The Certification-versus-Experience Conundrum - Part 2

In Part 1 of this article, I discussed the idea that the whole IT certification environment is a catch-22 between getting the experience you need to become “really” certified in your field, and getting a job to get the experience needed to pass a certification exam. People are getting a certification, any certification, just to get in the door and get the job so that they can get the experience they really need to validate the certification they already have. Are you dizzy yet? This whole situation leads to people who seek out brain dumps, memorize test questions, and get a certification, even though it means that they are lacking the skills and background needed to do the job. But, they have to have the paper just to be considered for the job. But let’s think about this: Isn’t the purpose of a certification to validate the background and experience you should have already gained? If you haven’t gained the experience, then what is it that you hope to validate? If you memorize test questions (and answers) just to pass a test, but do not have the experience, how much do you actually know? Now be honest. We are caught between a rock and a hard place with people who have “paper certifications” and employers who require the piece of paper, just for the sake of saying that they are raising their hiring standards.

In this installment of this article, I would like to discuss ways to build up that experience so that not only will you be exposed to the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that you need to pass the exams, but so that you can be a productive and valuable asset for your employer as well. Employers, I hope you will take some of this to heart also, and explore ways to foster an environment that helps your employees gain real certifications, and make them more valuable to you.

If being an IT professional were easy, everyone out there would be doing it. However, it seems like many people who are just good test takers are jumping in and memorizing exams, then calling themselves certified. I know this because I have seen my fair share of these so-called certified “paper tigers” in the work place. They stand out because they have the paper, but also have to have their hands held every step of the way. In some cases these paper tigers do not know even the most fundamental of computer concepts. I recall one very profound example of this: When I was teaching networking at a junior college, I had one self-proclaimed MCSE in one of my classes who didn’t even know the first thing about IP addressing and networking basics. But by-golly, he was an MCSE!

So lets take a look at some ways to get some real and valid experience, and real-world knowledge. I think in many cases you will find that once you get to this level, you won’t have to seek brain dumps to pass the exams.


Education:

I have said it before, I will say it again: Information Technology is a profession worthy of formal education. You can expect that most employers will require (or at least ‘highly desire’) at minimum an associate’s level degree. Formal training in networking, programming, or some other computer science related field is a very valuable credential. In fact, companies like Cisco have endorsed formal education to the point of backing initiatives such as the Cisco Networking Academy, and bringing in companies such as HP and Sun to create non-Cisco curriculums for CompTIA A+ and web development. Many colleges and universities, such as Southeast Technical Institute in South Dakota, are fully fledged Cisco Networking Academies and can offer this training. Unlike simply memorizing the material for a single certification exam, completion of formal training indicates that you have been exposed to certain concepts over a longer period of time. You have probably passed several exams, and completed a number of hands-on projects. Formal education is more likely to also include exposure to critical thinking skills and more in-depth technical knowledge. There are many universities or even junior colleges offering IT related programs. The main benefit of attending such a program is that not only do you get a more formal education, but this whole process in itself counts towards valuable experience.


What about “Boot Camp” Types of Training?

Boot Camps have their place – and a very valuable place at that. But I highly discourage jumping into a boot camp with no practical experience. By doing so, you are once again falling into the trap of trying to memorize exam questions and passing a certification exam with no regard for any type of real learning or relevant experience. The boot camp types of training are really intended for professionals already in the field who have experience and will understand what is being discussed. The main focus of the boot camp types of training are to refresh you on knowledge you already have, but perhaps that you don’t work with from day to day. One very real example I can give you here is the last boot camp I attended for the MCSA certification. I already had knowledge of and experience with the concepts being discussed – most topics having very intimate knowledge. However, one aspect – managing DNS – was a particularly weak topic for me, and I found that the refresher was just what I needed to correctly answer the DNS questions on the exam. But nonetheless, this topic was not foreign to me – had I known nothing of this topic prior to going into the training, I would have still struggled on the exam. The boot camp simply provided a much needed refresher for concepts that I do not work with on a daily basis, but faced on the exam.

The other benefit of the boot camp types of training is that they usually prepare you for the “psychometrics” of the exams. That is to say that you get a pretty good idea of what kinds of questions will be asked, how they are asked, how to weed through the “fluff,” and what mind-set you need to be in to answer the questions correctly. The exam questions are not perfect, and you are often at the mercy of the point of view (and grammar skills) held by the exam question writers at the time. Microsoft exams, for instance, have a way of drawing you into long, verbose questions. The goal is to weed through it, eliminate the irrelevant information, and find out what the question is really asking. You have to know as much about the strategy for test taking for a Microsoft exam as you do the actual technical information. Likewise is true for CompTIA exams, and for the many other exams out there. For each exam I have ever taken, I have noticed that I have had to be in a different mindset for each, and had to know how to interpret what the question was asking.


On The Job Training:

Hands-on experience is one of the best ways to sharpen skills. On-the-job training (OJT) often involves working with real situations, on real problems. The best way to get this type of training is often to jump in and demonstrate that you are willing to learn, have an open mind to absorbing concepts, and are willing to take advice from others. One of the things I have often been an open proponent of is a workplace environment that teams a mentor with one or more people. A mentor can be a strong source of training for the employees being trained and the mentor alike. Latch on to someone whom you think has sharp skills and pick their brain. One thing about the IT community is the willingness that most of us have with sharing our knowledge with new people to our profession.

Later on, become a mentor for someone else. Teaching someone how to do something sharpens your own skills. Information retention can be as high as 95% when you are teaching it to someone else, as opposed to only around 5% when you are just reading about it. Being in a mentor/trainee relationship helps build a good team environment and solidify working relationships. Be open to the points of view and techniques of others, but don’t be afraid to form your own techniques.


