The Dos & Don’ts of Certification
By Phil Croucher
The idea of certification is not new, relatively speaking, to the computer world, in which it seems to have been largely pioneered by Novell. It initiated the CNE program many years ago, after realizing that the various private companies providing training at the time produced results that were patchy, at best, and the people so “trained” were actually harming the company’s reputation. Others joined in shortly afterward, setting a trend in which just about every major manufacturer or service provider with any relevance has some sort of certification program. This has spawned a sizeable secondary industry around training and preparation. Some exams are purely internal and meant for employees only, but others are more widely recognized and are effectively transferable between companies, due to a certain amount of crossover. Still others are totally independent. This is all well and good but has resulted in much confusion for people trying to plan a career path and having to choose between the qualifications available and how to obtain them.
First of all, you have to ask yourself why you want certification in the first place. The whole process can be long and expensive—the cost lies not just in the courses, materials, travel, hotels, etc., but also in the money you do not earn while you are studying, although many companies have programs that cover all, or a substantial part, of the cost. The sting in the tail is that they might expect you to stay for a minimum period.
Of course, the idea behind certification should be that you can show employers (and other people) that you have certain skills, and your first response might be “I need it to get a job,” but if you think about it, certification does not necessarily do that. It might keep you in a job, but in the real world, it’s actually for getting your resume past the poor clerk in Human Resources whose job is to screen you out. The rest is up to you.
There are many people who get plenty of work without certification. That leads to other reasons: personal satisfaction and confirmation of your abilities, not to mention the filling in gaps in your knowledge, earning the respect of your colleagues and making you more productive at work, with the end result of helping you keep your job or clients longer or at least enabling you to switch to more productive career paths if and when required.
You might ask yourself what certification you require. It might be, for instance, that you want a particular job with a rigid specification, in which case your choice is limited. Others may choose a more scattergun approach and go for more general qualifications that will suit a number of circumstances, with the slight danger of not being specific enough for some employers, who may not even know what they are. (In Europe, for example, the A+ or Network+ exams do not have the same recognition as they do in North America, and you will not find as many books about them on the shelves.) You can reduce your workload considerably by looking for qualifications that can be used twice—Novell, for instance, accepts the Network+ exam as the equivalent for one of its exams, as do some universities, so you maximize the use of your time and money. What you do here is work backward from the end result and see what exemptions are allowed at each stage. The key to whatever you choose, however, is credibility.
Starting Points
To the world at large (well, the computing world, anyway), the first certification that springs to mind is the MCSE, but employers often specify this qualification without being aware of its ramifications. Those that are aware will look at it in conjunction with another, because it has been possible to pass the MCSE without much practical experience, although Microsoft now has arrangements to help combat this. These “paper” MCSEs are the reason many companies may insist on knowing your actual scores, or even where you trained, before they employ you.
As an example, my local repair shop gets a long stream of MCSEs asking for work, but as soon as they are asked to demonstrate the use of fdisk, there is often a puzzled silence. I’m sure you don’t want to be that sort of engineer! Another thing to note is that the training often revolves around Microsoft’s view of the world, and is regarded cynically by some people as a marketing course, although to be fair it would appear that many such problems have been addressed with the new examinations for Windows 2000. (Of course, those who have taken it already will only confirm the fact that it is still a rigorous exam and a formidable qualification.)
Among your peers, however, a Cisco, Java, Oracle, Solaris or Linux qualification has much more substance, as does a CNE. Do not go for a certification merely because it is popular. It could become unpopular at any time, although it is difficult to think of many examples at the moment. Essentially, as with software, keep away from new kids on the block until they have a track record.
Once you’ve decided what you want, for whatever reason, you must decide how to get it. If you have the time and the money, there are colleges with full courses that can take up to two years to complete. There are also so-called “boot camps” that can allegedly do the job in two weeks, but there is a world of difference between learning the course material and just learning the tricks required to pass the exam. With the latter case, once you do get employed, any lack of fundamental knowledge and experience will be quite obvious, and whatever job you get with your certification will not last for long. Having said that, there’s no harm in proper test preparation, and some boot camps are quite good. But they still rely on the fact that you will be tested only on a somewhat narrow part of all the stuff you are supposed to know, because there’s so much to cover and they have to leave something out. You therefore have to know all of what they teach you. Do not go to a boot camp without having a vast amount of practical experience or self-study under your belt (more than a year) and the ability to handle the intense pressure. A reputable boot camp should not take your money without checking, anyway.
