Worthless IT Certs?


A few minutes ago I ran into a blog by someone that said something that needed to be said. IT Certs are not really worth getting. I just wanted to save my comments on my own blog to reiterate and edit later.

Here’s my comments on his blog:

Having spent a few years as an IT Manager for a small company, I can say that I never looked at Certs in my stack of resumes. (Except maybe, A+, maybe) In fact, I put very little importance on College education. I wanted to see a couple years providing real, and creative solutions. This gave me a good ground work to start the interview process, and then determine if the personality would work.
I have seen a couple educated people, looking to get certs, not even be able to replace a hard drive. Or even tell me why certain DNS issues were causing problems. In my IT world, these people will never do. Learn how to do pc repair, then networking (the non-microsoft way too, ie. Linux) and you’ll be 100% better off.
In my experience getting jobs (and now clients), having the NT cert from back in 98, not a SINGLE person has ever asked me about it! I was always hired because of a referral, and my experience spoke for itself.
Besides, I feel that Certs really say, “I know the books smarts that this vendor wants me to know, not necessarily what the real world needs.” I would even say that, having the NT cert, only half of it was useful information.