Not wanting to sound like I'm in the extreme end of either for vs. against certifications, I am a full time consultant and I live in a government town. In order to even qualify to bid on government and a large number of private sector contracts, I have to meet their certification requirements. As all of the local agencies also have large government contracts, they ask for them as well in order to contact me with possible gigs. I happen to have a couple, mostly taken at the urging of employers to meet some odd requirement.
Do I think certifications replace experience? No. Do I think they are useless? Not completely. I'm a generalist, not a specialist, so some of these force me to look at things I wouldn't (voluntarily) play with. Has the second item come in handy? Yes, a couple of times. Do I like the idea of maintaining certifications? Not really, as it's $NOTINMYPOCKET although it counts as continuing education and tax write-offs. Do I care about my certifications? Only if it means the difference of getting that nice contract. Do I care of someone else has one? Only if it makes them use it as a club or unreasoning method of insisting on doing something as in "I have a certification in XXX, so by definition I'm right". I had a recruiter ask me about certifications and I responded with a statement that I've been doing this longer than the certs existed. Why would I need a piece of paper that says I meet some vendor's idea of how to do it? Seriously, theory and practice are only equal in theory and a vendor doesn't certify you in field expedient solutions. When I have been in the position of hiring people, do I ask about certifications? Only if it comes up and then mostly to find out why the person has it so I can figure out if it was a replacement for experience or some other reason. Junior people with certifications generally are still junior people. Senior people with them probably had a reason, and a few questions can let you determine if you want them in spite of a certification :) Hopefully this doesn't come across as the ravings of a lunatic. Cheers, Scott On 2010-10-27 9:20 PM, Brian Mathis wrote: > I'm curious what people who are consultants for a living, as opposed > to employees, feel about this topic. A consultant usually has a lot > less time to land a gig, and they also have to do it much more > frequently. > > Does having a cert in this case help more than for someone looking to > be full-time? > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
