The Certification-versus-Experience Conundrum - Part 1

Certifications play a big part in proving credibility in the IT world, but the reasons and timing for getting them has become somewhat of a nebulous and ever moving target. I’m sure you have heard the same old story: You need to have certifications to get hired, but you need experience to get certified. So how do you get experience if no one will hire you (because you don’t have certifications)!? We in the IT profession are operating under a rather strange standard, if you ask me – that many of our hiring managers are requiring certifications to get in the door for an entry level position. But our certifications, in order to be really and truly valid, rely on a person having prerequisite experience and knowledge. This is the classic “Catch-22” predicament. What this is actually leading to, however, is a whole bunch of people going out to find brain-dumps, memorize test questions, and go take the certification exams. Then they are hoping by some chance that they know enough to pass the interview, get hired, and can get on the job to learn about and get experience with what they really don’t know.

In reading the various message boards around the Internet, I see this very issue all too often. As a professional member of various online IT professional communities, I see over and over again messages from people who are asking where they can find a brain dump to help them pass the exam, not where can they go to get the experience or practical knowledge. The sheer number of brain dump sites in existence is testimony to what I am talking about in this article. We are living in a society of “paper certified” people, and it is adversely affecting the IT community as a whole. My opinion is that people in IT are working in a professional field of expertise, and that the certifications that go along with this profession are suffering because of the situations discussed here.

As members of a professional field, IT people really should at the very least be first undergoing some sort of formal training before attempting certifications. This isn’t a field for people who are solely “book-smart” as it takes a great deal of common sense and problem solving abilities to do well. If this was easy, everyone would be doing it. But wait – if you are a good test taker and can study brain dumps and memorize answers, then you too can be a certified systems administrator or engineer and get hired. Then you get into an organization and either get lucky enough to be taken under someone’s wing and get trained, or stumble through without really knowing what you are doing. The latter leads to a poorly run IT infrastructure, or worse, security breaches, damage, and loss of productivity because the answers to those real life situations were not included in the brain dump study guides.

How do we fix this? The first step is to make certifications become a reflection of what a person knows, rather than what we expect them to know in the future. Requiring certifications just for the sake of writing in some high and mighty hiring criteria does not make for a valid set of hiring requirements. In other words, certifications validate the level of professional expertise that a person has built up to, not a piece of paper verifying what a person can memorize. I didn’t get my pilot’s license just by passing a written exam – I had to prove that I knew how to fly the plane! So too should we be treating our certifications for IT systems. In essence, there are three groups of people involved in this conundrum who need to re-shape their thinking a bit.

Hiring Managers:

Quit insisting on MCSE and CCNP level certifications for entry level jobs. If you are going to post entry level jobs, then that means that you should be willing to take someone with no certification at all, or at the most an entry level certification such as MCP or A+. Then, one way to ensure that your new people do get certified is to make it a condition of employment: “This job is probationary for ‘x’ number of months, at the end of which time the incumbent must be A+ certified to be considered for full-time permanent employment.” This will help get those entry level people in the door, help them get the experience they need to do the job, and especially help them to get the experience they need to pass the exam and be “really” certified.

Look at the relevancy and recentness of certifications – when interviewing candidates, make sure that the certification they have is relevant to your needs. An MCSE on Windows NT won’t do you any good in your Windows 2003 shop. Likewise, an A+ certification earned on Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS won’t help you much in your Windows XP desktop environment. A recently passed certification exam should not mean that the person is a “newbie.” It should mean that they used their recent and relevant experiences to pass a current certification exam.

Ask some technical questions to root out the paper tigers. If they say they are A+ certified, then you should ask questions that are part of the A+ objectives. If you need help with this, don’t hesitate to look to your IT staff for assistance with putting together interview questions. Don’t hesitate to go to CompTIA or Microsoft and get the list of objectives for the certifications so that you can design some good interview questions. You might also consider asking scenario based questions about how a candidate might solve a real problem or challenge that you are facing in your company. But ask questions relevant to the level at which you are hiring. Don't ask an entry level candidate to solve a complex engineering or design problem, and don't ask an engineering level candidate how to reset someone's email account.

