RE: Certification

[Mark <mark@bish.net>]

This is very long but there is a nice rant at the bottom for the students
that you might want to check out.
 

On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, Kara Pritchard wrote:

> 
> But you, however, represent only a minute percentage of people (or
> companies) that have enough knowledge and experience themselves to be able
> to make such judgement calls.

I seriously doubt that (Maybe in large companies but 90% of companies are 
small to medium size in the engineering/tech sector). 

It's true that many HR depts scan resumes for certain words, for example
"PLC","embedded","Microsoft Access","C/C++", but the people providing HR
with those requirements are the managers looking for the people.



> 
> I don't think that not getting certified means you can't get employed. I
> also don't think that not getting a degree means you can't get employed
> either. 
> 

Agreed.


> In any case, it's very hard for HR type people to determine the
> reliability and credibility of an individual from an interview or
> resume. Even people like yourself. This is especially hard for people
> moving into the Linux market, because the maximum experience one could
> have is 9 years in development, 5 really in commercial support. Those
> people, for the most part, are already employed... by people like you.
> 

HR people are like filters and should be used as such depending on the
quality of the HR person.  We have poor HR people here so we "took off the
filters" and told HR to forward any and all resumes to the dept head.  And
for the record more HR people don't interview - just schedule the
interview.  What we are seeing at my company are very poor resumes.  We
get people in that we don't think are very qualified and start asking them
questions and we end up saying "Damn, why isn't that on your resume?"  

"by people like you."....Well, they hired me 2 days after my interview.



> The community we're addressing now are the people who currently are other
> OS admins, students, recent graduates, hobbyists, or even people coming
> from an entirely different field of study. What does having 15 years
> background in, say, Aircraft maintenance, tell an HR person interviewing
> this person for a jr sysadmin position or something. This aircraft
> maintenance person has been a LUG member for 5 years, and can show you on
> his website his beefy home network. He has no commercial experience. Are
> you going to give him a 45k/yr entry level job on faith that he's a fast
> learner?
> 

I interviewed a student yesterday who is graduating in December.  He is
working at a "Mental Health Tech" right now.  He doesn't have any "real
World" experience but I liked his attitude and his personailty and I think
he is going to be getting an offer at the weeks end, and do you know why? 
I think he can learn our system and do something with it.  Fast learning
is very important. 



> What about the other 99% of the companies whose HR people don't have CS
> degrees and who don't use Linux?
> 


HR by definition don't have any revelent experience any field they are
hiring for.  </sarcasm>  But again, the HR people are just filters that
are tuned by the managers of the company.


> There are many angles, and bigger pictures to look at when considering
> accreditation of skill. 
> 

Stupid scenario, but let's pretend Microsoft gave out certifications for
Access developers.  Now, would I hire the person who got the certification
or the student who did his entire Senior project in Access.  I would hire
the student who has done a large project that took months to complete
rather than the person who spent 2-3 weeks in getting a certification.

I agree with your statement, but you contradict yourself.  In making that
statement I ask that you look at a much bigger picture than you yourself
make.  Take someone's career (including school) experiences, take into
account what they really want to do, what they are interested in, what
sort of challenges they are willing to take on.  No piece of paper is
going to tell me that.  And when I go out for those Linux development
jobs, they see how I've incorporated Linux into my professional life and
they (for the most part offer me the job - all of the linux/unix jobs I've
applied for have made me an offer)


My advice to the people who want to move into jobs which use linux -
change your goal.  Seriously, that's like saying I want to go work at a
company that uses Microsoft.  Figure out what you want to do first -
networking, engineering (and then what type) and then build from that.  I
built networks in my spare time aat school and after enough time doing it
I became a $25/hour contractor overnight while I was still attending
school.  Entire Depts at the school eventually relied on me to sustain
their networks.  Also, I wanted to get into developing embedded linux
devices.  So, in my spare time that's all I did and now that's what I do
for a living and I love every minute of it.  Certifications don't mean
much if an employer sees that you love what you do and are willing to work
hard to obtain your goals.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Mark Bishop  (mark@bish.net)         |             Computer Engineer |
| 813.258.2390                         |             Network Engineer  |
| http://bish.net                      |          Embedded Programmer  |

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