IT certification from an employer's perspective
IT certification has been said and written enough, but I would like to tell how this question is viewed from the other side of the barricades - from the management, HR service and salespeople and how this attitude affects such things as salary, making hiring and career advancement decisions.
Some time ago I had the opportunity to view the results of a survey of production personnel of a major integrator, where there was a block of issues related to professional growth, training and certification. In short, the main reasons for certified employees are seen as follows:
1. “I consider the proposed certification useful for me, in view of the fact that the company pays for everything, decided to pass / made”;
2. I hope to increase the salary;
3. I hope for career growth;
4. Certification - confirmation of my skills.
All the answers are quite valid and I was curious to hear the opinion of the other side, let's see how management looks at certification, why it is needed and what employees should count on.
So, the most common reasoning about certification, heard over the past few years.
1. Affiliate status with the vendor. Virtually all major software vendors, as one of the conditions for obtaining their status, put not only a modest financial contribution, but also the presence of a certain number of certified specialists in the partner’s staff.
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2. "Victory conditions" . I will reveal the secret of Pusinelin - sometimes the performer himself writes for the customer a statement of work and tender documentation. Moreover, this practice is not purely Russian or Asian in nature, in Europe, too, people who will be only too happy to shift the boring work of writing all kinds of RFP and RFI to someone else. And even if a “potential” performer undertakes to write requirements for “himself”, then God himself ordered to add an item with qualification requirements, which indicate that the performer must have a thousand and one specialists with all sorts of special certificates. Which (specialists with certificates) this artist certainly has.
3. Marketing and Hall of Fame . I think every major IT integrator has such a wall - tightly hung with signs with partner statuses and employee certificates. Vanity is definitely my favorite of sins (c) John Milton.
4. Filtering candidates . Imagine that you (the development guru or the DB administrator who is quite self-confident) will have to find ... a stove-maker. Or a water mapper. Naturally, even the basic filtering of a resume will cause you some difficulties. This is very sad, but some of the staff of HR departments involved in the selection of personnel in the IT sector, little in the IT itself sense. All that they can count on are the keywords from the “buyer” - the future head of the employee. But as soon as it becomes clear that simply the words java and sql are not enough and people with a certain qualification are needed - certificates for HR play their part, the role of markers for which candidates are taken to the next round. And yes, this is sad and unfair, but most likely the girl from HR will not adequately rate your answers to StackOverflow or the number of followers on GitHub, but will rate you by summaries and certificates in it. For an example on hh.ru, there were 871 vacancies for the Java keyword, whereas vacancies where github is mentioned are only 23, and among them only a part contains a request to send a link to a github account, and not a description of what will have to work with github.
Now I mentally bring together the first and second block of answers, add my subjective experience and get rather ambiguous conclusions:
1. Except for very exotic cases, certification is not a key reason for hiring or not hiring an employee . Yes, this is a plus, but a plus for those already working.
2. Again, with rare exceptions, certification does not mean an automatic increase in earnings . A good way to deal with this is motivation programs, where the employee himself can indicate certification as his KPI in terms of revising the RFP. In your company there are no motivation programs and rules for revising the RFP? Try to agree with your supervisor that your feat will be marked, and he will, as a justification for increasing your RFP, indicate that you have been certified - sometimes it works.
3. Career growth within the company - here at times certification really works . Take the place of a manager - how out of ten timblids to choose one to be promoted to a project manager and at the same time not to be accused of protectionism? Especially if out of ten, at least five can actually be pulled, but can you appoint only one? And here you can declare the rule, who first got up (got IPMA or PMP), he will get a new position without a whisper behind his back, “promoted by pull”.
4. Unfortunately, the braindump, testking and their ilk have done their job and the value of certification has faded in the eyes of the IT specialists themselves. Moreover, the higher the experience and real skills, the attitude is all the more skeptical, so the certification value for its owner’s self-esteem is somewhat controversial and unequivocal .
But, in spite of all the above, I will allow myself to give final advice. Yes, real stars do not need certificates - work and recognition find them themselves. But here is the middle link, those who drags the main burden on him I want to give advice - do not neglect certification. Treat certification like ... sneakers. Sports shoes will not help a weak runner run better, but it will help the strong not to lose to another strong athlete who is “equipped” with comfortable shoes.
