Microsoft Certification should provide the mechanism for testing to see if people have acquired a necessary set of skills. Microsoft goes through an established process to develop these exams. It identifies the skills that are needed for a particular job specification. Then it identifies the technical tasks that would demonstrate these skills. But then Microsoft spoils it all by just asking questions about those skills…
Each exam has a “Skills Measured” section on the Microsoft Learning web site that lists the associated skills and tasks being tested. To its credit, Microsoft Learning also develops its training curricula based around these skills and tasks so that a curriculum path can finish with an exam – to verify learning. The exams ask questions about the skills and tasks. This is sound theory for knowledge transfer. But is it effective for skills transfer?
The big mistake Microsoft makes here is, after following a good process for identifying skills and tasks, the verification process is made via an exam made up of multiple choice questions. So the verification shows that a person can answer questions about a skill but can they actually perform that skill? This methodology produces “paper-based” certification. In other words, people who have the knowledge but not necessarily the skills to perform a particular job. There is a difference.
When I was at my previous job at another Microsoft partner, we started developing a skills-based certification process. Other companies like Red Hat and Cisco had done this for their technologies so why not Microsoft? Our idea was simple in concept: A candidate enters a room with a number of servers that are malfunctioning. The candidate has 4 hours to diagnose the situation and fix the problem areas with a technical requirement to get the servers up and running. If at the end of the time allotted, the servers are running according to spec, then “well done”, you are certified. You have demonstrated the actual skills needed for the job. If not, come back another time and try again.
In our initial tests, we found that candidates going through this type of skills-based certification process actually gained significant confidence from knowing that they indeed had the necessary skills to do the job. If the candidate already had the skills from a previous job, then demonstrating those skills in the exam proved no problem. Also, potential employers would have more confidence in a candidate that had proven their skills in this way.
Unfortunately, when we approached Microsoft with the concept, it dismissed the idea because of a lack of scalability. Microsoft’s strategy for the future was at that time to use “simulations” which emulated UI behavior within technical products. Feedback on this strategy has been mixed.
Maybe now with our Virtual Classroom platform, we might be able to revisit true skill-based certification and make it scalable too.
Later,
Brian
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