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.