Self-study could just involve a correspondence course in your spare time or ripping machines apart in your garden shed until you feel you know enough. However, a year’s hands-on experience is now about the minimum for MCSE. If you cannot achieve that, you need to think seriously about instructor-led training. Many Web sites (and books) containing nothing but mock exams may help here.
There are also excellent multimedia courses consisting of CDs and as many as 21 videotapes that will cost anything up to a couple thousand dollars or the equivalent that can be done over the Internet, although the package is often a “take-it-or-leave-it” situation when it comes to electives. Having said that, the combination of videos, computer- based training and technical reference books produces a much higher retention rate than using only one study method, but the access time for resolving questions is obviously a lot longer unless good support is provided.
Training companies must be researched as thoroughly as you would for any high school or college for your children, and it is not a good idea to rush the process. In aviation, for example, there are flying schools with widely varying abilities, even though the end result, a license, is the same, and budding pilots make sure their instructors have real-world experience, because there are certain things that, if taught properly in the early stages, produce a better-trained candidate. The same goes for computer certification. Ask previous students what they think—you might be very surprised, and word-of-mouth is always the best form of advertising. Also, check the proportion of passes to enrollments and how many students actually come back for more when they need a refresher. One thing that I’ve noticed is the high proportion of Web pages belonging to such schools that have rather obvious spelling and grammatical mistakes, which indicates that a good look behind the company frontage is required.
As it happens, there are standards here, too. A CTEC (Certified Technical Education Center) will typically employ to run their courses MCTs (Microsoft Certified Trainers) or the equivalent who must also now hold a base qualification, such as an MCSE or an MCSD, before they can teach. On the other hand, the onus is on them to self-regulate and to satisfy themselves that they have the knowledge to teach the courses they run. In other words, you have no real way of knowing that someone teaching Exchange, for example, has actually been trained in it themselves. However, the big secret is that it doesn’t matter where you take the courses! As long as you pass the exam, you can choose anyone you want to do the teaching—the mere fact that a doctor has a certificate is no indication that he or she knows what they are doing, and you can apply the same logic to instructors. I have seen some MCTs running courses over the Internet and have nearly fallen asleep in the first 10 minutes! Standards should always be taken as a guide and not an absolute, and you may find a college that is perfect for your needs just around the corner that has never gone for accreditation but has excellent instructors.
There is also the Authorized Academic Training Program (AATP) from Microsoft that uses the same curriculum as CTECs, but has the learning spread over a longer period in conjunction with other courses, which is why it tends to take place in colleges or universities, with the possibility of college credit that can be applied elsewhere.
You will benefit from your school being a test center as well. Apart from helping with quick retakes, it means they may provide quickie refresher courses as well for those weak areas. On a more mundane level, from personal experience, do not choose a school without a canteen or at least an inexpensive café nearby.
Do:
Clarify your reasons for certification.
Check out schools thoroughly.
Ensure that instructors have real-world experience.
Run through the practice sessions in the exams.
Answer the questions you know first.
Keep up-to-date.
Emphasize the benefits you can bring to an employer.
Highlight your best achievements.
Do Not:
Use a boot camp without experience
or time spent in self-study.
Skimp on practical experience.
Become “paper” certified.
Waste time on “popular” qualifications
with no real substance.
Accept schools at face value.
Forget that your training background is important.
Waste time on questions you don’t know the answer to.
Tell lies on your resume.
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Before the Test
Naturally, you need to study. I won’t presume to tell you how to do this, as individual needs vary so much. (I like the TV on as mental chewing gum.) But if you are going to pass properly, that is, without cheating, you will need a lot of practical experience because some questions ask you to identify screenshots or even require a list of the key or menu selections to achieve certain results, often down to three or four levels. This applies to all exams. On top of training materials, you will also need several spare machines to practice installations on, together with troubleshooting and to provide a small network, as this is fundamental to modern computer life. Sometimes, you will need up to five or even six or more, preferably with a different operating system on each one. (In this office, we run everything from Multiuser DOS to Linux.) Part of the training, of course, is to build the machines yourself out of the equivalent of old bits of string and whatever you can find in flea markets.
Another reason for practical experience is to know when the required answer to a question is actually wrong or maybe less wrong than the others! I haven’t yet found whether it’s the fault of the people who set the tests or of many of the books around, but as an example, the memory between 640K and 1 Mb on a PC-compatible is constantly referred to as high memory, when it’s been upper memory for years, and well before the A+ exam was even thought of. (High memory is that little bit just above the 1 Mb boundary that can be accessed with HIMEM.SYS.) Also, the area up to 640K has always been known as base memory (just look at all those old motherboard manuals), but for some reason, base memory is now what remains after DOS, etc. has been loaded.
