4 Strategies To Upskill Your IT Certfication in a Down Economy

4 Strategies To Upskill in a Down Economy

"1. Determine the most relevant courses & directions for upgrading skills in the current situation. Are they relevant right now?

As networks become more sophisticated and increasingly complex, the skills requirements for network professionals have rapidly accelerated and evolved. Networks have grown from basic transport systems for data to a business-critical application and services delivery platform.

To gain a better understanding about how companies can keep pace with new tools, converging technologies and expanding infrastructure, Cisco commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a global survey of 1,500 IT hiring managers across ten countries, including Russia. The results showed that in today's constantly shifting network environment, there is an immediate need to provide dedicated IT professionals with network education, self-assessment tools, and training and certification programs.

The Forrester research cited the most critical new job skills to support the functionality of the network to be wireless, voice, security, and remote office work. These specific areas demand the most urgent attention because innovation in networking tools is outpacing the skills required to implement them and manage them.

Fresh Off The Wire - Microsoft XP SP2 Support Ends in July 2010 - Get Trained on Windows 7 Today!

According to the latest MS Partner News, Support for Windows XP SP2 Ends July, 2010!

Get Prepared for Windows 7 and Get Trained Today!

SEO Certification – Is There Such a Thing?

SEO Certification – Is There Such a Thing?

IT Training Solutions is in the process of designing a course on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), so I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on this topic. One of the problems, as outlined in the article below, is how quickly the search engines change their search algorithms. So it’s very easy to find yourself learning SEO tips that are no longer applicable.

I found the article below on http://www.seo-theory.com/ written by Michael Martinez to be very enlightening as to the reality of SEO certification.  I’ve take the liberty to edit some of his personal opinions for the purpose of staying on the topic of certification.

“SEO Certification is a really scary topic. There are dozens if not hundreds of Web sites offering SEO Certification and, in an industry that has no professional standards, many of these sites claim to base their certifications on “peer reviewed” processes and nationally recognized standards. I know of only one established peer-reviewing group and that is Search Engine Marketing Journal. I’m not aware of any publications by the body on standards or certification.

In fact, there is only one internationally recognized organization that has anything approaching the credibility of being a “standards body” and that is the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Association.

*There is no way to get around this, if you are in IT and you stop learning, then you are doomed to be replaced in the near future.

Today’s laid-off systems administrators, however, are not likely landing these newly formed IT 2.0 jobs. They have been too busy applying duct tape and Band-Aids to existing infrastructures to stay on top of the cutting edge. Nearly a year and a half ago, already, I heard a FedEx Corporate Services IT executive bemoan how ill-equipped his team was to deal with the division’s increasingly fabric-like infrastructure. He was neither the first nor the last to express that sentiment. Source: Gigaom

The next big thing to learn is cloud computing.

Highest Paying IT Certifications for 2009

This article about the highest paying IT certifications in 2009 was taken from certificationsblog.com

1. PMP ( Project Management Professional)

PMP certification is designed to demonstrate strong level of project management and leadership skills. PMP is with an average annual salary of $101,695, this certification is leading the list of highest paying certification of this year.

2. CAPM ( Certified Associate Project Management)

Next highest paying is PMI’s certification known as Certified Associate in Project Management. CAPM certification holders surveyed have an average annual salary of $101,103.

3. ITIL v2 – Foundations

ITIL v2 Foundations certification came at 3 rd position with an average annual salary of $95,415. ITIL stands for IT Infrastructure library. More information about this certification can be found here

4. CISSP ( Certified Information System Security Professional)

CISSP with an average salary of $94,018 came at number 4 in the highest paying certifications list. CISSP is also known as “gold standard” in security certifications and it is handled by ICS2 (International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium). This is called baseline certification recognized by department of defense and national security agency.

5. Cisco CCIE Certification ( Routing and Switching)

Cisco CCIE Routing and Switching came at number 5 with an average salary of $93,500 in IT industry. Routing and switching are specialized tracks in cisco certified networking expert certification. It is the most famous CCIE track these days covering wide range of subjects, such as LAN, WAN, TCP/IP, Ethernet, OSPF and BGP, IPv6 etc.