Certification – Poor Picks – Low Level Certs

We are exploring my poor choices for areas in which to certify. Today we will look at Low Level Certifications

Let’s face it, if a certification is easy to attain, everyone who wants it will have it. Don’t waste your time. Instead, focus on a challenging certification. Some see value in a beginner going after a low-hanging certification, but I think that it’s doing them a disservice to allow them to think that the certification itself is what matters at that level. The processes of studying and practicing test-taking skills are far more valuable than the certification itself. Their time is better spent getting a basic book/website and learning on their own until they’re at a level where certification will help them out.

Once you have narrowed your focus, take a look at the certifications available in that area. Most certifications are “tiered” with low, middle, and high levels of proficiency on which you are tested. If you do not have much experience yet, you may be tempted by the low level certification. Don’t be. Develop the experience needed to go after the middle level. You’ll get a better learning experience AND a better story to tell. You will also be able to better distinguish yourself from those people that start at level 1 and stop.

(Disclaimer: I do not have any low-level certifications)

Certification – Poor Picks – Vendor-specific certifications

Of course, there are some bets that I wouldn’t make. I’m not necessarily down on specific certifications, but I am down on specific types of certifications.

Any certification that locks you into a specific vendor has, at its core, an interest other than the certification alone. If a vendor is pushing a certification, they want to make you expert in their technology over similar technologies. This raises the demand for that technology and increases their sales. Pretty much all of the large technology vendors have a certification program. These, of course, as the most popular certifications, as they are promoted by the sales department of each vendor.

The big problem for you, is that these certifications will lock you in and links your career to the future of that company. This can be even more dangerous than specializing in a specific programming language. That said, there is an out. In some places, there is no vendor-neutral certification in a specific technology (at a high enough tier). In those cases, you are best off going after two certifications! That way, if one company stumbles, you have the other one to fall back on. You can also brand yourself as an expert in the technology without being a sales person for a specific company.

(Disclaimer: I am Linux certified by both Red Hat and Novell.)

Certification – Personal Picks – ITIL

We are exploring my personal picks for areas in which to certify. Today we will look at ITIL

Best Practices are always in vogue, and they are starting to be formalized by systems such as ITIL. ITIL is a methodology for streamlining IT to the business’s needs. As IT becomes increasingly tied to business systems ITIL and systems like it will become increasingly important. At this time, ITIL is one of the best known systems for doing this, but as time goes on, there will be others. I strongly recommend that you take a class prior to certification in this (or other) methodology. Most methodologies are similar, and having a firm and solid grounding in the concepts for one will make it much easier for you to learn another should you need to.

This certification is worth pursuing if you are in charge of integrating IT with the business. If you are still on the help-desk / daily workload part of your career, you should familiarize with the ideas behind ITIL, but you might want to hold this one until later.

(Disclaimer: I do not currently hold an ITIL certification)

Certification – Personal Picks – Vendor Management

We are exploring my personal picks for areas in which to certify. Today we will look at Vendor Management

As the industry moves away from everything being internal to more “just in time delivery” and subscription-based software, individual businesses will become increasingly tied to vendors. As the vendor loses money when they have to deal with the business, they may not always be completely willing to add functionality, solve problems, or generally do anything that falls outside of their business model. This puts YOUR business in a very difficult position. It will be increasingly difficult to move away from a vendor, and the vendors will be providing a decreasing quality of service. Therefore, managing your vendors will become a key skill.

Sadly, there are no certification or training programs out there (that I know of) that can help you with this. There is one segment of one course (SANS MGMT 512) that touches on this, but there will soon be more. As the work landscape flattens out and there are more and more connections between the outside world and your business, there will need to be a new level of manager. We have middle managers that manage the people in your organization. We have account managers that manage your customers. We have C-level managers that manage the business as a whole. What we do not have are vendor managers, or professional customers. Soon, we will, and those of us who are good at it will blaze that trail and define the profession.

Then, we’ll be able to certify in it.

(Disclaimer: As this certification does not yet exist, I am not yet certified in it.)

Certification – Personal Picks – Security

We are exploring my personal picks for areas in which to certify. Today we will look at Security

Security touches on all aspects of business and tends to come in two flavors: management security and technical security. No matter which direction the industry goes (barring a whole-scale collapse), both will be needed. Management security will be more stable than technical security. In other words, the general principles behind security do not change no matter how the attacks do. As attackers improve their technology, the defenders improve theirs. This means that education on general concepts is a better bet than education on specific technologies. (Of course, if you have a specific technology that you have to implement, by all means, study it and learn how to implement it properly. Just try to understand the big concepts too.)

