By SANDRA GITTLEN

Got certification?

Network World, 11/14/01

CompTIA and Prometric have just released the results of their "2001 Global Training and Certification Study" and the findings signal good news for those seeking or holding certifications.

Overall, the study, which involved interviews with 18,000 certified employees, managers and those seeking certification, shows that certification is incredibly beneficial to advancing your career. In fact, the top three reasons cited for seeking certification are:

• Assessment of skills and knowledge.
• Increased credibility.
• Increased compensation.
  
  

More than 60% of the IT professionals surveyed agreed that certification is valuable. The reasons managers are hip to certification are along the same lines:

Credibility of having a certified staff.

Producing a higher level of service.

Increasing productivity.

However, more than half of the managers surveyed said letting employees seek certification leads to empty positions. This does not match up with what employees say - only 29% changed employers after certification.

The study also looked at preferred methods of training. For instance, about 50% of classroom training takes place in a third-party training facility. But, as I've recently talked about in this column, 23% takes place at the company's own facilities.

IT professionals say they equally rely on instructor-led training and printed materials for self-study. They also say employing self-study and self-assessment tests helped them to pass their exams.

And lest you think employees only follow training out of self-motivation, the numbers state that 28% of IT professionals undergo IT training at the recommendation of their employers.

Here's a number that I think will change dramatically in the next year: 22% sought training for job security while 10% sought training to find another job. With the job market constricting radically, I predict that the job security percentage will raise to more than 50% of respondents.

Finally, 80% of managers say that more than 10% of staff have been trained in the past year. I hope that number boosts so that response we look at says more than 30% of staff has been trained.

What do you think of these results? Let me know at sgittlen@nww.com.

For the complete results of the study, go to: http://www.prometric.com/ImagineIT/default.htm

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Gittlen is Events Editor at Network World.
You can e-mail her at sgittlen@nww.com.