Candidates:

If you are just starting out and going after the entry level certifications, read my point below about going to school. A formal training setting will give you much of the experience you need to get entry level certified with something such as A+. But don’t go after the certifications just for the letters. Find out what the objectives are and go further by researching the objectives more in-depth. This in itself will lead you to knowledge you perhaps didn’t have, and will give you more in-depth understanding of the material. Understanding is what it important, not just having letters by your name.

Entry level and experienced people alike: Do volunteer work – what an experience builder this can be. Virtually every city I have ever lived in has volunteer opportunities that you can take advantage of. If you live in the San Franciso Bay Area, you have the king of all IT volunteer opportunities – CompuMentor. Also take a look at Volunteermatch.org for some opportunities in your area. This is a great way to do professional networking, and build those contact and personal reference lists also.

Take some classes at the local junior college. This will often give you the prerequisite experience for those entry level certifications. It is not uncommon for a two year program at a junior college to provide plenty of the pre-requisite experience needed for a certification such as A+. There are a number of Cisco Academies that teach the Cisco networking curriculum for CCNA, as well as the HP IT Essentials curriculum needed for A+. These curriculum packages are all hands-on and will give you some real experience.

Certification Bodies:

Follow the lead of the organizations that bring us such certifications as the PMP, CISSP, and even the Cisco certifications. What do all of these certifications have in common? They expire and/or require proof of continuing education to keep a certification current. Even the Microsoft certifications eventually become retired, and at the very least are associated directly with a specific operating system or technology. A person may very well be an MCSE, but when the hiring manager asks for specifics and it comes out that he or she is an MCSE on Windows NT, then it is easily seen that the “big” certification has very little relevance in an all Windows 2003 shop. Cisco has an excellent structure for certifications: they expire, and follow-on certifications require a valid lower level certification to continue with the higher level cert. Gaining higher level Cisco certifications also maintains validity of the previously earned certifications.

CompTIA is one of the largest certification bodies in the IT community, yet none of their certifications expire, nor are the holders of those certifications required to prove any continuing education. These types of certifications are very relevant when they are current, but can quickly become obsolete. And given the relatively high price for the CompTIA exams, there is little incentive for taking the same certification exam over and over just to keep it current. How about an upgrade exam that is a little less expensive? What about requiring continuing education credits to keep these certifications valid? Just a thought.

Wrapping It All Up:

I end this article by using the technical people in the medical profession as an example of what I am talking about. Many of the professionals in the medical field, such as nuclear medicine technicians or biomedical equipment technicians, enter their first jobs with no certifications. But after working in their field for awhile, they are often required, as a condition of employment, to obtain their certification within ‘x’ months of being hired. These people are fresh out of a junior college or technical school; their employers know they have the foundational knowledge, but then give then an opportunity to gain real experience before requiring certifications. But a deadline for certification is often strictly stipulated. Get the cert or you’re out! Even doctors have to go through an internship as part of their training to build up experience, right? Let’s take that example as our lead to make the IT community a better place. Let’s quit requiring a fist full of certifications to get an entry level job. Grab the newly graduating people out of school, give them a real environment to hone their skills, and then help get them certified. My personal opinion is that employers will notice a good deal more loyalty from these folks (most would feel too guilty about leaving an employer that helped them get certified), and a great deal more sound productivity as well.

Personally, I think that we need to move more into a professional environment where we value life-long and continued learning rather than laundry lists of letters to put after our names. The certifications are a good way to validate what a person already knows based on the experience they have already gained. But a certification is a crummy way to try to validate what we think a person will know in the future. All the certification is doing in this case is testing a person’s ability to read, memorize, and take an exam. If that is all we are concerned about, then why bother?

Continue to Part 2