Published on: 01.07.2019

Is IT certification useful?

IT certification should prove that the holder has skills and knowledge to do particular work.

Often skills and knowledge that you need to get particular certification are different (hopefully their union will not be empty set) from skills and knowledge that are needed in practice.

And this is a problem.

From the perspective of the employer, IT certification looks like a great thing, the solution to the problem of who to hire.

Just take the person with the highest certification.

IT certification is very similar to grades in school.

A person with the highest grades should be the most competent, but often it is not, because of a lack of real-life experience.

And because you can not do two things at the same time, you end up with one or the other.

Often certification is a hedge for management.

If employe/project fails, they are not responsible, they hired certified persons, otherwise, they could be liable.

Another issue with certification, that I have observed is that total beginners assume if they pass certification they will be experts and find work.

Certainly, a beginner who has CCNA knows more that person who never configured a network, but CCNA alone, without any other IT knowledge is almost useless.

I do not think that certification is totally useless, just that it is overrated due to misunderstanding.