How important is an IT certification? With over 20 years of experience and no certification, this is my opinion

I’m not here to badmouth IT certifications (although I will) but to show you a realistic point of view.

If you are (or want to be) an IT professional, you are probably tempted to invest in a certification. I was many times. However, I always desisted shortly after initiating the investigation of what one should choose.

The paradox of the choice, in this case, wasn’t bad because it made me challenge why I wanted to study and pay for a credential.

• Did I want a better job?
• Did I want to earn more?
• Did I want to feed my ego?

I concluded that a certification wasn’t the means to achieve any of them. It wouldn’t work for me.

However, I do think they may have some benefits. Perhaps some of them captivate you.

Benefits

Although the benefits are not even close to those claimed by the entities that sell them, certifications can help you in specific situations:

1 - When you don’t trust your knowledge on the subject.

This is counterintuitive, but the truth is that you don’t need to be an expert to get a certificate (more about that in the next section). Suppose you are applying for a job with a desired requirement of knowing C++. Your certification would be enough for them, even if you never created a program.

2 - When you have a specific skill.

It’s hard for a company to evaluate vanguard or specific skills. So, their best option is to outsource that verification to the external entity that issues such certifications. “If they say you are good, we will trust them.”

On a smaller scale, I went to a service center to run a complete inspection and issue a certification for a car I was selling. My idea was to make buyers with no mechanics knowledge feel safe about buying my car.

3 - When you appreciate non-practical knowledge

If you are one of those people who loves to expose useless knowledge in conversations, certifications are excellent for you. You will collect information none of your colleagues know, mainly because they've never needed it. You may satisfy your desire to learn by memorizing multiple pages of material.

There is something to highlight about that. If, for some reason, you get the chance to put one of those pieces of knowledge into practice to solve an issue, you will be the King of the World for one day.

4 - When the company needs that certification

Companies sometimes need their employees to have a certain certification to pass some assessment (more on this later). If you happen to have it, you have an advantage over your colleagues or the market. What are the odds?

Credibility

When I’m hiring, the certification a candidate has means little more than the color of their hair.

That’s the credibility certifications have for me. Their purpose (which may have been valid 40 years ago) is to “prove” your knowledge of a specific topic. However, the overwhelming number of certifications available and the low barriers to passing on them invalidate that principle.

Having a certification in specific cases may still be good, but they don’t impress me.

Some reasons why they lost their original value and credibility:

• You don’t need to go through a course on the tool, but you can just study some books
• You don’t need to study those books either, but you can just simulate the tests and study the answers
• Big consultancies certify their trainees without any experience
• A bunch of theoretical knowledge doesn’t make a difference today; anything can be googled

Although I haven’t certified in IT (and that should be enough evidence to support my point of view), many years of working at top companies gave me some experiences to back up that idea.

Experiences

As someone who defends the benefits of University against the trendy message "quit your studies and create your ten-million company," I honestly used to believe that a certificate may make a difference.

Even after understanding they don’t prove knowledge, I’d still have obtained one if I thought it was a good marketing tool. However, some experiences demonstrated it wasn’t:

• None of my colleagues has ever gained a raise or promotion because they got a certification. Let me tell you more: I haven’t participated in any discussions about aspirants where the certification was an advantage for any of them.
• I’ve never seen someone fired because they didn’t have certifications. Although I have seen companies that must certify X% of their employees for arbitrary goals, they helped their employees with the certifying process in such cases.
• An interviewer once said, “Mmm… But what you are asking for is too high… You don’t have certifications…” That raised some doubts at that time, but then I realized it was just an excuse not to pay what I was asking for. The same happens when someone wants to buy a house or a car and keeps pointing out insignificant issues just to lower the price.
• My only certificate (which I used to show proudly) is in the English language. I felt uncomfortable in that area, so it was a way of saying, “My English is bad, but I have something that proves it is good.” Contradictory.

Over the years, the reality convinced me that certifications are neither proof that a worker is knowledgeable nor a guarantee of higher salary.

Conclusion

Certifying is not the best solution for demonstrating you are an expert or getting a better job.

Although it has some benefits, they apply only under specific circumstances.

If I wanted to invest some time and money in my career, I’d instead develop a complementary skill that will help me to stand out.