How To Choose The Best Computer Certification For You?

When you're choosing which computer certification to pursue next, you should also be formulating a plan for your career. Your time is precious, and you should never choose to pursue a certification because it's "hot". There are some hard questions you should ask yourself before deciding to pursue the CCNA, CCNP, CCVP, CCSP, CCIE, MSCE, or any of the many other vendor certifications that are out there.

Why do I want this certification?

This is the biggest and most important question you should answer before you spend a dime on books or classes.

If your primary goal in earning a certification is the money you feel companies will throw at you after you get it, make sure to do your research first. Basing your certification pursuits on a salary survey can lead to some serious frustration on your part. Don't get me wrong, I like money. J But those surveys can be very misleading. There's really no such thing as an "average" salary in IT. Job responsibilities and requirements vary greatly from company to company, to the point where a "network admin" may make $25K at one job and $75K at another. You can see where such variations in pay can lead to some misleading statistics. (And if you're thinking of attending a tech school whose main pitch is "look at all the money this cert can get you", ask a lot of questions about how they arrived at this amount.)

A positive answer to this question works wonders. If you have a plan for your career, you'll know how this certification can fit into your plans. If you don't know what you're going to do with it when you get it, or worse, don't have a plan for your future, you may be wasting your time. Ask yourself the hard questions now - you won't regret it.

How does the vendor protect my investment of time and money?

Let's face it: earning your certification costs time and money. You've got to set time aside to study, you'll need books, perhaps a class, etc. If you're spending that money and time, it should be to make yourself more valuable in the workplace.

The vendor should also have a vested interest in keeping your certification valuable. Take Cisco, for instance. I was at a bit of a career crossroads a few years ago. Should I pursue my masters degree, or pursue the CCIE? I took a strong look at both choices, and I knew that Cisco works endlessly and tirelessly to protect the value of their certifications. While other major vendors have made strides to do so, I felt Cisco did the best job of protecting the value of their certifications. That's why I felt secure in the investment of my finances and time into a major Cisco certification, and I've never made a better decision.

Before making a major investment into a computer certification, consider the steps that a vendor does or does not make to protect your investment.

Computer certifications have helped me tremendously in building my IT career. By asking the right questions, and taking a hard look at your motives and plans before pursuing a given certification, they can do the same for you.

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage, home of over 100 free certification exam tutorials, including Cisco CCNA certification test prep articles. His exclusive Cisco CCNA study guide and Cisco CCNA training is also available!

Visit his blog and sign up for Cisco Certification Central, a daily newsletter packed with CCNA, Network+, Security+, A+, and CCNP certification exam practice questions! A free 7-part course, "How To Pass The CCNA", is also available, and you can attend an in-person or online CCNA boot camp with The Bryant Advantage!

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Which Certification is Best for You?

A certification is one of the most valuable weapons in your job-hunting arsenal. A college degree and some experience -- and maybe a brother-in-law who's the hiring manager -- doesn't hurt either. But companies eager to hire specialists turn to certified candidates, in hopes that those candidates will be able to hit the ground running, and will require no training period. Although a bachelor's degree in computer science is always a plus, it doesn't necessarily prove that you know how to run a Microsoft network. An MCSE does.

The most popular certifications, by far, are those from Microsoft and Cisco, but hundreds of designations are available for every conceivable specialty. For a comprehensive listing of certifications, consult Anne Martinez's book, Get Certified & Get Ahead (McGraw-Hill).

"In IT certification, what you're going to get is some immediate bang for your buck in terms of salary increase," said Amit Yoran, CEO of information security provider Riptech and adjunct professor at George Washington University. However, Yoran still stresses the importance of having a college degree to accompany the certification.

Why certify? Doug Kendzierski, associate vice provost at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), said, "We're in a market in which demand has never outpaced supply by such a tremendous disparity." Certification is a way to prove to a potential employer that you have a specific set of skills, thereby making their hiring decision a little bit easier.

What's the hottest certification?

"Two areas of focus I see as very attractive is any sort of networking-based technologies, and the other is software engineering disciplines," said Yoran. Beyond the most common certifications (Microsoft, Cisco, Novell), though, there are plenty of other designations that may be just as valuable. If you want a career in Linux, get the RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer) certification. If you want to cash in on the increasing concern over network security, the SANS GIAC (System Administration, Networking, and Security Global Incident Analysis Center) certificate will show potential employers that you can protect the corporate goodies. To gain even more leverage, combine this vendor-neutral security certification with a vendor-specific one. Almost every firewall-equipment vendor has its own certification program, and a generic security certification combined with a CCSE (Check Point Certified Security Engineer) or a Cisco Security Specialist certificate would make for a quick path to employment.

Of course, the venerable MCSE still carries a lot of weight, perhaps more than ever since Microsoft made the test more scenario-based and less theoretical. The test is definitely more difficult, but that makes it more valuable in the marketplace. According to Mike Smith, senior product marketing manager for IT training and courseware development company Wave Technologies International, "They don't just say, 'Here, answer this question.' Microsoft has case studies, where they say, 'Here's a scenario, read these three pages and answer these seven questions.' They'll give you a diagram of pieces to a network puzzle and say, 'Put this together, tell me where your routers go, where your servers go, where your desktops are going to be and tell me the flow of your cabling.' You're not going to come up with that on your own."

Vendor-specific or vendor-neutral?

"If you take a networking essentials exam, you don't learn networking essentials, you learn Microsoft's view of networking essentials," said Yoran. This is a useful approach if you are going to run a Microsoft network, but according to Yoran, "the academic approach is a much purer one." If you have a vendor-specific certification, you understand a specific piece of proprietary technology, and that is often what employers want. But in the long run, confining yourself to a single vendor-specific certification may limit your advancement options. "You're taking a near-term gain with a long-term detriment," said Yoran.

Combining a vendor-specific certification with a vendor-neutral one will expand your horizons and position your value beyond a specific piece of technology. "Somebody who is just starting out has no choice but to start at a vendor-neutral platform," said Kendzierski, "because what they need is a full survey of technology that is not rooted in a particular product." You should pursue a certification in a specific vendor's technology after you get that theoretical background, either through a vendor-neutral certification or college education.

The cost factor

You can easily spend thousands -- even tens of thousands -- of dollars on a combined training/certification program, although the testing alone usually only costs a couple hundred. The best deal is still http://www.brainbench.com/xml/bb/homepage.xml target=new>Brainbench, a Web-based testing center that offers certificates for just about anything you can think of and is well-known and respected throughout the IT industry. Some tests are still available for free, but most cost $19.95.

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Source: ITworld.com