Are certification programs a scam?

Computerworld - Depending on whom you talk to, certification programs are either borderline rip-offs that provide little useful knowledge, or valuable hiring tools that make it easier for IT execs to pick the most promising new employees.

Available from vendors focusing on their own products, or outside organizations offering multi-vendor training, these certificate programs are expanding to fill the many specialized technology subsets that have multiplied along with the growth of data storage and other IT areas.

When it comes to storage, whether it be network-attached storage (NAS), storage-area networks (SAN), backups or business continuity, the proliferation of technologies has created a burgeoning demand for qualified IT personnel -- and educational organizations to train them -- who can operate in these complicated environments. While there is no substitute for experience, a well-schooled job prospect is still preferable to a raw recruit with no storage knowledge whatsoever.

"It's one thing to have a nice little piece of paper to hang on the wall," says Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst of The StorageIO Group, in Stillwater, Minn., "but it's another to have the experience." Schulz echoes a common theme when he says that storage certificates ease the job of hiring managers by showing that certificate holders have verifiably spent the time and effort required to go through some sort of training program. That gives certificate holders a leg up on non-accredited job seekers.

Almost a scam

Tom Becchetti, a storage architect with 20 years of industry experience who is currently employed by a large financial services company in the Midwest, begs to differ. Becchetti says he is fully trained in HP-UX, Solaris, Brocade Communications Systems, McData Corp. and EMC technologies, and sees storage certificates as a scam. "The reason I say that is most of the certification tests I've taken don't show that you actually know the material more than you can just memorize," Becchetti says. "You're capable of memorizing, not necessarily understanding concepts. And to me, that doesn't help companies."

Becchetti says some of the best people he has worked with had trouble passing certification tests while other equally qualified workers didn't, which according to Becchetti gives him no indication of their true capabilities. While acknowledging that certificates at least indicate that their bearers have put in the work required to gain them, he says that he can quickly assess how much useful knowledge they actually have.

"I look at it like at least they did the work, but I'm going to dive still deeper into understanding some of the concepts they know and understand," he says. "I've had cases where they've been certified and really didn't understand the product. They basically tested for the certification, and that was all they knew."