How important is a certification or a degree for someone getting into the ITPro world now?

[Cathy Moya]

We had some great discussion about certifications at our second meeting, Paths to being an ITPro. Some of us came into the ITPro world as trainers and see a lot of value in certification, while others on the call don't have any certification. If you were advising someone right now about getting into the ITPro world, would you advise them to get certified? 

When I was teaching the MSCE courses, I would tell my students that a certification might help them get an interview, but wouldn't get them a job if they couldn't pass a tech interview. 

What do you think? 

[#2]

I started in IT without a degree or certification.  Back in the old days when there were very few women in IT.  My 2nd IT job was with a consulting company and certifications were required.  They paid for my 1st certification on Windows NT 4.0.  I have keep up with my certifications since then.  Moving from the Server world in to the System Center world.  Along the way, I went back to school to obtain my bachelors degree.

For anyone starting out, the degree is necessary to get the interview.  I think having the certification will help get the job interview.  Hopefully if a HR person is looking at my resume and another person, my having the certification will put me in the call this person pile.

I also like to have the certifications because they force me to study and learn things outside of my day to day job.  I remember learning about the "problem step recorder" in Windows 7.  If i had not been studying for the test, I never would have learned about this great feature.  I still show IT people this tool and they think it is great for documenting what they are doing.  It is especially helpful with Change Management.

[#3]

Certification can certainly help, it demonstrates a level of knowledge and competence in a given subject but it's certainly not mandatory.  Ultimately experience and being able to showcase your skills will be most helpful I think.

There will be many IT Pros I'm guessing that will never be interested in certification yet may become subject matter experts in their chosen field. Certification isn't for everyone but it ticks a large box that can open doors, especially for someone getting to grips with new concepts and wanting to immerse themselves in a subject.  

I took two exams earlier in the year and got my MCSA Office 365, my first exams in a very long time and it was challenging but fair, that I felt measured my knowledge. I put a few notes here on the experience!

I would suggest to someone wanting to make a go of IT to investigate certification alongside practical experience and within six months to a year pursue certification if felt right.  Support from an employer as a professional development pathway can be great who can promote this alongside on the job-experience!

[#4]

I'm coming into this conversation years later. I have been finding, from the beginning, that the certifications are particularly helpful for me as a woman. In my backwoods area, women are not particularly welcome in IT, and having taken the exams they have not taken has really helped me prove my worth more easily than if I had not made the investment.

In general though, I don't find the exams to be that helpful in proving a person actually has the skills, experience, knowledge necessary to do their job well. In the last ten years in particular, I have found MS exams to be very much a matter of learning how to pass the exam, more than learning the topic to truly master the product/role. Frankly, in my experience as an MVP, the exams have varied in quality between being okay to cover skills, to absolutely not actually reflecting any real world knowledge about the skills needed for mastery at any level. Lately, I hear the cloud exams are better (I'm trying to get in take some but have been having some issue with my profile at the moment), but I found my CompTIA exams to be more relevant in terms of skills covered, and I hear the AWS and G Suite certs are really straightforward too.

[#5]

I know this is old discussion but I though to share my opinion too.

From my experience in the IT sector, Certificates doesn't prove you are an expert. It is good for someone who wanted to start a career in IT but not sure how to start and then go and learn and certification be a starting point. However, it doesn't show you are an expert or not.
I believe the best way to proof the expertise is the participation in forums, then you just share your profile and will see how well have you done.

[#6]

I've never said the certifications are prove of expertise, only that you have invested in learning the technology to the point of earning the certificate. Many, many people never bother, so it helps you stand out- especially as a woman in a largely male field.

I am intrigued about the angle of using participation in a forum as proof of expertise. That's interesting. As a former MVP, I'm afraid that I'm not really into using participation in the Forums to prove value. Although I would consider it as proof of possible interest in the technology, and an independence to go out to get help and find solutions, and even to offer help to others, to a certain degree. But I've seen too much to consider that proof of experience. Too many ambitious folk hammering the forums with not particularly helpful responses for me to think they add anything to your perceived worth. Sorry, I know that it is valuable to you, and that is valid. And, you may be one of the rare participants that actually help people. But most hiring folks either don't know anything about the forums, or have too much experience with quantity over quality to go there. If that was listed, with what I know, I would check in to see if the responses were valid and helpful. And if they were, I would definitely consider the candidate under a better light. Mind you, not every interviewer is going to delve into the details of forum activity like I would, so their interest in it as a proof of expertise may be limited.