Self-Study and Virtualized Labs:

Microsoft’s Virtual Server is now free of charge. Get this software and set up a virtual network on a single computer. Then look around and get copies of evaluation software for setting up your lab environment. A domain controller server and a workstation will fulfill the requirements for most hands-on training tasks for the Microsoft testing batteries. This will also give you tools to practice with for some of the CompTIA exams as well. If you need Linux, free versions of Linux abound. Get one of the training kits that offer lab exercises. Make an honest effort and actually do the lab exercises. Play around and explore the things that are not covered in the labs.


Volunteering:

There are a number of organizations looking for IT people to do computer work. Skills in anything from running network cabling, to refurbishing computers for less fortunate families, to providing office support, to providing training are being asked for. These are great ways to build up experience. Keep in mind that when you are performing these tasks, you are doing so for a real company. And since you volunteered your time to do it, the people are always extremely grateful, and when asked will provide a shining personal reference. Building up your list of contacts I just as valid when the list contains people for whom you have volunteered.They pay is not great, but believe me, the rewards are every bit as worthwhile as money, and often longer lasting. Try http://www.volunteermatch.org/ for some opportunities.

Find an Employer Who Supports Training and Mentorship Programs:

This is easier said than done – you just have to look around and interview people to find out which companies have a reputation for supporting employee development. And don’t forget – when you go to that job interview, you are allowed to ask questions of your own. Many employers will actually be very impressed when you ask questions about how they view teams and employee development. You are shopping as much for them as they are for you. In many areas, filling IT staffs is once again becoming a challenge for companies. Find out what they can offer you. Don’t burn bridges, but at the same time don’t jump on the first job offer that you get.

Employers, you aren’t off the hook in this article segment - I have to repeat what I said in Part 1: Carefully analyze your requirements for hiring. Don’t offer entry level jobs that require fistfuls of certifications just to get in the door. It’s not fair, and you are asking to be disappointed by gaining employees who have “paper” in hand, but no real skills. Additionally, set up a mentor program and get your senior people involved in the training and development of junior people. Support your employee’s professional development and help them gain certifications. My opinion on this is that you are likely to gain more loyalty from your employees by showing them that you are willing to support their growth and train them. If you really want to protect your return on investment, require your employees to complete a certification exam for which you send them to training, within a specified amount of time. Additionally, make them agree to continued employment with your company as a condition of receiving the training. On that note – employees: Show some loyalty of your own. Don’t join a company, just because they have a reputation of offering training, then bolt off to new opportunities. Stay and grow with them for awhile. If they are willing to train, they are probably willing to promote as well. Evaluate current and future opportunities with them and give yourself (and them) the chance to grow.


Where Are Certification Exams Headed?

If recent exams that I have taken are any indication, then I think the future of certification exams is headed toward overcoming this gap between gaining real experiences and passing the exam. More and more, certification exams are building in simulations where you actually have to be able to go into a simulated environment (a Windows 2003 server console, a Cisco router, etc) and do correctly do all of the steps required to complete a certain task. I remember the first time I passed the Cisco CCNA exam – it was all multiple choice questions – I was in and out in about thirty minutes. Now the CCNA exam is broken up into two exams (you have an option of one more broad exam or two more focused ones) and consists of questions requiring you to type in typing in router commands and the like to complete a task. The recent MCSA exam battery I just completed had a number of simulations where a specific set of tasks had to be completed. These simulations are extremely difficult for brain dumps to duplicate. Unless you are really good (and have a photographic memory), memorizing all the screens and steps will be difficult. I for one applaud this move as it requires a candidate to at the very least put together a virtualized lab environment where they can practice doing the labs and hands-on tasks.

Wrapping It All Up:

I’ll be blunt: Certification exams have experienced a somewhat “cheapening” of their worth over the years. To at least a minor degree it is because of employers who require multiple certifications for entry level jobs, causing potential candidates to scurry about to get certifications just to get in the door. But mostly, I believe it is because of people who are feeling the pressure to get lots of certs to be able to get those entry level jobs. And to a great deal, people just want to take the fast route to having lots of letters to put after their names. In many cases, especially the latter, people are getting those letters, but they have no real experience or practical skills to back them up. Certifications, that don’t expire and/or require proof of continuing education, result in stale skills. This also results in a “certified” person, who has outdated and obsolete skills, having little incentive to participate in continuing education activities. The IT profession is not something that everyone can fall into and expect to do well in – it is hard, complicated work, and requires people who are willing to commit to a long term of life-long learning. The IT profession is worthy of requiring formal education to get into, and certifications that validate real experience. And by that, I mean experience that gives true knowledge, skills and abilities for the job.

Do you want to know how valid this whole notion of having experience can be in preparing you for an exam? I can give you an example from one of my own certification exam taking experiences - one day on a whim, I downloaded the exam objectives for the CompTIA i-Net+ exam. I thought to myself "I know this material," and scheduled an exam just to see how well I would do. I figured the cost of the exam was worth the experiment. I passed! No brain dumps needed. I relied on experience I already had, and passed the exam, simple as that. This particular experiment ended with a pretty good additional outcome - shortly after passing the exam, CompTIA invited me in as a subject matter expert (SME) for a re-write of the i-Net+ exam.

Addendum:

The author of this article series has numerous IT certifications as well as a Master’s Degree in Computer Science (Information Security). He has participated as a subject matter expert (SME) in certification exam re-writes for CompTIA including the CTT+, i-Net+, and A+ certification exams.


On to Part 3

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