How Important Are Certifications to Employers?

In this video I answer a question from Bill Baldwin about the importance of certifications from employers.

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[ldisc]

I've always felt certs were for those with no technical background who were in charge of rounding up potential candidates. It seems the bigger the company (including medium to large tech companies), the more likely to be interviewed by some HR person first before going to the next stage where there's a 50% chance of being interviewed by someone with some technical know-how.

[sealovers]

I don't believe in certification at all i mainly focus on knowloadge and how to deal with the situation

[mgnet]

Really good topic Bruce, but in my experience it all depends with who you want to work with. You hit the nail when you said experience, be a team player and getting alone with your peers is crucial. For 25 years of experience on the IT industry working for a re seller, VAR, SAR, ETC, technical certifications are very important. I certification can make a difference between Silver, Gold or a Platinum dealer and the lost of revenue or GMD, soft dollars in my industry is the key to make extra margin. I have seen very talented people get hired with no certifications and after several months get hammer by the services manager to get certify. So in my opinion it depends what you really want to do, Work for a big company or a small service firm.

[network_king]

I have a good deal of certs so I don't want to say they are useless, but I would agree. I have CCNA and apparently it was enough along with some security certs to impress an admin that is quite hard to impress.
He then offered me a paid internship and now I'm helping with a Cisco migration even working on things like the core switch. Some of the stuff is 10 gig and these units have modules, some commands don't work totally the same, some changed to like an implicit deny unless you make an allow.

I've seen people pass some certs yet if you asked them to really do some of the stuff they'd have no clue or end up messing it up.

We had a "Dell warranty tech" in last week to change a motherboard what probably would have took me like an hour at most took him like 2-2.5 hrs. And taking the old board out he decided it was a good idea to jerk one of the front USB cables off the board and busted that. The next day another tech came and replaced that part and said like every call that guy makes he messes up something and they had to go in and clean it up. I was almost like we'd be better off requesting the motherboard doing it in-house and risk the warranty on a couple systems than deal with this kind of crap. I just thought this is pathetic if I was his boss he would be fired with no second thought.
I thought briefly what on earth cert do you have that qualifies you for this? Whatever it is it's lousy, but if we decide to do our own warranty work I'd take it so we don't have to deal with this. My co-worker basically thought the same thing too which we may at least look into if we can do it and the boss says okay we may just do it ourselves.

[Gazooo]

I disagree Bruce, it helps the company. If everyone is certified in the tech support your company offers a new customer might sign the contracts, then hiring the other company. Same approach to a design firm, if you didn't attend school but learn PS & Coding in your basement what makes you get the job. He/she took the time to attend school but doesn't have a big portfolio then still would get the hire.

[TechyRodsWire]

Great video and great points! Also who you know in this day and age, friends get hired before the person with the certs and experience now a days sadly. Tough world

[chrisose]

Certs, like degrees, are no guarantee of ability and in many cases are little more than certificates of attendance or worse yet receipts for payment.

[blazejewiczk]

I tried to go get Linux certifications but the exams at one point were 2 grand each for certification and I do believe is still two of them. Thanks for the video!

[Cat_Nomad]

As always, great video! It answered a lot of questions that I had.

[sayresyDevino]

Just glad I am OLD. it's a tough-tech world these days.

[binnsbrian]

CAN YOU DO THE JOB? CAN YOU GET ALONG WITH PEOPLE?
I'm having a plaque made for my office.