If not for certifications, how are you going to prove your skills in IT fields outside of programming to th HR who shortlists your resume?

[oslon]

For fields related to programming like web development or machine learning, you can definitely create projects. Not just you can create projects, you can also use it to prove your skills as they're very trustable source to verify information. Easy to filter you out by looking at your projects in this case.


But the problem is with low level job fields like tech support, L1 database administration etc where you aren't needing much programming skills.

How do you prove your skills in these fields:

• sql
• linux
• bash shell scripting
• docker
• kubernetes
• nginx web server

etc.

My programmer friend working at Big 5 was telling me that those who say certs are useless in other professions are mostly either lazy or lucky(He doesn't have any programming certifications and says he proved with his projects). He continues "You might be Einstein at these stuffs, but for HR to filter out your resume, you need to prove yourself with your resume". He sounded right to me when I consider a worst case catch 22 scenario: To get experience you need a job; for getting job you need experience. Some lucky people will have network with HR etc. But not all have it.


"No matter how you spin out, the most reliable way to prove you know stuffs in these "devops" area is having a certification." My friend continues.

Honestly, I get nothing wrong with my friend. He sounds just right.

But the biggest problem is that certs are expensive. What's the best way to deal with this scenario?

 

[dos2unix]

There's an old saying I try to abide by. Don't be a jack of all trades. Be a master of one.

That's not to say you shouldn't learn about everything you have listed here. But pick one thing, and focus on that. Become really good at that one thing, and the other stuff won't matter as much.

Now I've had some jobs that are very degree and certificate oriented. They want to see that piece of paper.
But I've had other jobs that just want the experience. When I hire people, I usually lean towards the experience.

Most of the places I worked, have little tests. Even if you have the degrees and certificates, you still have to take these tests.
For example.

1. How would you create a systemd service file for a custom bash script?
2. How do you change the IP address and subnet using nmcli?
3. How you add a new unformatted hard drive to a system.

Obviously the test contents change depending on what I'm hiring you for.
A SQL DBA test would be different from a cloud Admin test, and that would be different from a DevOps/Automation test.

Certificates are great ( I have a few ) but they can't replace the discipline of doing a job over and over again for years and years.
I know some tricks that aren't in the courses. Anyone can read a book, or go to a website and learn how to answer test questions. But knowing how to do something isn't the same thing as knowing when and when not to do something.

For example knowing that rm -f * will remove all the files in this directory is great...
but also knowing from experience that rm -rf /* is a whole 'nother thing entirely.

You may learn the commands from a book, but you learn the consequences of running those commands from experience.

If you want get certified, that's great. Don't get 10 certificates all at once. Too much distraction. Too much to learn at once.
Focus on one thing. Get certified there. The rest can come later.

 

[dos2unix]

The other thing I have learned over the years is... Not all certificates and degrees are created equal.

This may sound a little racist, but it's not intended to be. I have found that certain "Computer Science" degrees
from certain Universities and Colleges in certain countries, aren't the same thing as they are from other countries and Universities. This is somewhat true to a lesser extent here in the US.

Also, certain certificates are more in demand than others. Enterprise Linux certificates like Redhat are much more
likely to get you a job, than say... a generic certificate from a place like https://www.lpi.org/

 

[oslon]

Agree and disagree about degrees. Any degree is a good degree unless it's from a degree farm in India.

 

[Deleted member 147986]

But the biggest problem is that certs are expensive. What's the best way to deal with this scenario?

The certifications industry has always been a plague on trying to get anything useful done. My experience with "certified" people in general has been that they can regurgitate facts but have no understanding of what they mean. I've seen businesses spend dumb amounts of money to achieve literally nothing.

The moral of the story is that certs are toilet paper which mean nothing. Congrats on memorizing where a config panel is. It means nothing in daily IT problem solving.

The real problem is that leadership won't take responsibility for their success or failures.

Ignore all the bullshit, focus on developing your skills.

 

[dos2unix]

Agree and disagree about degrees. Any degree is a good degree

I myself went to college. My wife and I have 4 children ( they aren't children anymore ) that have graduated from college.
No my wife says 3, the last will graduate this spring.

At the risk of getting political here. Somewhere in the last 20 years or so, colleges no longer teach you how to be a doctor or lawyer anymore. 80% of what they teach you, is now political. Very little of what they teach you has to do with the skills you are going to college for. There is a lot of pressure to think a certain way, vote a certain way, and even some of your test answers depend on you thinking and agreeing with these views. I'm not against you voting this way or that way, but I am against someone telling me I have to vote a certain way or else.

If I had it all over to do again, I would encourage them to get blue collar jobs, skip college ( maybe do trade school or internship )
These days mechanics, plumbers, and electricians make more money than doctors and lawyers anyway. One of the things that really separates the generations ( even in the same family ) is the political views being pushed in colleges these days.

