Help Qualifications that the IT industry recognises and cares about

[caLLous]

Hi folks,

I'm looking to reinvent myself career-wise in 2009. I've been doing relatively unskilled low-level management jobs since I flunked out of a BSc Computer Science degree at Plymouth Uni a while back. But anyway, I’ve been living in the south of France for a year and I’m sick of it – I want to come back to good old blighty and start living again.

Now, I’ve seen adverts on TV for companies like Skills Train and Advent Training and I wonder if the claims they make about the certificates and qualifications on offer actually carry any weight within the industry. I don’t want to spend however much it costs and however long it takes to get a piece of paper that doesn’t actually open any doors for me.

To be honest I haven’t looked at Advent Training much yet, but I’ve signed up for some information for a few of the courses on Skills Train, so I will see what it looks like when it arrives.

For example, if I pursue the E-Commerce & Project Management course with Skills Train, I could achieve the "highly respected CIW Professional recognition" and then the "highly regarded CompTIA P+ certification". Are these actually highly respected and highly regarded?

Similarly, the Web Designer (CIW) course tells me that "CIW Internet skills certification offers industry-wide recognition of an individual's Internet and Web knowledge and skills and is increasingly a factor in job placement and career assignment decision making." Does it and is it?

Likewise, in the Network Security & Project Management course “A CompTIA Security+ credential on your CV proves to employers your ability to keep their information safe from network security breaches”. Does it?

I’ve really taught myself everything I know with regards to PC repair and just “fixing” them (be it software or hardware). I’m comfortable with XHTML, CSS, I’m getting there with PHP and MySQL and I’ll probably move onto Javascript after that. I was over in England a few weeks ago and went in to a couple of job agencies and the job centre to see what was available. The general opinion I received from the agencies was, if I wanted to go into web design, to put together an online portfolio of websites I’ve created and link to it on a CV (with thumbnails and a case-study approach to any particular parts that I had problems with or where I’ve accomplished something through clever use of code or whatever) and send that out to prospective employers. They didn’t think much of these certificates but I don’t know if that was an unbiased opinion. Plus I don’t really want to just do web design work - I want it to be a string in my bow for sure – I quite like the look of the "E-Commerce and Project Management" and "Web Designer (CIW)" syllabuses (syllabi?) on the Skills Train.

Anyway, in an effort to get back to the original point, are there any kind souls around these parts that work in the industry that wouldn’t mind answering some of these questions about certificates and qualifications please?

Thanks loads.

 

[Chilly]

yeah for web design, portfolio really is your best option. was good advice from the agency bod imo. for more serious coding work, you either need experience, provable skills (but this might not get you through CV filtering stages) or that degree you flunked on

I know a lot of web designers and developers with no formal qualifications who are excellent at what they do. On the other hand, they guys are mainly freelance as opposed to those who work for bigger firms (HR departments are generally shit and have no fucking clue).

 

[DaGaffer]

I've recruited loads of eCom people over the years, and designers, and I'm afraid I've never heard of the "highly regarded CompTIA P+ certification". Ditto the web design one. Sorry.

Project managers tend to come from more formal IT or Business Analyses backgrounds (think PRINCE II), although is becoming increasingly rare to use that kind of methodology for web dev (too ponderous) and the buzzword du jour is "Agile" - we use a methodology called Scrum where I work, which is just applied common sense if you ask me.

For web designers, as Chilly said, experience and a portfolio is the key recruitment characteristic. Even if someone was coming straight out of college, it would be what they've done more than what their piece of paper said (the best should be doing freelance work while at college anyway). I've recruited several designers now and I don't think any were chosen on the basis of their qualifications.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Lately IT seems like the only qualification needed is to answer "Do you know how to spell computer?" with "Maybe."

 

[Zenith.UK]

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?" seems to be an IT skill in great demand from my perspective. The number of times I've visited a site only to find a plug half out of a socket, or a cable not pushed all the way in... it's really annoying.