That said- it is a quandary, how to prove to someone outside your job how valuable you were in your job. I know that in interviews, I ask detailed questions, heck, I've made them prove they know what they're doing by sitting them in front of some VMs and showing me what they'd do (or, recently, setting up some trial subs and seeing what the interviewee would do in the cloud). It's an eye opening experience. Most interviewers are not members of IT, which means they may be more interested in certifications as proof of knowledge, because otherwise they are not experienced enough with the technology to catch out the fibbers. The certifications are a start to weed out those who don't know more than the sales brochure about a product. Are the certs a guarantee, since they are not simulated (they were for a brief and glorious moment before lockdown)? No. People can cheat and just memorize answers. But for most people, they do need to have at least opened a Powershell window and typed out a few commands, or navigated the portal/UI to add things and see stuff in order to pass the exams. And I know this seems crazy, but it also helps to certify across brands- like AWS *and* Azure, or Linux and Windows. That's another thing that really adds value lately.

I've got twenty years in the industry now, and have kind of grown up here. I no longer only use certifications and other things to prove my personal worth, but I have to also find people who bring value to the IT department and can actually do what I need to them to do. Having the certificates changes the conversation. It lets me know that they value the knowledge necessary to do the job they're interviewing for. That they have an idea of the objectives of their role in the company to a certain degree. It adds to their resume's explanation of experience. I do, as a seasoned professional, have to check to be sure they aren't a "paper" professional, that they actually do know how to do things, but it does move their name closer to the top of the list.

[#7]

I got your point, regarding to the forum I believe there are need for improvement and in case a post is valid and helpful , they would get upvote and mark as answer. Actually, some people contacted me and they told me your post help solving my issue. Also in case you look into a forum like Stack Overflow, I know it is one of the hiring criteria and in case you want to proof you are a really good developer, you just share your profile and I know many people hired that way and it even has a job section.
However, Microsoft forums would need improvements and I believe they will reach a level where you could show a professional profile as a proof of your expertise. 

[#8]

Ah, now I am can better understand why a lot of your posts are about things that these forums need to do to improve. These forums are not like Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow. And they never will be.
I can see why you'd want them to be. Their business model and purpose are fundamentally different. If you are working at a company that are invested in SE, and I generally only see that for developers, they might use your forum activities as a way to see what you're skills are, but most companies don't even know it exists, especially if they are not explicitly involved with developers. And Microsoft isn't really specifically invested there. Stack Exchange has also had it's ups and downs in the last twenty years. I remember it as Experts Exchange, and they had tantalizing links to solutions to your problems, but you had to pay first to see the post. Stack Exchange evolved from there, and had a bit of a different model, but it's more for developers, and it's primarily for getting developer's jobs. It's a job and answers site.

These Microsoft tech community forums are just customers casually showing up, asking questions, getting answers, sometimes wrong, from other customers just showing up. No investment from Microsoft other than the platform. And that isn't going to change. The only reward is doing a good job and helping people. Only acknowledgement is maybe a follow up post saying thank you, or some likes. They aren't even, by and large, moderated. That's not the point of the forums.

These explicitly community forums, because it's all community and few moderators, it is really community driven. People come in and talk with each other, help each other, communicate with each other, with no other agenda. There are people there with greater knowledge, or in some cases, like the Women in IT or Humans in IT, there are experienced speakers in the topic area, who might host events or meetings on a relevant topic, but it is purely a get together and talk place, and nothing else. You might find someone with connections, or a mentor, but you can mostly find others like you, just trying to find their way. And mind you, I haven't seen an explicit marker that differentiates the technical communities from the human connection communities, They are all in a flat hierarchy.

That said, the explicitly technical forums are a little different. People go there innocently hoping for technical support, assistance, advice. Some don't realize the people answering are not Microsoft employees, or otherwise formally qualified. I know that Microsoft likes MVPs to do free support in the technical forums, and you can use the volume of your replies there towards your renewal. It's that volume thing that kind of ruins it for me, as it really, really encourages quantity over quality. That's also why, for those who know those forums, they can be inclined to shrug off a humble brag about doing a lot of work in there. I'm only bringing it up if you see an actual change in demeanor of an interviewer because you thought that it would get you somewhere. At Stack Exchange/Overflow, maybe, here, no. Sorry about that.