As you can see in view of the above, you often have to learn things just to pass the exam, rather than because they are correct. Still, even with these criticisms, any exams are welcome, as there has long been the need for some sort of standard.
During the Test
Most exams cost around $100. They are commonly multiple-choice, even where graphics are involved, which makes them markable by computer. You will be given a pencil and paper for notes; other than these, you will be allowed nothing personal in the examination room. Normal exam rules will apply, namely, no talking between candidates, making distracting noises, cheating, etc. Although there is ostensibly some form of central reservation system, in practice, you can often go to the local school and short-circuit the system.
First of all, do run through the practice session that is provided. It only takes 15 minutes or so and doesn’t count toward the total time anyway. Aside from giving you a feel for the way the exam is conducted, it will also allow you to settle down. Although there is a time limit, it is very generous and there is no need to rush—nobody cares how quickly you pass, just as long as you do.
There should be no penalty for getting answers wrong, but it is still a good tactic to go through the exam quickly first and answer all the questions you absolutely and positively know the answer to, not forgetting to mark the ones you want to go back to later for review. Do not spend too much time on any question. This will give you the maximum remaining time to deal with those you are not sure of, which won’t necessarily be because you don’t know the answer to them, but because of the way they are worded. For example, many are phrased in such a way that a negative answer is required or, rather, the answer that is not correct often requires a great deal of thought, which is what takes up the time. Also, if you look carefully during your quick run-through, you might get the answer to one question as part of the text of another. Some people have reported questions on undocumented subjects.
You should get your results as soon as you finish the last question. If you fail, it might be possible to retake the exam within a very short period, but often, there is a minimum time to allow for proper study before you take it again. (This is where the school’s ability to work around the system may help.) This would appear to be more difficult with the new Microsoft exams for Windows 2000, as no feedback is given about your strong or weak areas, apparently to preclude you from taking the exam again too quickly or passing on the questions to other people.
After the Test
Bearing in mind some of the reasons for certification–that is, to make you more productive at work and to give you pride in what you do–it makes sense to maximize the return on your investment by keeping up-to-date, which can sometimes be a full-time job in itself. Years ago, it was estimated that it took a year to lose 20 percent of your knowledge, which meant that if you were out of the computer world for five years, you would need to requalify. Now, that figure is more like six months!
Microsoft requires, for example, that MCTs log a minimum number of days instructing each year, and many people who studied hard with NT 4 now find that their MCSE qualifications will expire if they do not retest on Windows 2000 in the very near future. This subject is particularly relevant for university graduates—it is a common complaint from employers that, while well-trained, such people often have out-of-date knowledge, particularly where professors only teach and do not participate in outside experiences.
Maintaining currency can be done by reading magazines and taking advantage of the many resources available from the manufacturers themselves, often at discount rates, by virtue of having taken (and passed!) the exams. Certainly, Novell supplies a CNE package that contains all of its products for certified people, and Microsoft has the Technet. Unfortunately, many employers do not take kindly to people reading magazines, etc. at work, but several accounting firms set aside one hour a day for checking up on new material, and trade magazines are part of the process.
Information is also available over the Internet, but manufacturers now have a tendency to take off the older stuff, which doesn’t help the many repair shops still repairing XTs, so they become less useful. Here is where newsgroups can fill the gap, as can magazine Web sites that may deal specifically with your area of expertise.
In addition, there are various third-party resources available to cover both old and new equipment. The Microhouse Support Encyclopedia used to be good, coming on several CDs and updated quarterly on a subscription system. The company was recently taken over by Earthweb, which subsequently sold it, so the current status is not known, although there is a Web site under construction somewhere. If they are still in business, their product is highly recommended, and they have links with many high-profile magazines who allow their articles to be used. In addition, many manufacturers make their release and engineering notes available to them.
On a smaller scale, but equally informative, there is my own product, “The A+ Reference Book,” which, although it covers the complete A+ and Network+ syllabuses, is primarily a source of reference, containing information on more than 6,600 hard drives, motherboards, networking and most areas that affect a technician’s life, including the most detailed description anywhere of all those pesky CMOS settings that “they” don’t tell you anything about!
Phil Croucher has written several widely acclaimed books, including “The BIOS Companion” and several columns for the UK’s Computer Shopper, PC Plus and PC Answers magazines. He can be contacted at www.electrocution.com.
