This is the 100th "Certification News" newsletter I've written for
ITworld. That doesn't mean much, besides attesting to my personal
long-windedness, but having been able to come up with something new to
say every week for nearly the past two years does say something about
the certification and training industry in general.

Just in the time I've been writing this newsletter, I've seen dozens of
companies come out with new and innovative training options, review
titles, books, CDs, and more. From where I sit, training and
certification has become more essential as a means of survival, and much
more intensive. By more intensive, I mean putting more and more
knowledge into the same sized package. Not only are boot camps becoming
more popular, but standard training courses are getting shorter, and
training CDs have more content on them than ever.

At the same time, employers seem to be getting a little more
tight-fisted. A salary survey published by 101communications showed that
employers that hire Cisco-certified employees were a little less
generous last year, with CCIE's going from $115,402 in 2000, to $91,000
in 2001, a staggering 21 percent drop. The survey shows that some gains
will be made in 2002, with the average going back up to $99,000, still
representing a 14 percent decline over 2000.

Lower-level Cisco certifications also saw drops in compensation,
although not on as great a scale as the drop suffered by CCIEs. The
survey also indicated that 55 percent of respondents believed that
certification had not led to promotion. What this means to me, of
course, is that the market is starting to reach at least a modest
saturation point. Whereas at one time, a Cisco certification was a plus
-- something to put you on top of the heap -- it's now essential.
Without it, you won't even make the first cut in a job interview.

This is true for Cisco certificates, as evidenced by the survey, but one
can also deduce that it has become the general state of affairs for all
of information technology. A college degree is no longer adequate to get
you in the door; a certification of some type is almost a requirement.
From the point of view of hiring managers, I can see why. The university
degree gives you a broad, general base of knowledge, but the
certification shows that you have something more specific to offer.
Since there is an ever-growing pool of certified candidates, more
employers are taking the attitude of considering it an essential
requirement.

I saw a similar phenomenon in some parts of the San Francisco Bay Area
extending through Silicon Valley, where it's said that even the guy
behind the counter at the gas station probably has a university degree.
In places like that, where a very large percentage of the population has
been to college, a mere bachelor's degree becomes worth far less than it
used to, and becomes a requirement for even the most mundane of clerical
jobs that used to be relegated to high school grads who had perhaps
taken a few business courses at a community college.

Do you need a bachelor's degree to type memos and file papers? Probably
not, but in some markets, it's still considered a ground floor
requirement. Do you need a Cisco certification to get a job working the
night shift as a computer operator? Again, probably not, but as the
market continues to get saturated, certifications will become the major
differentiator and a key "foot in the door" for candidates on a much
lower level.

» posted by ITworld staff

ITworld

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