Are Tech Certifications Worth It?

Ask any IT veteran or hiring manager and you are likely to run into strong opinions in opposing directions, but who’s advice can you rely on?

Generally speaking, those who believe that certifications are not worth it, typically make the case that they are not a reliable indicator of content mastery. Paul Murphy, a writer at a popular tech site, has this to say: “The key problem with IT certification is that most of them are so hard to fail they aren’t worth their weight in paper – and yet employers, acting under SOX and related pressures, continue to demand them.“ⁱ I have also heard others confirm that they have worked with techs in the past who had fancy certification titles with very limited knowledge of the systems that they are certified in. Personally, I have not met such individuals, but that’s not to say they don’t exist. In fact, I think most of the people who have recounted these stories to me were being completely honest.

On the other side of the debate are those who believe that certifications are a very good indicator of content proficiency. The staunchest supporters being the certification developers themselves. These vendors typically cite independent studies claiming that companies who hire certified techs and the techs themselves are better off as a result. According to Cisco Systems, some of the benefits to the employee include higher salaries, competitive advantage and career advancement.ⁱⁱ According to Microsoft, some of the benefits to employers include, up to 20% less downtime and 28% higher productivity in teams with high rates of certification. They claim that top tier teams have a rate between 40%-55% of certified employees.ⁱⁱⁱ

As with any heated debate, I believe the answer often lies somewhere in the middle and each side of the argument doesn’t always present or have all of the relevant facts. So who is correct in this situation? In simple terms, both of them. It is true, there are a number of certified technicians out there who do not have content mastery or even content proficiency in their chosen subject matter. It is also true that industry certifications has lead to higher salaries for some employees, less downtime for some employers and contributed to a higher quality IT staff. Given that these two statements are somewhat contradictory in nature, how can they both be true?

The big elephant in the room that neither camp seems to acknowledge, is the inconvenient truth that it is nearly impossible to determine which certified individual cheated on the exam and which did not. Therefore, when evaluating the performance or knowledge of a given person, one does not know if the person being evaluated passed the exam(s) through traditional hard work or through the mighty purchasing power of his or her wallet. Unfortunately for the certification programs, music is not the only thing that folks are pirating on the internet, they’re also pirating exam answers. In my opinion, that rarely published fact is what makes both sides of the debate correct.

Lets say for example that you have interviewed or worked with a certified individual who passed the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 exam with high marks and yet cannot give you at least basic overview of what the operating system does, then how could that person have passed the exam? No matter how easy the exam might be, you would still need to have at least some rudimentary knowledge of the system. Moreover, I have taken certification exams and they are not “hard to fail”. Anyone who does not believe me simply needs to go through the free sample questions posted on various test preparation websites of a system that they have several years of experience with such as Windows XP/Vista/7 and see if you get high marks. The Microsoft exams are so difficult, that seasoned IT veterans without formal training often get the sample questions wrong, even the ones that are not meant to be trick or trivial questions.

My conclusion is that tech certifications, when genuinely earned through traditional studying are a strong indicator of content proficiency. Moreover, and not surprisingly, higher level certifications have a better reputation than entry level certifications. For example, the CCIE credential is notorious for being difficult to obtain. Although they do not publish official statistics, Cisco says that less than 3% of all Cisco certified individuals make the cut.^iv Similarly, Microsoft is also tight lipped about their statistics,^v but the general sentiment from many online forums is that the exams are very difficult and the failure rate is high. In fact, there are often exam insurance promotions run by Microsoft and training providers where you can re-take an exam if you fail.

I have passed several certification exams on systems that I have been using for a long time where I saw immediate improvements in my work performance as well as the ability to look over systems configured by my non-certified predecessors that did not have configured settings past the initial setup wizard of the server/application in question. Whether or not certifications result in higher wages is anyone’s guess. However, the same could be said of a college degree, but my reaction remains the same: sometimes it does, and sometimes it does not.

i http://www.zdnet.com/blog/murphy/are-certifications-worth-the-money/1249

ii http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le31/le46/cln/cln-images/cisco-concentrations/English_The_Value_of_Cisco_Certifications.pdf

iii http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/cert-benefits-emp.aspx

iv http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/ccie/employers/index.html

v http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en/CertGeneral/thread/afdbf7a4-5f68-4ae9-b738-217b76a30b4c