Unlike virtualization, security certification is a mature industry and there are oodles of players. Before you can evaluate them, you have to consider what your goals are. If you want to be an implementer, you will want to go down the technical security line — though it changes so quickly you will need to plan for multiple certifications, at least one per year. If, however, you want to be more of a management-level security person, you need to understand the concepts very deeply and merge them into your life. This is also a path to general paranoia, as management security impacts all aspects of life, not just the tech world.

At this time, the two key players in security certification that I recommend looking at are as follows:

(Disclaimer: I have both a CISSP and GIAC certification)

ISC2

ISC2 offers a handful of generalized security certifications. The “Gold Standard” of these is the CISSP, which also has some specializations. There are some lower-level certifications that are intended as stepping stones towards the CISSP. Personally, I say to develop the prerequisite experience needed for the CISSP and then go for it. This is an excellent management-level certification and you will learn a great deal while pursuing it.

SANS

SANS offers several certifications in many areas: Security, Audit, Management, and Legal. However, SANS is primarily an educational organization, not simply a certification body. Yes, it is possible to get a SANS certification (called a GIAC) without taking a class, I do not recommend it. The point the a GIAC is the experience and learning that you get along the way. A SANS class is excellent and well worth your time. They have multiple formats, from the week-long security conference to small, do-it-on-your-own systems like SANS Mentor and SANS @Home. You will probably have a more holistic experience at the conference, since a lot of the learning comes from talking with multiple people. However, if your budget doesn’t allow the conference or class, you will still learn plenty in a Mentor or @Home class.

Note that SANS offers training in so many fields, that you can get a management security OR a technical security certification through them. Remember that the point is education, so choose the certification based on what you need to learn (and are passionate to learn). I doubt that most hiring managers / bosses will distinguish between the different GIAC certifications, so don’t worry about that. Just pick the experience that you need to have and the rest will follow.

Certification – Personal Picks – Virtualization

So now, we finally get to the point you all wanted: which certifications should you pursue? There are lots of lists out there that discuss the “hot certs”. I’m not going to do this. Instead, here are the certifications that I think would probably teach you the most, and therefore advance your career in actuality and not just on paper.

Everyone talks about virtualization like it is the new technology that is going to save the world. It’s good, but it’s not THAT good. It is, however, highly disruptive. First, it abstracts the operating system from the hardware. Different virtual technologies do this in different ways, and each one has its own advantages and problems. Learning about this and, in particular, learning how to troubleshoot in this environment will be huge for your future career. Secondly, virtualization merges the networking on the switch level with that of the server. This can be drastically more complicated and understanding how it works is essential to your future.

Consider virtualization another fundamental technology. If you do anything with system administration, you need to understand it. As the various operating systems become increasingly easier to use, the importance of understanding them deeply will wane and the importance of virtualization will increase. That said, the difference between a de-facto admin (deal with break/fix) and a professional admin (plan/build for growth) will continue, it’s just that the role of admin will grow to include the virtual environment as well as the operating systems.

At this time, the technology is undergoing a shake-up with the leading players being VMWare, Citrix/Xen, and Microsoft. The only player with a mature certification program is VMWare, so I would focus there. Keep an eye on Citrix though, as it is likely that they will add Xen to their highly-successful certification line.

(Disclosure: I do not currently possess a virtualization certification)

Certification – Which certifications to pick – Tech Levels

We are exploring key considerations for when you are choosing a certification. Today’s consideration is the disparity between levels of technologies.

So, when you’re looking at a certification you may be forced to choose between new technology and current technology. It can get quite confusing. New technology is bright and shiny, and it is often easy to get the passion to study it. However, the problem with this is your career path may not wind up heading in that direction. New technology is fickle and can change or even vanish before it gets stable enough to become mainstream. Consider the risk. If you think that this technology will be around for at least five years, it may be worth learning deeply enough to get a certification. If not, you should probably keep an eye on it and see where it goes.

Current technology has the opposite problem. It’s easy to tell if it’s on your career path, but since it’s been around for a while, it may be hard for you to get up the passion needed to succeed. Also, you run the risk of deprecation. Many technologies (basic languages in particular) expire after a certain period of time, so by the time a technology stops being “new”, it has also lost a certain amount of it’s lifetime.

Of course, it’s never possible to foresee the future, so in the end, you will just have make a best guess and go with it. However, there are a couple things that you can do to mitigate the risks. First, try to pick a general technology, not something overly specific. The more specific something is, the bigger the risk that you are specializing in the wrong area. That said, don’t pick something so general that it’s so watered down that it is useless. Secondly, you might want to hedge your bets. If you see the industry going down two possible paths, pick a certification in each path. That way, you will gain learning that will help and still have a good story to tell.

