| While trying to avoid the “hot/not” rhyme,
the goal of this article really is to explain why, in the
current depressed IT climate, some certifications are (still)
hot, and some are not. I am not sure how good the explanation
is going to be, but the new metaphor in the title is not
without merit.
Certification and Experience
Everyone knows that the light we get from the Moon is not
the real thing; it is just a reflection of Sun’s
light. And yet the Moon continues to be the object of
so much praise and admiration. Going to the Moon is certainly
no small exploit, although not much awaits the valiant
entrepreneur upon return.
Certification in IT is not much different: most professionals
will confirm that in today’s market, having a certification
acronym after your name is no guarantee of a promotion,
let alone a job. Nevertheless, it is a mark of professional
respectability that one cannot afford to ignore without
incurring significant career risk.
While most IT employers want to hire someone with experience,
experience is not certifiable. As a professional, claim
20 years of experience in an IT specialty and you may
date yourself out of employability; claim less than two
years, and you get the same result. But certification
establishes a common ground, where both parties would
gladly go. The prospective employer gets the assurance
that the candidate has at least been scrutinized through
an external, standardized process and demonstrated he
possesses the required knowledge - should the new hire
not succeed in the new position, the hiring party is
somewhat less to blame. The candidate has a chance at
a level play field. Having passed a certification exam
he has enhanced his credibility and sense of value – and,
depending on the particular market, his salary prospects.
The quest for certification in IT
Some fifteen years ago (an astronomical number of years
in IT!) certification for the IT worker was a non-issue.
Programs were written, systems were built and there is
no evidence that they ran any worse than systems built
today by the largely certified pool of IT professionals.
So, is there a real need for certification in IT?
Certification in IT was certainly driven by the big
IT firms. Novell pioneered the concept and was quickly
followed by all major international players. As operations
of these firms became more and more globalized, and as
the work force in IT became more international and diverse,
vendor certifications grew in number and depth of specialization.
Today there are over 100 of them worth pursuing (any
respectable certification program is based, according
to some sources, on a body of at least 10,000 practitioners).
Some companies saw the certification movement as a golden
opportunity to advance their marketing strategy and to
expand their base of users. Also, new (and profitable!)
companies were established with the mere purpose of marketing,
managing and administering IT certifications. This led
some skeptics in the industry to see certifications as
a money-grab more than anything else.
IT Certification today: moonrise
Today, IT certification is an industry in itself, although
certifications are still deeply connected with a specific
programming language, development platform or IT product.
The fortunes of these certifications come and go with
those of the respective languages, platforms and products.
Notably, the MCSE and MCSA certifications from Microsoft
have become a commodity, to the point that the number
of people seeking them has declined to levels that put
some certification businesses in a very precarious position.
At the same time, demand for Linux certification continues
to be surprisingly strong, when considering the overall
depressed certification market and meager IT training
budgets. Some analysts think that the grass-root culture
of Linux explains the trend.
There are very few non-vendor IT certifications but
their number and degree of attraction to the IT professionals
is expected to grow. As the IT work force is becoming
more self-reliant, portable skills will be favoured over
vendor-based ones, because the latter have a high rate
of becoming obsolete. Developing and certifying competency
in project management and software engineering disciplines
will likely become a priority for the serious IT professional.
Already, the PMP certification has acquired a well-recognized
international status. In Canada, the I.S.P., a non-vendor
certification emphasizing professional conduct and adherence
to a code of ethics is put forward, with limited success
so far, by CIPS (Canadian Information Processing Society).
As long as IT budgets stagnate or shrink and training
is downloaded at individual level, the popularity of
IT certifications will probably be driven by the perceptions
and needs of the individual practitioners, rather then
corporate strategies. As the IT profession matures and
globalizes, certifications will become more important
but will never be a substitute for or a guarantee of
competence, experience, and strong business ethics. After
all, the Moon does not shine all on its own.
Tatiana Andronache
is IT technical staff for a large information technology
company in Toronto, Canada. She can be reached at tatiana.andronache@sympatico.ca
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