College degrees cost a ton of money these days, more than my first two houses put together. That's a lot of wasted money spent just to get brainwashed.

 

[Deleted member 147986]

Colleges and universities have been ideologically captured to such a a degree you would be a fool to send your children there today. These used to be places of learning and exploration of the world and ideas in general.

Instead of learning how to think, how to learn, people get an education on how to be a victim, how to hate America.

Not only that, but many of these educational institutions have either proclaimed their support for terrorism of have not spoken out against it.

These institutions are no longer worthy of your support. They're worthy of your scorn, mockery, and lack of any financial support. What a joke these institutions have become. Stop supporting terrorism with your money.

 

[Deleted member 147986]

To get experience you need a job; for getting job you need experience.

I've seen people asking for 6 years experience for software that didn't exist for more than 1 year. People are going to ask for absurd things. Not saying it's fair or right, but it's what they do.

Your job is to keep your head up, your back straight. Come to some agreement that works for you while not accepting weird nonsense.

By the metric of the job offer only 0.01% of people could possibly apply. It's clearly a bargaining position. Stand up for yourself.
Don't be afraid to walk away from a job that will only hurt you.

 

[TheProf]

In programming, certs dont really have a lot of weight... just because you can pass a test, it doesnt mean you can program. Programming is about problem solving, not how a language works... So I would say, there is no point for certs. I am also a Senior DevOps engineer and I've worked at a couple of very well known security high tech companies, no one ever cared about certs, including HR, but that was in North America and I've already had 15 years of experience in IT.

However, I do find certs helpful when it comes to learning things like SQL, Linux, Docker, etc.. because it does test your theoretical knowledege and some certs actually put you through a LAB which is even better.

Also certs have more weight when it comes to backing up the knowledge with experience.

If you dont have experience, you need to build projects and gain experience on your own time and then demonstrate what you've built during the interview.

I also feel that specializing in the beginning is not the best way to go, you want to learn the basics of at least 3-4 tools, and start building some projects with those tools... As you get more and more experience, and you move up the latter, you can start specializing in the technology you enjoy the most.

 

[MikeWalsh]

Colleges and universities have been ideologically captured to such a a degree you would be a fool to send your children there today. These used to be places of learning and exploration of the world and ideas in general.

Instead of learning how to think, how to learn, people get an education on how to be a victim, how to hate America.

Not only that, but many of these educational institutions have either proclaimed their support for terrorism of have not spoken out against it.

These institutions are no longer worthy of your support. They're worthy of your scorn, mockery, and lack of any financial support. What a joke these institutions have become. Stop supporting terrorism with your money.

So; because an institution doesn't actively speak out against something, then in your view they must be tacitly supporting it? "If you're not with us, then you're against us".....that kind of thing?

Hm. What a very strange - and odd! - viewpoint. Rather like "tunnel vision".

We had something like this on the Puppy Forums a couple of years ago. One specific member, whether because of having relatives involved or because he just felt incredibly strongly about it - threatened our Admin that if he didn't do as he requested, he'd make sure the site was "taken down". Permanently. At the start of Putin's offensive on Ukraine, he fully expected the forum to suspend normal operations, and become an "online soapbox" for the duration.....loudly & vociferously condemning Putin for the duration of the war, however long it lasted, 24/7.

We also have one Russian member. Nice guy; wouldn't say "boo" to a fly. Poor sod actually lives not far from the war-zone, though he tries to keep up-beat about the situation as best he can. Because the poor bugger had the misfortune to be born a Russian citizen, purely due to the location of his birth, this Forum member fully expected the guy to be banned forthwith. No appeals. No say in the matter.

This guy , like many of us, belongs to several fora. Because I belong to some of those same forums, I know for a fact that he's been bashing our community as hard as he can, in as many places as he can.

He's not getting many takers, I know that. Several people have actually spoken out against him as being "a nuisance", and a troublemaker. Give him enough rope, he'll hang himself eventually.....


Mike.

 

[dcbrown73]

Here is my point of view based on my career in IT that started back in the 90s and today I'm a CTO without any college or any certifications.

• It's a lot easier to get a job when you have a college degree or supporting certifications. (ie, it can open closed doors)
• A college degree or certification isn't real-world experience. There is no replacement for experience. (Experience >>>> Degrees & Certifications, even if most execs don't understand this)
• Unless you are a "Learner", IT can be a difficult field to build a long term successful career. Technology changes fast and if you don't keep up, your career will likely struggle too. Don't let your knowledge of current technology become stale!
• Don't silo yourself. Learn your core subject, but learn surrounding subjects too. DevOps / GitOps is a perfect example of this. You need programming and system level understanding. Linux too. You need to know OS, Networking, Storage, IO, Virtualization, Security, etc) Silos are the old way, not the new way.

Appendix: A "Learner" means someone who always enjoys learning new things.

