Database Certifications: Career advice (1 Viewer)

[NauticalGent]

Good morning everyone!

A job opening popped into me email this morning. One of the requisites is "Microsoft Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA): Database Fundamentals or CIW Database Design Specialist or ability to obtain either within 90 days"

I did a google search on both and I am sure my current company would even pay for me to get this cert. Eager to hear any experience or opinions on this...

 

[The_Doc_Man]

You would probably know way more than half of the content of the MTA: Database Fundamentals course. Should be a "crip" course for you. If that is all they want, and it is an either/or, I would say "go for it."

With the Navy, I had ORACLE certs to go with security and O/S certs, but NONE of the certifications were from Microsoft. Didn't hurt me at all. Because it is not of the kind that expires, I still technically hold an HP OpenVMS 8.4 System Administrator certification even though now retired.
My security cert, I'm not so sure about, because I had the CompTIA Security+ certs, one of which was supposed to be permanent, but the other was a 3-year cert for the government. The catch is that having taken both, I didn't see a particular difference between them. Sometimes the certs are good - but sometimes they are money-makers for schools that are a waste of time for the persons paying for them.

The only thing I would do as a matter of caution is, if you decide to take a course, inquire as to the lifetime of the cert.

 

[Isaac]

Don't hardly ever see job postings that care about certs any more in the database development world, but there are definitely some. If it helps go for it - plus it's another thing to go on the office wall.

 

[NauticalGent]

inquire as to the lifetime of the cert.

Solid advice, thanks!

- plus it's another thing to go on the office wall.

It's all about the "I Love Me!" wall....

Thanks guys, I was hoping someone here had either cert but I guess that isnt the case. They are not too expensive, $150 for the exam and about $80 for course material. $230 for something that just might get me a bump in salary....

 

[Minty]

Make sure you copy and paste all the content.

Just for safe keeping obvs

 

[arnelgp]

certifications means money?
they will teach you what you already know (and less).
then they will give you a computer-printed class-c paper.
and they will call it certifi-fake.

it's not for me. i can read english. i can understand those pdfs.
the writer's of my pdf's are MVPs.
i have my own copy of access, then who would tell me i need
certification? not even my clients on-line ask for it.

 

[NauticalGent]

certifications means money?
they will teach you what you already know (and less).
then they will give you a computer-printed class-c paper.
and they will call it certifi-fake.

it's not for me. i can read english. i can understand those pdfs.
the writer's of my pdf's are MVPs.
i have my own copy of access, then who would tell me i need
certification? not even my clients on-line ask for it.

You have pretty much summed up my feelings on a modern day college education

 

[Galaxiom]

When an employer is looking for a certification like that it may mean they have absolutely no idea how to judge the skills of the candidate themselves. It is really tough for a small shop to put on their first database admin/developer when those choosing the candidate have no knowledge of the subject. Many have bluffed their way into positions and companies have lost opportunity because of it. There are a lot of terrible databases in the world, even among commercial products.

No certificate is comparable to several years doing the job and getting results. Anyone who doesn't really know what they are doing will either sink or swim over that time. The inept usually run away from their messes and try again somewhere else, hopefully doing it better. (I'm proud to be able to say that my first Access database is still in use after twelve years. It has had very little done to it other than migrating the backend to SQL Server and upgrading a couple of forms to take advantage of it.)

Like me, a lot of database professionals started as IT dogsbodies and learnt databases on the job out of necessity. I have had no formal training at all but have worked my way to becoming the dba at my workplace. (I would be unlikely to get that title as it would mean a huge pay rise but I am grateful for the opportunity to have learnt on the job.) I gravitated into the role as IT staff were added. Fortunately when I started I was a good match to where the company was at the time with smattering of spreadsheets implemented as badly constructed Access databases and a lot of room for improvement. I am so grateful to AWF and the people here who really helped me get on my feet.

Managing data is an unbounded task. There is always more to learn and there is no incentive greater than necessity. There is no greater quality in an employee than passion for learning, achievement and the desire to understand best practices. My advice to anyone starting out is to demonstrate those qualities in yourself, find a workplace at your level that has a future and grow with it.

I take my hat of to those of you who are out there rowing a boat on your own.

 

[NauticalGent]

Galaxiom, spot on. Good post/contribution to this thread!

 

[tmyers]

As a younger person, I have noticed most places seem to value certs over degrees (at least in my area). Most job requirements don't require any degree whatsoever, but they require a whole range of certs. I would put more value on a cert than a degree personally.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

First, I agree that learning your computer skills by just DOING things is better than most college courses and cert courses. But in line with the excellent post by Galaxiom, particularly his first paragraph, I can tell you with absolute certainty that the trend towards external certifications is due to the incredible complexity of today's modern business world.

Modern managers simply have no way to evaluate people for all of the jobs that might occur in their company. Even within computer science fields we have specialties such as networking, database administration, system programming and administration, device driver programming, applications programming, compilers, security, ... Every one of those can probably be further subdivided at least a little bit.

Heck, my first "real" job led me to quickly become the HR liaison for computer programmers. I would screen the resume' for applicability and potential. We were always looking for people but often got people scurrying out of the woodwork. (Sounds harsh, but trust me, some of those applications were horror stories!) I helped the HR people set up lists of folks to call (and the order in which to call them) to determine whether the persons were even worth the price of an interview trip.

The problem these days is that there are SO many specialties that an HR department would need to hire someone from each specialty to evaluate the persons. The use of external "standard" certifications is the "cheat code" that lets the HR department make an educated guess that the person might be at least worth a look. It still doesn't say whether the person can program their way out of a paper sack, but it tends to indicate that when their eyes glaze over, it isn't because of the concepts covered in the certification.

I got my first real job thanks to a guy who knew me from college and had seen some of my work. He knew I could code efficiently and also knew that I understood device control issues. So I got my foot in the door as a device-driver guy. But my major wasn't computer science. Nor my minor. I had only taken two computer science courses. The rest was "learn by doing successfully." That is where my operating system and compiler and other odd tid-bits of knowledge originated.