Some time ago I had the opportunity to view the results of a survey of production personnel of a major integrator, where there was a block of issues related to professional growth, training and certification. In short, the main reasons for certified employees are seen as follows:
1. “I consider the proposed certification useful for me, in view of the fact that the company pays for everything, decided to pass / made”;
2. I hope to increase the salary;
3. I hope for career growth;
4. Certification - confirmation of my skills.
All the answers are quite valid and I was curious to hear the opinion of the other side, let's see how management looks at certification, why it is needed and what employees should count on.
So, the most common reasoning about certification, heard over the past few years.
1. Affiliate status with the vendor. Virtually all major software vendors, as one of the conditions for obtaining their status, put not only a modest financial contribution, but also the presence of a certain number of certified specialists in the partner’s staff.
')
2. "Victory conditions" . I will reveal the secret of Pusinelin - sometimes the performer himself writes for the customer a statement of work and tender documentation. Moreover, this practice is not purely Russian or Asian in nature, in Europe, too, people who will be only too happy to shift the boring work of writing all kinds of RFP and RFI to someone else. And even if a “potential” performer undertakes to write requirements for “himself”, then God himself ordered to add an item with qualification requirements, which indicate that the performer must have a thousand and one specialists with all sorts of special certificates. Which (specialists with certificates) this artist certainly has.
3. Marketing and Hall of Fame . I think every major IT integrator has such a wall - tightly hung with signs with partner statuses and employee certificates. Vanity is definitely my favorite of sins (c) John Milton.
4. Filtering candidates . Imagine that you (the development guru or the DB administrator who is quite self-confident) will have to find ... a stove-maker. Or a water mapper. Naturally, even the basic filtering of a resume will cause you some difficulties. This is very sad, but some of the staff of HR departments involved in the selection of personnel in the IT sector, little in the IT itself sense. All that they can count on are the keywords from the “buyer” - the future head of the employee. But as soon as it becomes clear that simply the words java and sql are not enough and people with a certain qualification are needed - certificates for HR play their part, the role of markers for which candidates are taken to the next round. And yes, this is sad and unfair, but most likely the girl from HR will not adequately rate your answers to StackOverflow or the number of followers on GitHub, but will rate you by summaries and certificates in it. For an example on hh.ru, there were 871 vacancies for the Java keyword, whereas vacancies where github is mentioned are only 23, and among them only a part contains a request to send a link to a github account, and not a description of what will have to work with github.
Now I mentally bring together the first and second block of answers, add my subjective experience and get rather ambiguous conclusions:
1. Except for very exotic cases, certification is not a key reason for hiring or not hiring an employee . Yes, this is a plus, but a plus for those already working.
2. Again, with rare exceptions, certification does not mean an automatic increase in earnings . A good way to deal with this is motivation programs, where the employee himself can indicate certification as his KPI in terms of revising the RFP. In your company there are no motivation programs and rules for revising the RFP? Try to agree with your supervisor that your feat will be marked, and he will, as a justification for increasing your RFP, indicate that you have been certified - sometimes it works.
3. Career growth within the company - here at times certification really works . Take the place of a manager - how out of ten timblids to choose one to be promoted to a project manager and at the same time not to be accused of protectionism? Especially if out of ten, at least five can actually be pulled, but can you appoint only one? And here you can declare the rule, who first got up (got IPMA or PMP), he will get a new position without a whisper behind his back, “promoted by pull”.
4. Unfortunately, the braindump, testking and their ilk have done their job and the value of certification has faded in the eyes of the IT specialists themselves. Moreover, the higher the experience and real skills, the attitude is all the more skeptical, so the certification value for its owner’s self-esteem is somewhat controversial and unequivocal .
But, in spite of all the above, I will allow myself to give final advice. Yes, real stars do not need certificates - work and recognition find them themselves. But here is the middle link, those who drags the main burden on him I want to give advice - do not neglect certification. Treat certification like ... sneakers. Sports shoes will not help a weak runner run better, but it will help the strong not to lose to another strong athlete who is “equipped” with comfortable shoes.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/211763/
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