Certification – Which certifications to pick – Career Path

We are exploring key considerations for when you are choosing a certification. Today’s consideration is your Career Path.

After all my talk on passion, here is where the practical side has to come forward. It’s well and good to be passionate about something, but if it doesn’t relate to your job, you might not be able to get the full value out of the certification. You also have to consider what the certifications would convey to someone who looks at them. We live in a world where, to be successful, a person has to be good at both doing their job and talking about their job. One of the ways that a person talks about their job is with their job history, also known as a status report, yearly review, or resume.

It is important that your job history tells a story about you, and that that story is the same as the one that you are telling about yourself. For example, if you have been working in IT for over a decade, you might want to say that you have deep experience and can really do your job well, but all you have is a collection of low level certifications, your resume will say that you have no drive and always try to take the easy way out. Similarly, if your job history is focused on one technology, but you are certified in another, you are saying that you can do one thing well, but you really want to be doing something else. This is probably not what you want to say.

It is best to figure out where your career is headed, and pick a few certifications on that path. Be able to explain to anyone who asks why you have that exact certification and what distinguishes it from others in your field. You WILL be asked, and if you do not have a good answer, it weakens both you and the certification in general.

So, take a quick look at the certification you are considering and ask yourself why you want it. If your answer is one of the following, stop and pick a better one:

It’s easy to get
Everyone has one
It’ll get me a good raise

Certification – Which certifications to pick – Passion

We are exploring key considerations for when you are choosing a certification. Today’s consideration is Passion.

As with many things in life, success comes down to passion. If you are a salaried worker, you are likely expected to work 40 hours a week. If you ONLY work 40 hours, that means that you are doing the MINIMUM expected of you. That’s not exactly the quick path to success. Thus, if you want to succeed, you have to be passionate enough about what you are doing to put in 50 hours and have it feel like 30. If you’re really passionate, you can put in 60 hours and have it feel like 20.

This works the same if you are hourly. An hourly employee is expected to get a certain amount of work done in a hour. Thus, your minimum is to do X work for $Y in compensation. If that’s all you do, then you are again meeting the MINIMUM expected of you. To succeed in this model, you have to figure out what X work is, and try to do 2X work in each hour. The only way to work this hard on a consistent basis is to be passionate about that you’re doing.

In most cases, when you start on a certification path, you will not be able to stop your day job. Thus, in either model, you have to do more than the minimum amount of work AND spend the time to learn and prepare for the certification. This is HARD. The only thing that can help is to really WANT it… really badly.

This is where passion comes in. If you are pursuing a new lover, you will throw caution to the winds and devote all your resources towards being with that person. If you are training for a marathon, you will spend many months getting into shape, constantly keeping your goal in mind. Similarly, if you want to get ahead professionally, you have to approach the project with that level of passion. Pick what you like BEST about your job. Pick something that you can eat, breathe and sleep for months. Only when you are at that point and level of interest can you have a strong likelihood of success.

If you have that level of passion, you will get closer to your goal on willpower alone. Sure, you need other things like a rational plan, a schedule, and the support of your friends and family… but if you approach with ONLY conservative rationality, your journey will take so long that you may not even complete it. The passion will be your guide to your goal. The practicality will be the tools that you need to blaze your trail.

So, choose what you are the most passionate about. If you do not, you will likely not have the desire to complete the certification journey.

Certification – Which certifications to pick

So, at this point, you have decided to pursue certification. Good for you. The question that is likely on your mind is “what certification should I pick?”. At this point, a lot of people often fall back on the “more money” thing. It is true that some certifications cost more than others, and those ones are often ranked more highly on a salary survey. So, you need to start by considering salary surveys (which could be a whole other series).

Salary surveys are often sent out to people on a list. This list if often made from people who signed up to take a certification test or who requested the results of a salary survey in the past. This makes such surveys inherently unreliable and skewed in favor of certifications. In the real world, most businesses will not give you a salary increase just because you passed a test. So, if you want to get the salary boost that people think a certification brings, you’ll have to change jobs. At that point, soft skills like negotiation, interviewing technique, and a solid ability to perform the job will impact your salary MUCH more than having passed a test.

To say it more simply, getting certified will not get you rich. Being good at what you do and being good at managing your money will get you rich. Getting certified will just make you better at what you do… if you choose to do it right. So, the next three posts will explore key considerations for when you are choosing a certification.