Certification value greater if vendor-independent, say some
Wireless networks are finicky and don’t always play by cabled networking rules. So some training and certification might be in order if you’re focused on the wireless side of the network house.
Gary Audin, president of consultancy Delphi Inc., generally eschews industry certifications because “there tends to be an overdependence in hiring processes on them,” he says. His reasoning is that hiring managers see the letters behind the name on the resume as CYA insurance.
“They figure if it doesn’t work out, it’s not their responsibility,” he asserts.
Audin makes an exception for wireless, though. “A lot of people have no experience with wireless and have nothing to relate it to. [There are] distortion and interference you’ve never run into before with cable.”
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Still, Audin is a big believer in independent training. In his experience, he says, it’s questionable how accurate vendor-specific training is. “Most vendors don’t apply the same rigor to the generic material as they do to the product-specific material,” he says. “They also leave out things that don’t apply to them. And what if there’s an acquisition and there are two different WLANs running?”
Max Lopez, now a senior wireless engineer at the University of Colorado in Boulder, a large Cisco WLAN shop, bypassed a general tenure period for reaching his pay grade when he was hired because of his certifications.
He is a Certified Wireless Network Administrator (CWNA) and Certified Wireless Security Professional (CWSP), distinctions he received from vendor-neutral enterprise Wi-Fi training company Certified Wireless Network Professional (CWNP) Inc.
He also holds a Cisco Certified Network Associate-Wireless (CCNA-Wireless) from Cisco and certifications from other Wi-Fi vendors such as Aruba, Trapeze (now a part of Juniper) and AirMagnet.
Doug McDonald, a wireless team lead for Henry Ford Health System in Rochester Hills, Mich., says wireless certifications help him put an end to finger-pointing and bickering with suppliers of Wi-Fi-enabled medical equipment.
McDonald, an employee of Siemens Enterprise Communications working in a dedicated capacity for the healthcare provider, an Enterasys Wi-Fi shop, holds a CWNA and CWSP and says he is pursuing his Certified Wireless Network Expert (CWNE) cert, also from CWNP.
“A lot of medical devices aren’t ready for prime time for an enterprise network,” he says. “The suppliers want to say the problems are in the network. We get a leg up [with certified staff who can prove otherwise]. It’s a great piece of ammunition, and we want every team member dedicated to wireless to have at least a CWNA.”
