Summoning the Vast Power of Certification

Author: George Pauwels

August 2008

The topic of credentials connotes denotes different thoughts for different people depending a great deal on the credentials held by the person in question. For those who hold a baccalaureate degree, it is one of the most wonderful milestones in life. For the individuals who have not had the time, money or inclination, they wonder what all of the hoopla is all about. The computer professional who has worked all his life in the field and has mastered his skills by the seat of his pants find those young (and not so young) newly certified, wet-behind-the-ears technicians to be completely inept and lacking the necessary experience to turn the computers on let alone manage one. Their thoughts seem to be summed up in the immortal words I once heard uttered by a local village council person: “I ain't got no use for that book learnin'!” Yet as accurate as their concern is for those lacking experience they seem to miss the point that those certified individuals have actually taken the time to RTFM.

Does reading the manual make you ready to do the actual job? Absolutely not. Does passing the test make you an expert? Not so much. However, doing both those things coupled with experience and the right personality makes you an invaluable asset to a hiring company. How many times have we as computer professionals been called in to fix a problem caused by someone who has clearly never taken, nor been given the time, to find out how the technology should work? When I first started in this field in 1988, there were few if any certifications. Heck, there were few if any manuals written by anyone other than engineers. Ever read a book written by an engineer? I would rather read Mandarin Chinese than a very dry and lifeless geek-produced manuscript. Our motto back then was if it works, don't touch it. We had very little idea what we were doing. We were blazing the networking frontier. The computer environments we live in today has evolved from those humble, unstable beginnings and computer professionals, at least some of them, still work with that same spit-and-bailing-wire attitude.

Many of us in our current situation have been pigeonholed in the IT field. Even though your title might be system administrator, your day-to-day job responsibilities may only involve managing user accounts or being responsible for system backups. As a network engineer, you may only get to do new system deployment and never get to do any actual troubleshooting. In addition, this is how it should be in some cases. Assuming proper job rotation, you will eventually face every facet of the network engineer's role. However, suppose your company only has frame relay WAN connections. You may never experience the “joy” of troubleshooting an MPLS circuit. Nor will you ever know the benefits MPLS may provide for your network.

This is one of the areas where certifications excel. When you study for a certification test, you are required to know all areas that may be serviced by the technology. A strategy in chess requires that you “See the whole board.” That is an important benefit when it comes to creating accounts or deploying a new system. Wouldn't it be nice if our people had at least an academic knowledge of the technology they are working with? How many times have we heard Tier 1 people complain about the lack of knowledge of the user community? How many times have we heard Tier 2 complain about that same lack of knowledge of Tier 1? And so on and so on.

From a career standpoint, credentials are extremely valuable. Try to get past the gatekeeper, aka Human Resources, for a technology position with a new company without a certification. Try to get promoted to management before you are 50 without a bachelor's degree. Try to get a yearly bonus or a promotion to that coveted Tier 2 or Tier 3 tech job without an advanced certification. It is tough to do. So is experience no longer valuable? Gosh, I ask amazingly dumb questions. The answer is no, of course. But cobble together experience, a good track record and the vast power of certification and, oh yea, a college degree, and that is a tough combination to beat.

George has been a part of the IT community since 1988. Before joining New Horizons, George worked as a Network and Systems Administrator and a Security Analyst. He currently holds the following certifications: CISSP, Certified Ethical Hacker, Certified Hacking Forensic Investigator, SCNS, SCNP, Security+, Linux+, MCSE NT 4, MCSE 2000, MCSA 2000, MCSA 2003, MCT, Network +, CCNA, CCENT, Inet+, MCIW, CIW-CI, and many others no longer viable.