Every job I've had in the last 10 years (including the one I'm starting at tomorrow) has been a personal referral. Not from someone looking at the alphabet soup of qualifications and saying 'yeah, that'll do', but from someone I know mentioning a job to me or mentioning my name to someone hiring. Hence why I said make friends. Visit your local usergroup (or start a usergroup), make friends online, etc, etc.

As for a standardised test, that assumes that all companies are the same, which is not true. Some may need specific skills, some may need top-level people, some may need someone with moderate skills across the board.

Oh, and once we have standardised tests, we get to deal with this kind of person - http://ask.sqlservercentral.com/questions/107800/i-put-3-years-experience-as-a-sql-developer-i-want.html, the kind who will cheat, will lie, will pay others to write the test for him, etc.