On 6/7/2015 4:10 AM, Joshua Riesenweber wrote:
As someone studying their first CCIE (RS), I sometimes find these kind of discussions disheartening. They come up every now and again, and the opinions seem vary anywhere between 'a good interview tool' and 'less than worthless'. A certification is like anything else a person puts on their resume -- I assume its value is overstated and follow the "trust, but verify" protocol.
I expect candidates to have the same body of knowledge regardless of whether or not they're certified -- I need them to do a job, and that job requires certain skills. If getting that piece of paper taught you those skills -- great, though very unlikely. If you acquired the skills without the paper, also great. Generally I find that candidates with no/few certs are the more well-rounded (real-life experience + practical knowledge) candidates. The School of Hard Knocks is a great institution of learning.
following a certification track isn't perfect, but it gives (at least to me) the structure to cover areas of knowledge that you might not if you were doing 100% on the job training or some other methods. It gives you something to aim for, and helps with motivation and setting goals. In many ways, certification tracks are something like getting a PhD. Completely useless information (and very few skills) to anything you'll do in the "real world", but if it makes your clock tick, go for it. Just don't expect me to be impressed when I'm interviewing you, because it has no direct relationship with your ability to do this job.
As a personal growth tool -- great. As a professional growth tool -- meh.
When I see someone who has a certification, and they can follow it up with actual skills, it indicates they have a certain level of dedication to improving themselves and their education. (In my experience it takes more time to study a certification track than to learn just what you need to get a job done.) My favourite question to ask candidates during an interview is "Tell me about a cool technology project you've done outside of work." I don't even really care what the answer is, it's more about "do they get revved up while they're talking about it?"
If they fire up to 110% and get super excited to tell you about the super-awesome $THING they built/coded/hacked, it bodes well for their motivation about all things tech, including learning about it. The "geek" type, if you will. If they shrivel up and say "I dunno... Uhh... I installed Exchange once." then I know all I need to know about their dedication to improving their knowledge & skills. They're here for a day job and really aren't passionate about technology. I often ask this question early in the interview process -- I find it helps the really-awesome-but-with-poor-interview-skills geeks to relax and do well with the rest of the interview, and it it provides me with a pretty damned reliable barometer reading of the candidate from the get-go.