IT Qualifications

[Chuckster]

Put it this way, we had a business & finance director with no professional accountancy qualifications who did their job successfully well for 6 years before moving onto pastures new. It just goes to show that sometimes certifications mean didly squat if your experience speaks for itself. And she was 27 when she got the job! She's gone to another school and has obtained CSBM and DSBM, which serves no purpose other than in a school setting.

 

I was hired purely on my experiences and the technologies I was exposed to prior to applying for my current role. I was up against a friend of a friend who had 2 degrees, an MSc and some professional certs. From what I heard he is very academic but lacks the practicality of doing an IT job.

 

One other thing to add: the school's finance manager has a degree to chemistry! Like I said, experience over degree/certs any day.

 

Also, big corps like KPMG and Deloitte no longer believe in degrees. They have their own assessment centres to assess graduates. This just shows how devalued British degrees are!

Edited November 14, 2015 by Chuckster

[Soulfish]

Other than a Masters degree in Computer Science I don't have any "formal" IT qualifications. I've done plenty of courses, but never bothered to actually do any exams as I've always been too busy to dedicate the time to taking them. Does that mean that I think professional qualifications are worthless? Far from it - I think they help to show that someone should have a good understanding of that particular area of technology and certainly when I interview someone that has particular IT quals I do tend to focus in on them and quiz them to find out quite how much they really know vs how much its purely a paper excise.

 

As others have said a qualification can help get you in the door (as can relevant experience), so are certainly useful for the CV; but they're not the be-all and end-all - any qualification that you want to talk about needs to be able to be backed up with real world experience to really succeed .

 

Actually now I think about it I do have a certification as a Citrix XenServer admin, but I helped write the exam so I don't think it really counts!!

[ITGURU]

I have several Microsoft Certifications but makes no different to the pay, and not really recognised in my school. However I do it for my own learning purposes which helps me do by Job without requiring additional support from outside companies when do migrations, upgrades and resolving issues.

 

If ever went into Business they would be useful as they advertise the qualifications.

[dblight]

I have several Microsoft Certifications but makes no different to the pay, and not really recognised in my school. However I do it for my own learning purposes which helps me do by Job without requiring additional support from outside companies when do migrations, upgrades and resolving issues.

 

If ever went into Business they would be useful as they advertise the qualifications.

 

Exactly my view, that's the only reason I have done them, I didn't need to certify in all the ones I have. Maybe they will come in useful if I was ever to move into a business environment again? Who knows? It's just my the satisfaction for me that I can backup years of real world experience with an array of technologies, SCCM, hyper-v & VMM and server 12 etc etc

[themightymrp]

I'm of the same view as @ITGURU and @dblight - I have certifications and keep doing more, but it's mainly for my own personal learning experience. I like to be able to do things myself (or with edugeek )

[MattDLEA]

This has been troubling me for a while. I have a degree in ICT but no formal M$ qualifications. I'm torn at the moment I work for myself so noone is interested in the qualification, the schools are confident that I can look after the network and everything. However I'm aware that if I was to look at maybe becoming employed again then certs help you get past the HR stage of the application process. The other problem is I still don't know what I really want to be... SysAdmin pays the bills, but I like programming to so .

[dhicks]

My colleague at work says IT qualifications are useful and do nothing, he feels work experience is more important and will get you where you want in IT.

 

It rather depends on the type / level of job you are applying for. I'm currently sifting through around 100 applications for our entry level IT technician job, most of whom, on paper, seem to be over-qualified, with degrees in various IT subjects. However, I'm getting the impression there's a smart-enough-not-to-go-to-University kind of person - someone who knows that academic studies aren't for them and is bright enough to realise that spending 3 years getting into debt isn't going to help them in any way.

[pcstru]

most of whom, on paper, seem to be over-qualified, with degrees in various IT subjects.

"Over Qualified" is a term that I think is often a shibboleth for unfair discrimination, unless your job/person spec happens to set maximum levels of qualification/skill/education.

 

In reply to the OP : Qualifications and experience are your marketing collateral. You can make either work for you but if you lack experience qualifications are gold and even if you do have good experience, qualifications and certifications might just put your cv above the cut off line and get you the interview - at any level.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

most of whom, on paper, seem to be over-qualified, with degrees in various IT subjects.

"Over Qualified" is a term that I think is often a shibboleth for unfair discrimination, unless your job/person spec happens to set maximum levels of qualification/skill/education.

 

In reply to the OP : Qualifications and experience are your marketing collateral. You can make either work for you but if you lack experience qualifications are gold and even if you do have good experience, qualifications and certifications might just put your cv above the cut off line and get you the interview - at any level.

[TechMonkey]

I learnt that qualifications aren't always the best indicator at a very early age. I was around 16, I had done work experience with a large train company that my sister worked for and they were happy with me so let asked me to come back and do some holiday work every now and then.

 

One of the times they were in the middle of a large project to update all the PCs and a rather large back end project, moving to Novel 6 if memory serves correctly. I was assigned to a large pile of boxes and introduced to a contractor who had been hired as extra muscle during the project. We got chatting as we worked our way through the boxes (my memory seems to suggest he was chatting more than I, not very good at the logistics and there was a little bit of "Shifting boxes is below me" from him) and he was encouraging me to get MS certificates as they were dead easy if you knew anything about computers and then you could make easy money like this gig. I was a little in awe as that was what I wanted to do, make money and do IT.

 

After unpacking everything we were then told to get a boot disk and start building the PCs. As we had been given a nice large corner of space we set up as many as we could so we could nip along and bulk build. As I was finishing off I suggested he go make a few boot disks and we could get going.... "A what?" came the fateful reply. A boot disc, a disc to boot into DOS so we can get the building process working. Now I can't remember the details of how it built, but it wasn't PXE and it wasn't sticking the NT disc in. The contractor was stumped. Had never heard of them, had no idea how to make one. I was confused, I'm sure one of his certs was in PC deployment, hence why he had got the job. I explained what needed finishing off and went up to the IT dept to make a batch of disks. While there one of the guys asked what I was doing so I hesitantly explained that I was creating the boot disks as the other guy wasn't sure (I tried to put it as nicely as possible). There was a bit of a stare and I got a well done carry on.

 

Took the disks down and then gave him half and told him set off.... He then stood behind watching what I was doing. He had never gone in to DOS to format a disk, never changed boot order, didn't know much about DOS at all. So I gave him a crash course and off we went.

 

End of the day the guy who was my mentor called me aside and asked if everything was OK as they had noticed I was doing well but we hadn't progressed and I nervously told him that I was a bit surprised I had to demonstrate these things, but once done all was OK.

 

I finished there end of the week and was back next holiday. Contractor wasn't around. I asked if his contract ended and I was told in a telling way that he had moved on as he wasn't what they were looking for.

 

2 other contractors I worked with on that project were MS certified and I had to show them both how to make a boot disk and work in DOS. They were much more open to not knowing things though and much more hands on but it really stuck with me.

 

TL;DR Qualifications don't always mean someone knows their shizzle. That often comes from playing around and having an underlying interest that makes you want to find out more.