Let me read you the first paragraph of the fourth chapter of the best selling A+ certification book:

"Anytime someone comes up to me and starts professing their computer savvy, I ask them a few questions to see how much they really know. Just in case you and I ever meet and you decide to "talk tech" with me, I'll tell you my first two questions just so you'll be ready. Both involve random access memory (RAM), the working memory for the CPU.

1. How much RAM is in your computer?
2. What is RAM and why is it so important that every PC have some?"

LOL! If I were the hiring manager at a company, I would throw out every resume that had A+ certification listed on it.

5/5/2009 6:24:55 PM

Quote :

"If I were the hiring manager at a company, I would throw out every resume that had A+ certification listed on it."

that's probably why you're not a hiring manager...should a person get a job based solely on an A+ cert? of course not...but it's a good way to determine whether or not a candidate has some basic skills

basic training is the groundwork for more advanced experience...discounting it is just as stupid as treating it as if it's the greatest thing since sliced bread

5/5/2009 6:34:40 PM

^

& it's needed for getting entry level IT help desk type jobs, but anything above that it's not needed i'm sure.

5/5/2009 6:40:53 PM

LOL! Thread fail!

5/5/2009 6:49:09 PM

::sigh::

I guess I have an odd sense of humor, I died laughing when I read that.

In search of support for my reasoning , I found a comment on this thread: http://www.pikemalltech.com/2007/07/08/why-the-a-certification-is-absolutely-useless/

Quote :

"I must agree it’s worthless. I run the IT department for a large media company and I will throw away a resume with A+ on it unless it also has something like CCNA or a worthy cert. I’ve never had it myself and at my last job (teaching IT) I taught it. The people taking it just didn’t know a thing, figured it was all they needed."

Yes... I'm sure it's useful for simple jobs, but in all honesty, I probably wouldn't put it on my resume if I were applying for a serious job.

[Edited on May 5, 2009 at 7:14 PM. Reason : ]

5/5/2009 7:04:35 PM

I don't see why having an A+ certification would hurt someone's resume. It's probably useless for anything other than entry-level, and even there it isn't worth much, but it's not a negative. It doesn't mean you're as lame as the guy who wrote that passage from the book.

Anyway, what were you doing reading the book?

5/5/2009 7:41:19 PM

I thought about paying the money for it this summer just to throw on my resume.

5/5/2009 8:59:41 PM

haha, see i also consider a CCNA to be a fairly worthless cert.

5/5/2009 9:17:13 PM

say it ain't so lol

5/5/2009 9:22:38 PM

Having a CCNA, is both good and bad. Means you are comfortable wtih cisco stuff to a degree, and also should know how to subnet. Plus a few other skills.

Now the new CCENT, When it came out, i thought it would be worthless. I havnt read up on it more but i still think that.

5/5/2009 9:25:36 PM

i guess, from my perspective, i didn't attempt the CCNA until i'd been doing networking for years, and i rolled in without studying and passed it. I'm not a good test taker.

I don't think it's worthless from a 'good on the resume' point of view, just that it's way too easy.

5/5/2009 9:28:52 PM

I agree.. It's just my attempt to get my feet wet in the Cisco world so I'm gonna take it pretty soon.. I'll go for something higher after I get some real experience in the field.. until then I figure I might as well get whatever I can put on my resume that isn't too much extra work

5/5/2009 10:23:26 PM

Quote :

"I run the IT department for a large media company and I will throw away a resume with A+ on it unless it also has something like CCNA or a worthy cert."

fuck certs.
how about that?


and to throw away a resume because it has a certain cert on it is complete stupidity. not that A+ carries any weight...but it's not a negative on its own. unless you're a dick.

5/5/2009 10:38:31 PM

Quote :

"LOL! If I were the hiring manager at a company, I would throw out every resume that had A+ certification listed on it."

I am a hiring manager and I do throw out resumes with A+ on it because I'm looking for serious software engineering professionals who:

A.) had better things to do (ie. gainful employment) with their time than waste it on a certification that tests the importance of how much RAM is in a PC or
B.) Is so embarrassed by not having better things to do at some point in their life they manage to hide that fact from their resume since it's about as relevant as having been a 'YMCA Camp Counselor' or 'Carmike 16 Usher'

So while yes it is basic experience, what I am looking for is so far beyond basic experience having things like this on a resume is distracting. Its along the same lines as having things like 'Microsoft Office' experience and 'EMail'. If I see those on a technical resume...I'm sorry it's getting thrown out.

5/5/2009 10:43:18 PM

^^ I'm going to disagree with the negative weight thing. The technical resume is almost an artform that balances depth of information with brevity. If you feel the need to include certs like A+ on a serious technical resume, you're not going to be taken very seriously. It's all about relativity and what is important to the position you're applying for. If A+ is in no way relevant to the position you're applying to, then I wouldn't include it. Whether you think it should be negative or not doesn't mean everybody shares that viewpoint.

