Ross Brunson wrote: > There are a lot of areas where the SUSE CLA/CLP coincide with the LPIC-1 > objectives, and though there is a reasonable use of YAST in that > environment, the overall difference is slight enough that it's no more > different than mapping RHCSA/RHCE to the LPIC objectives. Have you taken > the CLA exam and do you know what it tests?
I took Novell exams back when it was still economically viable for my company to maintain a large workforce of Novell-certified instructors. I do have to note that here in Germany the number of requests we get for Novell courses has been declining for some time, in favour of courses based on our own training materials (with a strong LPI bent even if the participants aren't actively planning to take the exams), to a point where I no longer need to personally bother with Novell exams. One of my colleagues can pretty much handle all the Novell stuff that people throw at us these days. Looking at the list of current objectives on the CLA web site, there is a fair amount of material that isn't covered in the LPIC objectives. I personally have a bit of a queasy feeling when I see this. There is now no real way of telling whether a candidate has actually studied or worked with the SUSE- specific bits of the CLA exam simply based on their presenting a CLA certificate. In fact, if the candidate were to present an LPIC-1 certificate at the same time, that should make one extra suspicious of that candidate's SUSE chops, since they might have obtained that certificate as a freebie without actually having ever worked with a SUSE system at all. The LPIC-1/CLA deal may pad people's resumés when it comes to simply counting the number of certificates, but for the manager of a Novell shop looking to hire somebody with actual Novell experience, the deal really devalues the CLA certificate more than it enhances LPIC-1. (Which may at the end of the day be Novell's problem rather than LPI's, so props to LPI.) > In a heavily-developed and (from your viewpoint) very savvy market such as > Central Europe, there is the slight chance that the recruiters will know > there is a connection between the Linux+ and the LPIC-1, but you are giving > such a massive benefit of the doubt to HR professionals that it takes one's > breath away at the largesse involved. There's nothing wrong with a well-filled vanity wall ;^) I would (and in fact do) recommend every candidate I teach to take the CompTIA Linux+ »powered by LPI« exams, simply because they are the same as the LPI-branded exams and will get you an extra certificate. It would also be stupid not to ask Novell for the PDF file with the CLA certificate. However, such candidates should not labour under the misconception that these three certificates together, obtained through the triple whammy, mean anything other than what a single LPIC-1 certificate would mean as far as their qualifications are concerned, since, as is clear to all of us chickens here if not (yet) your average recruiter, all they have done is fulfill the requirements for LPIC-1 (whether that results in three different certificates or one). I wouldn't personally want to bet on that fact remaining secret from HR departments for all eternity, especially considering that various of our colleagues spend much of their waking life trying to educate HR professionals about the individual value of, and relationship and differences between, the diverse Linux certifications available on the market today. In fact I used to think it was part of LPI's official mission to work on that end of the hiring equation as well, and by elucidation rather than obfuscation. > The goal of achieving multiple certificates as a whole, and in this case > specifically, is to score as many points in the selection process as is > necessary to get you into the interview. Where, knowing our candidates as > well as I do, they will seriously impress the technical and administrative > interviewers with their skills, appropriate levels of competency in dealing > with corporate enterprise systems and other qualifications for employment. I don't know about the US, but over here claiming knowledge and experience that you don't actually have (like those bits of CLA that aren't in LPIC-1, unless you actively put in extra work) may get you into the interview but will count against you when it comes to actually getting hired, or being kept on during your probationary period. If a candidate presented a certificate claiming knowledge of such-and-such and then didn't seem to be actually familiar with the subject matter, as an interviewer I would be less than enthusiastic not just about that candidate but about the certificate(s) in question, which might then, for better or for worse, influence my thinking about future candidates presenting the same certificate(s). This is not in any way an LPI-specific problem, since overall LPI (unlike other certification schemes) has a pretty good track record of not producing »paper LPICs« with little to no actual experience in the real-life things interviewers like to see. It would be in the utmost interest of everybody concerned if things were to stay that way. If getting into the interview based on »scoring points« is what counts, then why don't we tell people to check every single box provided for programming languages, databases, web frameworks, etc. on the recruitment form, too? Of course we don't because that would be dishonest (and would probably come out in the interview, too). So why is it OK for LPIC-1 alumni to claim proficiency, through a CLA certificate, in other stuff that they've never actually been tested on? It may just be me but personally I don't feel that LPI should actively encourage what one might view as either delusions of grandeur or professional dishonesty. I'm not aware that the CLA certificate comes with a disclaimer saying that if you got it based on your LPIC-1 pass you may not actually know everything that people in a Novell shop would expect from somebody who had taken the CLA exam for real, so in that case please don't use it to apply to Novell shops, just use it to »score points« when applying elsewhere. > Maybe everyone in your market is jaded and cynical, but most of the rest of > the world is excited about the opportunities for employment and the > difference that certification makes, and the 3-in-1 deal is hands-down the > most popular deal and set of partnerships that LPI has done in a long time. Sure. What's not to like about certificates for free? ;^) It's just that, like many popular deals in life, this deal may come with unintended long-term consequences. To finish on a positive note, I can only reiterate that regardless of everything else there is one important aspect where the freebie CLA does make a lot of sense, namely as a stepping stone to higher-value Novell/SUSE certificates (which tend to rely less on the SUSE-specific stuff in CLA, so whether one has actually passed an exam on that doesn't matter all that much). LPIC-1 alumni get to save time, money, and hassle by not having to take another entry-level exam before going for the CLP and CLE certificates. Of course you will have to figure out for yourself whether going for CLP/CLE is worth your trouble in the first place, but – as far as I'm concerned – if you think it is then LPIC-1 is a much more reasonable starting point than a non- freebie CLA, both because (a) it gives you the »big picture« to a greater extent than CLA does, and (b) you get to put LPIC-2 etc. on top of that without having to go through LPIC-1 first (which, unless the Novell CLA course materials have improved a whole lot since I last saw them, would be a nontrivial proposition). Anselm (Still not speaking for my employer.) -- Anselm Lingnau ... Linup Front GmbH ... Linux-, Open-Source- & Netz-Schulungen [email protected], +49(0)6151-9067-103, Fax -299, www.linupfront.de Linup Front GmbH, Postfach 100121, 64201 Darmstadt, Germany Sitz: Weiterstadt (AG Darmstadt, HRB7705), Geschäftsführer: Oliver Michel _______________________________________________ lpi-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-discuss