As for the quallies, CompTIA A+ and Network+ are recognised certification as is formal Cisco CCNA certification. The MS ones have changed a bit recently, but it used to be the case that an MCSE opened some doors as well. Part of the problem is that MCSEs lost some of their value because so many people were getting it. It's an in-joke that MCSE stands for Minesweeper Certified, Solitaire Expert.
The actual list of MS certs can be found here...
Microsoft UK Learning - Microsoft Certifications: Overview

 

[Scouse]

Yep, the M$ ones, the Cisco ones and for project management, Prince II.

 

[caLLous]

or that degree you flunked on

Heh, the wonders of hindsight - turns out my mum was right, I am regretting not finishing.

I'm afraid I've never heard of the "highly regarded CompTIA P+ certification". Ditto the web design one. Sorry.

Thanks, this is why I asked and what I was expecting tbh. And I'm more interested in E-Commerce than the Project Management side which I didn't make clear at all in the original post.

for web design, portfolio really is your best option. was good advice from the agency bod imo

For web designers, as Chilly said, experience and a portfolio is the key recruitment characteristic. Even if someone was coming straight out of college, it would be what they've done more than what their piece of paper said (the best should be doing freelance work while at college anyway). I've recruited several designers now and I don't think any were chosen on the basis of their qualifications.

I like all of these words, thanks.

And thanks for that list Zenith, made for some interesting reading - I hadn't really thought about the MS certificates but some of em would seem to be quite useful.

Anyways, I'll wait til the details arrive and look through them and then make some sort of decision.

Thanks to those with constructive replies.

 

[Helme]

Learning Linux might help a whole bunch too, it's probably the easiest field to break into with IT seeing as there's still very few educations who caters to it and that its very widely used.

 

[Chilly]

lol helme....linux and easy in onc sentence without a "NOT"? Slow down the crack dude

People expect windows admins to be retards (in my experience) but when a linux admin doesnt know how to create an nfs mount or install a library they get the fucking boot very fast because they tend to work in highly competent teams who dislike poor performance. Obviously its not like that everywhere but it certainly is where I work. I consider myself a reasonable linux sysadmin but I wouldnt get very far doing the job.

 

[Bodhi]

It's tough to get into but what about VMware? VCP's rake in an absolute fortune, and VMware itself isn't THAT hard to understand, as long as you get server infrastructure to begine with.

 

[SilverHood]

I can only echo what has already been said. Never heard of any of of the certs you listed. In general, I find that certs are pretty worthless unless backed up by experience.

Ie, a slew of MS certs and no work experience and no projects rings alarm bells. Any monkey can study for an exam. I did the Oracle certification and it was a waste of time. I practised on the test server we had maybe 7 times, memorised the answers and did the real thing. Piece of cake. I happen to know Oracle fairly well, but we had guys from work who passed after 3 months study, who could barely string together a query involving more than 3 tables.

I actually went through one of these types of companies - FDM (FDM Academy), and it's been a mixed bag.

It certainly opened some doors that I would never have gotten past on my own, but also has some awful business practises. You win some, you loose some. The clincher is mobility. Don't sign up with the job guaranteed stuff unless you are willing to move (or live in London). There were jobs going in Bournemouth, Brighton, London, Birmingham, Switzerland, Germany and New York, with competition for the UK jobs being the highest, with virtually no competition for the NY role I ended up landing, and 1 person going for the Swiz role (and he turned it down, the numpty).

 

[Shagrat]

ITIL is the other one that seems to be becoming a bit of a standard as well, at least in the service management IT industry anyway

 

[Helme]

lol helme....linux and easy in onc sentence without a "NOT"? Slow down the crack dude

People expect windows admins to be retards (in my experience) but when a linux admin doesnt know how to create an nfs mount or install a library they get the fucking boot very fast because they tend to work in highly competent teams who dislike poor performance. Obviously its not like that everywhere but it certainly is where I work. I consider myself a reasonable linux sysadmin but I wouldnt get very far doing the job.

The Linux field is easy to get into... if you know Linux because you can't be an utter mong and get away with it like you can with Windows