Without college and certifications, I took the hard way into IT. I had to get my foot in the door and sometimes it was not the position I wanted. I got my foot in the door, then I went to work driving the business forward with the knowledge I did have.

My first Systems Administrator job occurred when I got hired as a "Data Processor" processing store end of day data. It was a full time job 7:30am to 4pm and I worked on a Motorola Unix machine. It was manually editing files and running Cobol commands to process it into a database and then run reports.

I use the korn shell and automated my entire days work down to 30 minutes in the morning. I basically automated myself out of a job. They didn't fire me, they promoted me to a Systems Administrator and asked me what else I could do.

If you want to get into the a good IT job and you have no real world experience. Get certifications, go to college if you can. Even an associates degree and learn, learn, learn, learn at home. Create yourself a home lab and use it. Create things that professionals are doing. This experiences will be invaluable when you are in the real world. My automation of my entire job catapulted me into the position I wanted from a position I didn't want.

Once you get your foot in the door. Move mountains with what you've learned!

Good luck!
Dave

 

[dos2unix]

echo 'SGksIEknbSBEYXZpZCBhbmQgSSdtIGEgTGludXggRW5naW5lZXIK' | base64 -d

R2xhZCB0byBtZWV0IHlvdSBEYXZlIQ==

 

[SeanK]

I used to hire IT teams in NZ, AU, Asia and in one case, the Middle East. Certifications and degrees are essentially IQ tests but may not be a reflection of actual ability. Some people have a real problem making the leap from theory to practise.

Most employers will sit down with newcomers and question them in often longer interviews to determine ability or look for projects and work they may have done off their own initiative.

Experienced people will find their resumes being gone over but also again, questions get asked that only someone with real skill can answer.

If I wanted a career as a programmer I'd look to build skills in different languages while in school and college and develop a few of my own projects to show employers. This has a lot more impact in my opinion, than industry certs and degrees. Not to say these things don't have value, too.

 

[Diputs]

HR often have no clue what they are talking about. Remember, for them, Outlook & Facebook = IT

So, my best guess is that they use "other" parameters, and it's actually quite simple: somebody gets chosen, and you'll never know why. But it doesn't matter why, it surely as hell won't be because you were the best.

 

[hasser33]

For fields related to programming like web development or machine learning, you can definitely create projects. Not just you can create projects, you can also use it to prove your skills as they're very trustable source to verify information. Easy to filter you out by looking at your projects in this case.


But the problem is with low level job fields like tech support, L1 database administration etc where you aren't needing much programming skills.

How do you prove your skills in these fields:

• sql
• linux
• bash shell scripting
• docker
• kubernetes
• nginx web server

etc.

My programmer friend working at Big 5 was telling me that those who say certs are useless in other professions are mostly either lazy or lucky(He doesn't have any programming certifications and says he proved with his projects). He continues "You might be Einstein at these stuffs, but for HR to filter out your resume, you need to prove yourself with your resume". He sounded right to me when I consider a worst case catch 22 scenario: To get experience you need a job; for getting job you need experience. Some lucky people will have network with HR etc. But not all have it.
After years as a DevOps engineer, I decided to create my own brand. I followed the advice from experts, focusing on building a strong visual identity and digital presence https://www.heyday.net/blog/how-to-start-your-own-brand-step-by-step-guide-from-heyday I engaged with the DevOps community, sharing my insights and learning from others. My brand’s story resonated with clients who valued my unique approach to automation and cloud solutions. It wasn’t easy, but by carving out a niche and consistently delivering quality, my brand grew. Now, I’m not just a consultant; I’m a trusted partner in my clients’ success, embodying the collaborative spirit of DevOps.

"No matter how you spin out, the most reliable way to prove you know stuffs in these "devops" area is having a certification." My friend continues.

Honestly, I get nothing wrong with my friend. He sounds just right.

But the biggest problem is that certs are expensive. What's the best way to deal with this scenario?

In fields where showcasing programming projects is less applicable, like tech support or L1 database administration, certifications can indeed play a crucial role. They provide a standardized measure of your skills and knowledge, which can be especially helpful when you don’t have extensive experience or a network to vouch for you.

To address the cost of certifications, consider strategies:

Research Free or Low-Cost Alternatives: Some organizations offer free introductory courses and certifications. Websites like Coursera, edX, and others sometimes provide financial aid or free courses.
Employer Sponsorship: If you’re currently employed, your employer might sponsor your certification as part of professional development.
Certification Scholarships: Look for scholarship opportunities from certification bodies or educational institutions.
Practical Experience: Gain practical experience through internships, volunteering, or contributing to open-source projects. This can sometimes substitute for formal certifications.
Remember, certifications are one way to prove your skills, but they’re not the only way. Practical experience, even in personal or volunteer projects, can also be a compelling part of your resume.