What's a highly regarded IT certification that every IT professional should have regardless of what field of IT they are in.
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M$4 Answers
What you want is a combination of training and experience. You could be certified as a master in whatever, but with no experience you are simply a guy that proved that he could pass the tests. If, on the other hand, you have the experience too, it means that not only you have been doing it for a while, but managed to learn something in the process.
This is not just a problem with certifications, it happens with degrees too. If you stay in college and complete your masters and doctorate without work periods in between, you can't possibly expect to compete against somebody that got his bachelors, worked a few years, got his masters, then worked more and finally got his doctorate.
Whenever I am interviewing a candidate, I am immediately suspicious if his resume has too much training v. experience.
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M$
The value of the certification might be more in being able to answer questions knowledgeably as a result of having taken the training rather than the actual certificate, because many other professionals will have acquired the same knowledge by other means.
Qualifiications (as apposed to certifications) that would be highly regarded across many fields of IT would be things like Computer Science degrees from top universities.
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M$
If you want an alternative to the vendor-backed, technology-specific certs, there are a handful of organizations that focus on more neutral certs. I'm not familiar with these, but it sounds like The Open Group's IT Architect and IT Specialist certs are the closest to what you want:
http://www.opengroup.org/certification/
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M$
http://www.ISC2.org/
The test is also given by Remote-Exploit.org (Makers of the linux distribution Backtrack)
I have to warn you the courses are not cheap, they range from 50-200$ and then if you fail you might have to pay again.
The CISCO and Novel certification are a real plus however if you plan to work in IT.
GoodLuck!
XDS
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Once you have more than a certain number, I would question how is it that you have so much time available just to get certified. Just be careful with Cisco, once you get pegged as a router guy, it's like Hotel California.
When you look at the right balance of certifications v. experience, think Boy Scout merit badges. As you have spent X time in the Scouts, you are expected to have accumulated a number of badges. If you have a lot less less, you are shirking. If you have way too many above, then you are probably getting the qualifications just so you can have the badge and it is probable that you did not learn much during the process.
If your peers of similar experience have 2 certifications, and you have none, then you are falling behind. If you have 3 or 4, then you are OK, all it means is that you are pushing harder. If you have 5 or 6, then you are a paper tiger unless you got your certifications as part of your normal schooling. In this case, 6 certs due to school/training obviously rank higher than 6 certs due to cramming.
Notice I am not saying age, I am saying experience, so if in my example you could be two years out of college and in this field, competing against a 45-year old that switched to this field two years ago, then you are peers as far as experience counts.
So if cost is not an issue, would you still see it as an asset to obtain as many certifications in your field as possible, would an employer be impressed to see you are dedicated enough to obtain several certifications.
Right now I have CompTIA A+ and Network+ and will probably be getting my Cisco CCENT and Redhat RHCT later this year.
Obtaining additional certifications would start to give me quite a list of certificaitons, is this too much?
Thanks pvera, this is the information I was looking for.