Does Certification Really Matter in IT?

Does Certification Matter in 2010?

 "Over the last few years, it seems like technical education and corresponding credentials have begun falling by the wayside. Sure, IT administrators, technicians and other staff still need to master their respective domains. There's certainly little margin for error when you're configuring, provisioning and managing computing resources in multi-million dollar corporate data centers. So why don't industry-recognized certifications seem to matter anymore?

This worry isn't just conjecture or my own personal opinion. In late 2009, TechTarget sponsored its annual Data Center Decisions survey. The survey was designed to gather information on the technological preferences and initiatives across a cross-section of IT professionals, and it also included a few career-related questions. The career results were stunning.

Over 55% of 375 IT respondents reported that they had no certifications at all. The next most significant response was just over 17% for MCSE. After that, a little more than 4% reported CCISP, while only about 3% noted Linux+ certification. The remaining responses were split amongst a wide variety of Microsoft, Cisco, CompTIA, and other vendors' certifications. I don't know about you, but the idea that more than half of IT professionals have no professional IT credentials is beyond disturbing.

This bleak picture is even more alarming when you consider that certification was a factor in hiring or promoting only 17% of 453 respondents. Almost 83% of IT professionals were hired or promoted without any regard for their certified knowledge. Even worse, certification was a factor in compensation (salary increases or bonuses) for just 12% of 447 respondents.

This means 88% of IT professionals are compensated without any regard for their certified knowledge.

Numbers like these tell me that corporate management is not encouraging the professional development of their IT staff."

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*This post was originally published on SearchWinIT.com by Stephen Bigelow.  This post has been edited for the purpose of this blog.