people who are hiring IT workers, they don’t mention technology as the first, second or even the third most important thing,” says David Foote, co-founder, CEO and chief research officer. Knowledge of Oracle’s database used to be the key to getting many jobs. Now, companies want experience in specific vertical industries as well as technical skills, Foote says.

The biggest decline was seen in beginner-level certifications, the value of which dropped 16% over the last two years, according to Foote’s research. Companies tend to pay extra for employees with intermediate and advanced skills but not for those trained only on beginner courses, Foote says.

Foote’s survey of 78,000 employees focuses both on salaries and the average value of a particular skill or certification, paid to employees as bonuses or salary adjustments. Foote normalizes the skill and cert pay as a percentage of salary for the purposes of its reports. Let’s say a particular skill or certification is worth a 10% boost in pay over a comparable person who lacks that skill. If, six months later, that same skill is worth a 15% boost in salary, then the value of that skill has increased 50%. That’s what Foote measures.

Some certifications are bucking the trend and rising in value. IT security certifications rose 3.1% in value over the past two years and 1.2% in value in the last six months. Certain types of security skills are seeing dramatic growth. A 27% rise in value was measured for the Certified Information Security Manager designation, just in the past six months. In second place with a 25% rise in the last six months was the GIAC Security Expert cert.