The ^Bitter  Network Administrator

                                                A Website Dedicated to Computer Professional...and some not so Professional

Will Being Certified Guarantee You a Job
by Doug Chick

In this economy one job sees many resumes. To compete, your resume has to be outstanding against the others. What makes a resume outstanding is experience, but if experience is something that you don't have much of what can you do? The most logical strategy is computer certifications. If you don't have experience than certifications are the next best thing to being there. But a certification is not going to guarantee you a job. Remember, companies that profit from certifications will often tell you anything that you want to hear to get your money. I've received letters from people that have spent thousands of dollars on certifications and haven't landed job one. Not only has this been disappointing and discouraging, but most borrowed the money and are now paying it back at a high interest rate, and after 2 years, still don't have a job. Why, because a certification alone is worthless. 

I met a man in the certification section of the book store that was looking at MCSE cert books wondering which would be the best one to start first. I ask him why he wanted to get certified and he explained that after 20 years as an accountant he lost his job and was in a free program by the government that gave free classes to become Microsoft Certified? Within minutes he explained that by getting an MCSE he would be able to obtain a new job making the same or more money. I didn't want to say anything discouraging but the chances are very unlikely that he'll do that. If you are a person that is computer obsessive, eager and dedicated enough to eat, breath and sleep computers your percentages are high enough that you will find the job you want in even a slow job market. If you think that just by getting an MCSE jobs will find you, than you made a very disparate decision and either spend your savings or borrowed a lot of money and wasted it at a certification boot camp or junior college that lied to you.  Still, there is a chance that after all of what I just said ,you might be one of the lucky few that get a job with only a certification as experience. But quite frankly, if you had that kind of luck you would have never lost your job in the first place. 

However, I do feel that percentages change dramatically if: you're under 35, very smart and understand that you are starting at the bottom and are expected to learn a lot more than the flash card answers you remembered to pass the tests. These are the only people being hired and that are keeping their jobs. So, if all you have are certifications and want to have a career in computers I suggest that you set up a mock network in your home and reinstall the Network operating system about a 100 times and learn to create accounts add users until you can do it with your eyes closed. Once you are able to do that, you'll have experience.

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