krowley (10/31/2013)
MVP is an award for community contributions. That's it. It shouldn't guarantee a DBA job any more than spending time at Toastmasters should. It's about how much you share with the community, not what technical level you're at. I often say it's an award to talking too much.
But you can't just "talk" off the top of your head and get this award. People have to find what you say valuable, which means you have to be providing "accurate" answers more often than not, etc... So it does at least imply a certain level of competency.
There are some SQL MVPs (no names given) that I wouldn't trust in the same building as my servers. There are a couple who just repeat what others say. You could in theory talk, blog, present a lot about basic select, insert, update and delete and get an MVP award. Doesn't mean you can admin a server or do complex development. Just means you talked a lot and helped a lot of people with the very very basic T-SQL statements.
Besides which perception matters as much as anything in job hunting. If Microsoft thinks you are a Most Valuable Professional for the community then it would make sense to me as a hiring manager that you would be at the very least a valuable addition to my team.
As a sales person or community contributor, sure. As an expert DBA, they might as well use that Toastmasters experience to judge technical competency.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability