Re: MCSD certification - is it still necessary to land a job?
From: Bruce Wood (brucewood_at_canada.com)
Date: 02/08/05
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Date: 7 Feb 2005 17:19:12 -0800
Sam,
Just to give you another perspective, I have no .NET anything. No
certs. No exams. I do, however, have 20 years experience doing
object-oriented design and programming. While I'm by no means a guru in
all things .NET, or even the myriad technologies that Microsoft offers,
I am, after 1 year messing around with C#, helping out in this
newsgroup. You can read my responses and judge for yourself my
technical level.
You might still give me an interview, but as you said, you'd be "less
likely" to give one to me than to someone who didn't have my depth of
experience but had passed the certs. Looking for certifications from
Microsoft is not necessarily the best strategy.
If I were interviewing a candidate for our office, I would want to know
two things:
1. To what extent do they understand the kind of software technology
that we are using? We're using Windows Forms and we're looking to get
into Web Services, so I'd want to know if they had any experience in
those things, or at least understood the general concepts and issues
surrounding them.
2. To what extent to they undestand modern design and programming?
Object, classes, overloading? Do they understand when it's appropriate
to use this-versus-that. This sort of thing you learn with experience,
not much from certification exams.
The Java certs impressed me (and scared me, truth be told). In order to
pass one of those things you need hard experience. After looking at the
Java 2 programmer's exam I decided that anyone who wasn't using Java on
a daily basis couldn't pass it. Not so with MS exams: they're more
cram-and-write affairs.
To Lewis, I would say this: Take what Sam said to heart. Spend a few
extra bucks and take the certification exams. _Not_ because this will
give you an edge for the rest of your career. Rather, because it will
improve your chances of getting your next job. Once you have your foot
in the door and some experience under your belt, move from job to job
based on contacts and reputation, not cold calls and MS certs: the
latter are useful only when you don't have the former.
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