Hi

I have to agree with Steve - certification is not any indication of real world ability - I really wish it was but sadly it simply isn’t true.

It does show commitment to learning and developing yourself, the ability to focus on something - but it’s rare for the stuff you learn through certification to translate into hands on experience.

So often the theory doesn’t match the reality - and that’s where the experience needs to come in.

I’m an employer and have been a DBA (oracle and sql server) for over 15 years now - in that time I have met (on both techs) some really clever people with all the certifications you could want. But put them in front of a production system that isn’t working and they simply don’t know how to translate the knowledge that they have.

On the other hand, as I mentioned, I have been a dba for many years and have no certifications at all. I probably couldn’t pass the exams either as I was always useless in that kind of an environment.

As an employer, certifications become useful as a tool to check that our employees are growing in their knowledge and they provide us with tangible points for pay increases, etc - in this way they are invaluable to us. But that’s our own internal staff - not necessarily people we are looking to employ. They have to prove their knowledge to us through exams etc.

As a company owner, I know clients like to see certifications because they expect that to mean competence. Which means this also makes certification good for a company as it is a selling point. Though these days that only really works with oracle because these same people don’t always understand the difference between a SQL Server certification and an office certification and just assume they are easy to get.

There are undoubtedly benefits to certification - but as Steve says - experience is the key and you have to be able to demonstrate a whole lot more than just being able to pass an exam.

Sue