[Edited on May 5, 2009 at 10:46 PM. Reason : grammar nazi]

5/5/2009 10:46:05 PM

^^i'm assuming anyone who lists a+ is applying for a more general IT job. customer support, computer repair...something like that.

a+ is only two characters. if i had other certs, i would list a+ along with them...but i dont have any, so its not an issue for me.

5/5/2009 10:47:56 PM

Quote :

"If A+ is in no way relevant to the position you're applying to, then I wouldn't include it."

Well no shit.

5/5/2009 10:55:52 PM

i really don't see how two characters hurt, especially if you already have a certification section. it sounds like ya'll are being your usual elitist asshole selfs.

but then i don't have any certs, and i'm not a hiring manager...so what do i know.

i have reviewed more than a few resumes though, and i would never throw them out just because they had two certain characters on them.

5/5/2009 11:04:44 PM

Quote :

"haha, see i also consider a CCNA to be a fairly worthless cert."

I had one of those for a while. Now my resume says "CCNA - Expired" instead. That's better right?

[Edited on May 5, 2009 at 11:08 PM. Reason : l]

5/5/2009 11:08:01 PM

I don't know, doesn't that beg the question "Why didn't you get recertified?" What does expired mean anyway?

Is a CCNA at all relative towards a position you're searching for? I think regardless of your answer it should be removed. If you say yes, again that goes towards the question above. If you say no, then it begs the question "why is this on your resume if its not relevant".

5/5/2009 11:15:23 PM

ok sure if he's applying to work at cisco or to support/work on cisco gear, then yeah you want that cert current.

if he's applying for a jack of all trades type of job where the cisco gear is tangential to his normal job duties, then the fact that he has at least a basic level of cisco/networking knowledge (as evidenced by his passing the ccna cert) is helpful information.

Quote :

"What does expired mean anyway? "

i think thats pretty obvious

5/5/2009 11:23:10 PM

I guess my point is on a resume you have 1 *maybe* 2 pages to convey why a potential employer should contact you for a follow up position. When I look at a resume, I tend to look less at the content and instead read between the lines. I'm the guy looking for gaps in employment, somebody who changes jobs frequently, etc.

One of the things I absolutely hate seeing on a resume is filler and buzzwords. The resume is supposed to be an executive summary, meaning it should be brief,succinct and to the point. You should be highlighting your best features, responsibilities and accomplishments. If I see something like 'CCNA-Expired' a red flag is jumping up and down in my head asking "well why is it expired? Why is it even on here? Is it relevant? Is it just filler? Did he fail the recert exam? Was he too lazy or was it no longer important in his career path? Is he serious about his commitments?" There's a lot of things that can be read about who a person is by what they chose to put in and leave out of a resume. You can call that stupid or whatever you want, but its extremely naive to think that it doesn't happen. When hundreds of resumes are crossing desks then it becomes that much harder to weed out the decent applications and it becomes much easier to pick on any single little thing to throw one out.

5/5/2009 11:34:27 PM

Expired means that if I ever want another networking job I'll probably take the test again before applying for any real positions.

I don't really have that expired shit on my resume though. If it comes up in conversation I would mention that I had it once and could certainly take the test again if it were relevant. At this point I'm torn between going back to the tech world or getting further away from it. I still don't know which way I'm going to go to be honest. I have seriously considered taking some time off, dropping loads of cash on some Cisco/EMC equipment, and trying to get a storage CCIE. Other than that I don't see myself doing much more tech work unless I'm on the sales side of the house where hard good work can be ridiculously lucrative.

[Edited on May 6, 2009 at 12:46 AM. Reason : l]

5/6/2009 12:43:37 AM

i got my A+, Net+, and CCNA when i was still in high school...the CCNA is expired since i never bothered to keep it active (the test was paid for in high school and it was so easy that i thought it would be a waste not to let someone else give me what was, at the time, a more valuable certification)

i still think it's asinine for someone in a position like confusi0n's to "throw out" a resume with A+ on it (i assume he means that he literally stops reading the moment he sees that cert, balls up the resume, and tosses it into the trash)

Quote :

"So while yes it is basic experience, what I am looking for is so far beyond basic experience having things like this on a resume is distracting."

are you saying YOU get distracted when you see two character on a piece of paper? really? sounds like your company needs a new "hiring manager"

5/6/2009 8:35:48 AM

I did the hiring for the last company I worked for in tech support. For those entry-level positions I didn't throw out resumes just because they had certs, but I'll be damned if every one of those resumes didn't interview horribly on the phone. Even the MSCAs and MCSEs. Give me someone with experience and confidence and a willingness to learn over certs any day.

