4 comments
Various 
Martin Fowler pretty much echoes my sentiment about certifications in his recent post. I have lots of certifications and I need them to be able to do my job because Microsoft requires me to certify to be allowed to teach official Microsoft courses. In a way this is a good thing: as soon as you enroll for an official Microsoft course you’re guaranteed to have a certified trainer. And this will, might, should guarantee a good, valuable training experience.
I can feel a ‘but’ approaching…
Does knowing what property to set make me a good teacher or developer? The quality of the exams and the availability of brain dumps seriously degrades the value of the exams. Every once in a while there is a news item about some 7 years old kid passing Microsoft exams. I am not envious but this really makes me mad. It proves that exams might have absolutely no value in determining real life experience and the ability to solve complex problems.
So why do we take these exams?
I encounter three important drivers:
- The employee – Resume building. Potential employers and head hunters still see these titles as an indication of quality. At times, I suspect, because they are to lazy to get someone who is able to really test an applicant involved while interviewing candidates.
- The employer – Checking for the effect of a course. The employer only sends out employees to courses that prepare for exams because they want proof of the effect of the course. I can understand this need but this causes a bad side effect: during the course students are more concerned with the exam than with the knowledge and skills that are needed for their jobs.
- The exam issuer – Staying in the loop. Microsoft requires partners to have a minimum set of certified employees to continue to be a certified partner. Being a certified partner can be very useful when trying to find customers and trying to convince them of your qualities. At times this loop feels like a vicious, never ending treadmill.
Can’t you be more positive?
Sure. There are many good reasons too. It is nice to have a third party to confirm that you know your stuff. It is nice to have some sort of target to aim for and, if you can withstand the seduction of brain dumps, the feeling of accomplishment when you pass an exam.
4 comments
Erno,
I have to say I couldn’t agree more. The concept of certification as an indicator of someone’s knowledge and skill is needed, but it only works well when the certifications actually guarantee these qualities. Anyone can understand this, and if you’d ask, everybody would agree. So just like the debate about some of the Dutch Highschool diploma’s that were given away along with a pack of sigarettes: how much faith do we have in the Microsoft Certifications?
I’ve also read the article of Fowler and I share the same feeling and experience. However, what can we do about it? Does Microsoft (or any other big corporate for that matter) has any motive to upgrade the quality of their exams? Should we invent our own exams or titles? If so, how do we get ‘the market’ to trust our certificates over the existing ones?
W van Gool
I know quite a bit about how Microsoft creates exams. You will have take my word for it, it is in Microsoft’s interest to keep the certifications as good as they can and the effort they have to make to keep up the quality of the exams is huge. I am sorry I can’t tell you any thing more, if I did I’d be violating some NDAs.
A pointer I can give you is to track the blog posts of Liberty Munson. She works at Microsoft and knows all about exams and keeping up the quality. http://borntolearn.mslearn.net/members/liberty/default.aspx (you need to login with a live account)
Erno de Weerd
Diplomas don’t mean skills …
Gazduire
And skills are hard to show in an interview…
I have done quite some interviews when people wanted to work for Info Support and from that experience I found it very hard to test for skills. I have used several methods and even writing code on the spot is not a true measure. So I resolve to measuring past experience/education by asking questions to find out at what level of detail and understanding they have been working.
To us it is more important that a candidate is able to learn and enjoys learning. There is no use in asking them “do you enjoy learning?” Of course they will say yes. So I simply start probing their knowledge about what they have done to find out at what level they understood what they were doing. The results vary from blindly copying code from Google to knowing the dirty details of a runtime.
Unfortunately not many employers do the interview this thoroughly which has two effects: 1.: candidates get away with shiny but meaningless resumes and 2.: candidates are too afraid of talking to us because we really test them.
There is no need to be afraid of an interview at Info Support unless you lie a lot or really do not know what you are talking about. And even then, the interview is not what you should be afraid of because if you lie or are completely ignorant you would not like working with us.
Back on topic: we look at skills, not at certifications.
Erno de Weerd