RE: Certification
deFreese, Barry said:
> Certification is a double-edged sword. I don't know about the Linux world
> yet but in the old Novell days and in the M$ world, many organizations
> will not hire someone who is not "certified", regardless of their true
> experience level or talent.
novell especially. I haven't used it myself but for some reason this
rumor stuck with me, the fact that novell was so complicated to install
it required a certified person. I watched a certified person(for novell
3? or maybe 4) install netware 5 once and it looked fairly complicated.
I've installed about 16 flavors of unix and linux(every major unix
variant except SCO), and haven't had any issues(no certs here).
in my job search since september I have very rarely come accross a
job that mentions certification(my job search terms are typically
'linux' 'unix' 'networking'). Most of the jobs requesting certs seem
to be in the networking area from what I have seen. Only seen maybe
2-3 jobs tops that requested unix or linux certs. More jobs requesting
top secret clearance then unix/linux certs here at least.
>
> Now, the flip side of the problem is that you have VERY talented people
> who do not need to be certified getting passed over for jobs and freshly
> certified (certifiable? :-) ) morons who couldn't set up a server to save
> their lives.
sad huh. I was talking to a friend who works in boston, his company
was hiring a new "system administrator". The other one was moving out
of state, and I talked to him about the people who applied there since
he was doing a lot of the interviewing. The job posting asked for
unix skills, mac skills, networking, firewalls etc. Typical shit, though
it referenced too much desktop-centric to be attractive to me(not to
mention I'm on the other side of the country), anyways the people they
interviewed were fucking idiots. I mean he would ask them a question like
"what is your favorite shell", and they couldn't answer. They would
get confused and say "Well I just open a terminal..". I mean he couldn't
even NAME a shell to bullshit his way through the question.
and they still ended up hiring him, though he won't be the system
admin, my friend got promoted to that position, a 10k raise and this
new guy gets to be helpdesk.
many other candidates had little or no administration experience, i.e.
they came from sales or marketing positions and had brief usage of a
particular OS but nothing on the administrative side. And I mean
nothing, not even installed it at home and used it.
I had hoped that this shitty economy would of flushed such candidates
out of the IT industry forever to leave room for the better qualified
folk(e.g. the "lifers" such as myself :) ).
my friend suspects the shitty candidates they got were due to the
low salary of the position(he didn't know what the salary was), I'm
guessing they were lookin for someone for under 40k. They recieved
more then 500 applications for the position in the first week. I had
another interview with a recruiter on monday and she said they still
recieve on average 300 applications per job posting.
> I think the stigma is changing some after many companies have been burned
> hiring the "certified" morons. However, getting certified is never
> necessarily a bad thing. It can be a way to keep up with technology and
> it also shows employers that you are willing to continue learning/growing.
getting certified may be good, but depending on what your looking for
job wise should influence what certs you mention you have. e.g. personally
I would look down upon an individual who is going for a Unix/linux job
who touts having an A+ certification. This certification may be more
respectable in the minimum wage PC repair but to me it makes it seem
like the person doesn't know much(or, if listed along side a bunch
of other certs it would scream 'paper cert' to me).
nate
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