When I was actually taking tech support calls it never ceased to amaze me how absolutely clueless people with certs could be at times. I'd ask them to launch 'Add or Remove Programs' and they'd fumble around for 2 minutes, then I'd get an e-mail from them with alphabet soup behind their signature.

5/6/2009 9:09:21 AM

Quote :

"I'll be damned if every one of those resumes didn't interview horribly on the phone. Even the MSCAs and MCSEs. Give me someone with experience and confidence and a willingness to learn over certs any day."

that i'll believe...there are very few "professional" certs in a wide spectrum of fields that i give any real-world weight to (hell, i have a fair number of them myself), but at the VERY least, they SHOULD indicate the the cert holder has a basic knowledge of that given field (because while the certs may not be hard, but they're probably not easy to cheat for, overall)

the problem is that not everyone has experience, so certs are a good way to stand out compared to other people without experience...some certs are definitely valuable, but all of the ones i can think of require at least some experience in the field in order to pass them

5/6/2009 9:49:56 AM

Certs are only good for getting huge discounts from Microsoft at my company. Getting hired here requires a degree in a field related to CSC/IT from a university like NCSU, and years of experience with SQL, Database Administration, and breaking and then fixing Tier 1/2 vertical software packages.

5/6/2009 4:46:02 PM

I have the experience but no way to show it on my resume since well, my bachelors is still incomplete and will probably remain that way for the foreseeable future.

5/6/2009 5:15:33 PM

^^

That reeks of someone that's been reading MS Dev Center too long. Getting hired requires lots of things. One is a forward and backward knowledge of data structures and algorithms. If you don't have a job you need to know that shit cold. Know a graph problem when they ask you a question which is disguised from you being able to immediately recognize it. You should be able to shit out at least one n log n sort, shortest path, and minimum spanning tree algorithm. I don't recommend taking 20 minute to realise it is in fact a graph problem like I just did Know at least one language cold and all the idiosyncrasies of it. If it's Java write a simple app with Java, Swing, GWT, Android anything that gets you to know the foundation classes and see common patterns actually used. If you don't know how to traverse a tree or recursion that's seriously a problem. If you have C or C++ on your resume because you wrote a hello world app in it be prepared to answer a shit ton of questions about memory allocation and what is analgous in Java to virtual/pure virtual function.

Know the PROPER way to answer a question like this:
I have 50,000 telephone numebers embedded in 10,000 html files in a directory. How do I create a file with just the phone numbers.

Or a variation.

Take all the mp3s that itunes moved all over your computer and copy them back to your Music folder.


http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/SortingResumes.html

Sometimes, though, a resume gives pretty strong negative clues which allow you to screen out applicants without going much further. Once I got a resume from someone who claimed to be an expert in Microsoft Window [sic] programming. Another time the only experience listed on the application was a job at Dunkin’ Donuts. That resume did a pretty good job of following all the suggestions that high school career-guidance advisors love to give out (this guy “managed trays of donuts”) but there was not a smidgen of evidence that the applicant had ever seen a computer.

[Edited on May 7, 2009 at 12:41 AM. Reason : a]

[Edited on May 7, 2009 at 12:45 AM. Reason : a]

5/7/2009 12:29:06 AM

thanks cael. I was in mind to quote from Smart & Gets Things Done earlier but didn't feel like pulling it out.

To me this sums up certs of all kinds (but certainly not all certs)

Quote :

"To top programmers, the most maddening thing about recruiters is their almost morbid fascination with keywords and buzzwords. The entire industry of professional headhunters and recruiters is bizarrely fixated on the simple algorithm of matching candidates to positions by looking for candidates that have the complete list of technology acronyms that the employer happens to be looking for. It becomes especially infuriating to realize that most of these recruiters have no idea what any of these technologies are. “Oh, you don’t have MSMQ experience? Never mind.”"

5/7/2009 12:38:38 AM

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things-smart.html

I prefer this Joel does have a pimp office.

5/7/2009 12:44:05 AM

It's going to depend on the software company. Where I work, we care more about your ability to wear "multiple hats" than your ability to know one subject matter better than anyone else. Basically, you cannot just be a great DBA, or an excellent Programmer of X language, or a Networking guru. You have to be proficient in several arenas with proven results, with references from previous employeers backing up your work ethic. Certs are just another piece of paper, except less impressive than a bachelors, and as you may know, they only matter if you can sell it during the interview. If you are straight out of college, and were not a part of a co-op program, your chances of landing something at my company, at this time, in this economy, are very low. Unless you know someone personally or wow them during the interview.

[Edited on May 7, 2009 at 4:13 PM. Reason : -]

5/7/2009 4:07:23 PM

ahah it almost sounds like you work for I-Cubed

5/7/2009 4:29:11 PM

hats on hats, son

5/7/2009 4:53:47 PM