The advantages of being a ZCE
Testimony of a Zend Certified Engineer (PHP & ZF Certified)
What is ZCE?
Zend Certified Engineer is the title awarded by Zend Technologies (PHP industry) to those who obtain either the PHP certification or the Zend Framework.
So if you work with PHP, ZCE is the certification that will set you apart in the marketplace and validate your skills as a professional software engineer for that language.
How to get there?
In order to become certified, all you need to do is create an account at zend.com, purchase your voucher, schedule your test with Pearson VUE (as of writing of this article, there are three tests available: PHP 5.5, ZF1 and ZF2), and of course, you should have studied the certification’s official curriculum.
I would recommend studying with the group “Rumo a Certificação PHP”, which counts on dozens of certified professionals and one question/challenge a day, as well as engaging discussions and news.
Let’s not dwell on this though. The reason you are reading this is to get better acquainted with the advantages of the Zend certification, if you need further information click here.
What does Zend say about it?
“In today’s fiercely competitive markets, how do the best developers stand out in the crowd? They earn a Zend Certification — globally recognized as the industry standard for benchmarking and validating PHP expertise.”
I must agree. Although there are other ways to get certified in PHP, Zend has proved to be the official certification, especially because the industry is responsible for maintaining and developing the language.
Advantage #1 – ZCE title
This title, Zend Certified Engineer, is widely known and easily recognized. There are over 10,000 certified professionals altogether and for that very reason further explanations and introductions are unnecessary – especially for those in the area.
ZCE is for life. Even if the version of your certification is not one of the latest ones (i.e. ZCE, PHP 5.3), your title will stand since your certification has no expiration date.
Some certifiers, as LPI, expire in 5 years. Therefore, you are required to pay and retake the test if you want to remain certified.
You may also use your certification’s logos on your page, business cards, e-mail signatures or anywhere else you’d like.
In my case, I am allowed to use these three logos as well as their titles.
The ZCE abbreviation may be used as well.
Advantage #2 – Zend Studio and Zend Server Developer Edition
Zend Studio is the PHP IDE, a Zend product, usually sold at around US$ 185.00. You receive a certification license, as well as a year’s worth of support.
Zend Server Developer Edition is an awesome tool for developers who wants to have a full control of their application and code, it’s a professional PHP Stack, supporting Apache/Nginx, multiple frameworks and many other things.
That is, you basically receive in products what you spent on getting the certification (around US$ 195.00 for each exam). If you are a PHP developer and want a professional PHP tools, why not take the ZCE exam?
For further details, visit the official pages for Zend Studio and Zend Server.
Advantage #3 – Gratuities and Printed Certification
Even though everything I mentioned so far is virtual-based, once your certification is approved and validated, you will receive a printed certification (in high quality), which is yours to frame and keep. You should also receive a written notice validating your certification and a few stamps like the ones in the picture below.
“Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.”
— Bill Gates
Advantage #4 Certified professionals catalog, Yellow Pages
In my opinion, this is the best of advantages. There is a catalog available on Zend’s official page where it is possible to find certified professionals (see it here) and so you can be found by companies interested in hiring such professionals. Taking into consideration that companies that are aware of Zend’s yellow pages are sending you a message, they know exactly what they are looking for.
There are reports from professionals who were invited to work at Groupon, Wikimedia Foundation, among others. I, for one, have received a message from a national recruiting company. It´s not that frequent, but still, there is great chance of receiving an excellent offer.
Another advantage of the so-called yellow pages would be that not only can you display your certifications but you can also add your company information and social network links to your ZCE profile.
An official group was formed on LinkedIn for ZCEs. Click here.
To sum it all up…
We can see now that there are a number of advantages to getting your ZCE certification. If we analyze the cost-effectiveness, getting Zend certifications is definitely an excellent choice.
You acquire knowledge, stand out in the marketplace, receive gratuities and become part of a public directory meant only for certified professionals.
My background
Since 2013, I’ve been working as an IT consultant, a very complicated career I might add. As consultants, we are tested every day and challenged in all kinds of adverse situations for which we don’t always have the necessary background or enough adaptation time to understand. Besides, proving our competence is an extremely difficult task since resumes are not the main standard for hiring – knowing the right person is.
Within that scenario, I ended up choosing to improve something that could speak for myself and strengthen my brand in the field. For that, I dedicated part of my studies to getting certifications, starting at PHP 5.3 until the most recent one which was Linux+ (see more here). So far, I have 7 certifications.
I have thus managed to stand out avoiding superficial evaluations about my knowledge. As I said at the beginning of this article, these certifications exist to attest to our capability and to prove that we understand certain technologies.
I believe that getting certified is a very positive way to promote your brand. However, we should not get certified on areas that are not part of our experience or it turns out to be pointless.
My next steps will be: AWS Solutions Architect, LPIC-2 and LFCE. Wish me luck!
