The Value of Certificates and Certifications in IT

Certificates and certifications have become big business and are more important than ever for anyone who is working in IT. There was a time where I thought that after I graduated from university I would have no more studying to do. How wrong I was, because it’s actually quite the contrary. But it’s for a good cause. As of right now, I achieved 20 certifications in IT and I want to discuss what the use is of these certifications and in what ways you can profit from achieving a certification.

Definitions

As you noticed in the title, we spoke of both certificates and certifications. Although these are often used interchangeably, there is a considerable difference between the two.

A certificate is a paper that is typically granted after completion of a course. Here, it suffices to have attended the course, whether physically or virtually (i.e. completing all course modules).

A certification is a paper that is typically granted after completion of an exam, and having passed with a high enough grade or a sufficient number of points. This exam is usually supervised or proctored to prevent cheating, and needs to be paid for.

As you may intuitively understand, a certification will carry more value than a certificate. This is especially the case if the certificate is granted for a course that comes with a (paid) exam that is supposed to taken and passed in order to be granted a certification. Certificates mainly carry value if a course has no corresponding exam.

Then there is also a gray zone, where you may take a course and you have to take a paid but non-proctored exam such as for certifications from Scrum.org, or you have to pass a series of quizzes such as on the Coursera learning platform. The vendors will often sell certificates as a certification, even though they would strictly qualify as certificates only.

Purposes

After having started your professional career, typically following a graduation from a university, pursuing certifications is a great way for multiple purposes. The main reason is undoubtedly to learn new things, so you will improve your skillset and increase your knowledge about a particular topic. The certification also serves as proof and objective measurement that you have fulfilled a particular set of requirements and that you possess knowledge about a particular topic. Often, this certifcation carries value and is internationally acknowledged, so you can show it to your employer or client and gain an advantage whether you want to get hired, demand a raise, or acquire a new project.

Apart from the content, having achieved any certification also says the following:

• You take a serious interest in a particular topic and you set time aside to study for it.
• You are able to study and successfully pass an exam, which is always a challenge.
• You care about education in general and you care about your career, in the sense that you both stay up to date and take action to improve.
• You take initiative, in this case to learn something new.

Although less important, some certifications can be mandatory to hold in order to be allowed to carry out tasks at particular places, or to count towards a partnership program that your employer may maintain with some vendors such as AWS.

Certifications vs Experience

Although certifications are beneficial for a multitude of reasons, as explained earlier, we should not make the mistake of thinking that certifications are all we should aim for and that they can replace experience.

A certification is often of theoretical nature, and therefore mainly serves as a proof of knowledge. Alternatively, you can consider it to be a proof of talent. However, it is not a proof of (practical) experience.

Actually a certification can be best compared to a driver’s licence for a car. You may know how to drive a car, but that doesn’t mean you should right away chauffeur a $300.000 Ferrari in dangerous unknown territory.

In the end, practical experience is and will remain more important than a certification. So a certification will not make a magical difference in terms of assessing how good you are, however it can still be very useful and sometimes it just gives you an edge and enables you to get the most out of your experience. It would therefore be ideal to have both experience and certifications.

Managing Certifications

When you have achieved a certification, you also have to manage it. You may want to for example share it on LinkedIn and add it to your CV. Some certifications also require maintenance and you may need to do a recertification or do some other work to keep the certification ‘active’.

Publishing

Let us discuss some best practices when it comes to sharing certifications. Personally I maintain two CVs: On my main CV (2 pages long) I have a list with some of the certifications I have (not all of them fit on it) and on my second CV (a longer document with my project history) I keep a full list of certifications and certificates that I ever achieved.

On LinkedIn you can add your certifications to the section ‘Licenses and Certifications’. As the name says, it is recommended to only put here your certifications and not your certificates. Apart from entering the name and month of achievement, you should also add a link to Credly or Accredible so that the verification of the certification. Alternatively, you could upload the PDF certificate to your personal website and link to there. Apart from that you should keep a directory on your computer with all certifications in PDF form so you can send these to anyone who asks to see them (such as employer or recruiters).

You could however put your certificates and any courses without certificates under the section ‘Courses’. For example in the following format and possibly associate it with an employer if the course was organized there:

It is actually important to keep your ‘licenses and certifications’ section clean with only certifications, otherwise the section will lose value. There are some people that put every single course there they ever took, without verification, and this makes it also difficult for visitors of your profile (such as recruiters) to properly assess your skillset.

You should especially refrain from putting up certificates for courses that have an associated exam. For example an exam prep course like ‘Certified Kubernetes Administrator’ on Udemy comes with a certificate after completion, but this certificate is useless since you are supposed to pass that exam and only after passing that exam you should put up the corresponding certification. In fact it may even give people the false impression that you got the certification even though you actually do not.

Coursera Certificates

As mentioned earlier, Coursera is a bit of a gray zone. It is arguably quite a reputable learning platform that offers its own certificates. When completing a course on Coursera, the platform suggests that you download the certificate and publish it on LinkedIn. Should you do that? Unless you really have nothing else to show, I would personally recommend against it, because although Coursera offers quizzes during its courses, it is still a certificate and not a certification.

I personally only have put up a certificate on Mainframe because there is no corresponding exam and the course was created by IBM itself, that even comes with its own Credly badge. I also wanted to highlight that I have gained knowledge on Mainframe and COBOL, which are rare but valuable skills. Also there not many other trainings on Mainframe and COBOL available in the first place, with the Coursera course arguably being the best there is, and there does not exist any exam on both topics.

Recertification & Maintenance

Some certifications also require maintenance, in the sense that they expire after for example a couple of years and you need to take action in order to keep the certification ‘active’. Certificates on the other hand never need maintenance.

Maintenance comes in different forms. Often you will be required to simply pay for the full exam again close before the expiration date. Some vendors may give you a non-proctored quiz that you have to complete whereas other vendors even require you to put in active work with so-called “continuous education points”. And in exceptional cases you may even to pay an annual maintenance fee. Maintenance in general is therefore a topic of debate. Some people think it is silly to invest additional time and money into an exam they already passed once just to keep it active after an arbitrary amount of time, whereas others find maintenance useful in order to keep up with the latest updates in the field and support the certification program to retain its value.

On LinkedIn and on your CV, you can but you do not have to put up an expiry date for your certifications. Even if a certification is expired, you can and you should still put it up because you did achieve the certification in the past and that fact is not going to change. For by far most certifications, nobody will care whether the certification is active or expired so upon recertification you will practically only be doing the vendor a favour by contributing to their annual turnover.

The active status can matter in cases where the certification counts towards a company’s partner program status, such as for some major cloud vendors. Also in the field of Cybersecurity the status of the certification is important because there it can be critical that your knowledge is kept up to date.

Conclusion

Certifications are definitely useful to have, and I can recommend anyone working with IT to pursue at least a few certifications to expand their skillset and add these to their CVs and LinkedIn in order to prove their knowledge.

It is important to understand what the exact value is of a certification. It is a proof of knowledge, and it cannot replace actual experience. Rather, it is an addition to the experience one gets. Often a certification can just give you an edge in some situations such as getting a foot in the door for a job interview or you can use them to negotiate a pay raise (of course, the certification alone will not be sufficient).

After achieving the certification, we should also keep note of how to manage them and possibly maintain them. We can and should show them off on our CVs and on LinkedIn, but we should clearly separate from certificates, which despite the similarity in name are actually something very different.