IT professionals expecting easy success miss out on the
most rewarding feature of their careers—learning
new things.
Just Kick Back
IT professionals expecting easy success miss out on the
most rewarding feature of their careers—learning
new things.
- By The Forum Guys
- January 01, 1999
Let’s discuss this certification thing. One day,
you read about big-money jobs begging for Microsoft Certified
Systems Engineers and decide to enter IT, so you do some
research. But that uncovers lots of conflicting information.
You hear that the certification process is expensive,
but you find certification preparation books for under
$50. You hear the process is difficult, but you know inexperienced
people who have passed some exams. Indeed, a few of them
have been kind enough to document their certification
experiences and even share actual questions from the exams.
Wow! That should help, as should legitimate test preparation
software. With all these resources, you begin to suspect
certification will be much, much easier than you thought.
Armed and motivated, you begin to prepare. You try to
read some of the books, but they’re dry and don’t
have many pictures. So you switch to the test preparation
software, going through it once and scoring only 10 percent.
But after reading the answers revealed on the bottom of
the screen, your second try scores 70 percent. Much better!
Two more rounds and you’re acing the test! Yeah,
you’re practically an MCSE.
Your ego grows as you download braindumps and memorize
test questions. After a week, you’ve convinced yourself
that you knew the answers to those questions anyway. So
you schedule your first exam. And presto! You pass. You’re
an MCP now.
Go through this process six times and get a nice certificate
in the mail. You’re ready for a $65,000 network management
position, right? Just throw your resume out there and
kick back while recruiters hound you with attractive offers.
OK, what’s wrong with this picture? For one thing,
it’s a hard sell to an IT veteran like the one conducting
your first interview. Whoa! What’s this? You’re
being asked questions about SCSI IDs and cables, IRQs,
SRAM, Fdisk, Copy, and batch files? Aren’t those
old DOS things no one uses any longer? What’s this
about WINS, DNS, DHCP, and TCP/IP? Wouldn’t Microsoft
have test questions on those topics if it thought they
were important? (Microsoft does. It’s called TCP/IP
for NT 4.0, and it’s a must for any serious MCSE.)
Maybe those IT veterans—people who have actually
worked in the field—ask these questions because they
know certification and performance are two different things.
Maybe, despite acing exams, you’re still not qualified
if you don’t know things outside the Microsoft curriculum
but required by the job.
Microsoft certification is important, but it hardly tells
the whole story. You’ll need to continue to seek
knowledge over time from myriad and unglamorous sources.
You’ll learn in server rooms with cables strewn across
the floor, or in cubes where users have jammed their desktops
sideways to fit. And those braindumps you liked so much
just a few weeks ago? Well, the best braindump in the
world is Microsoft TechNet. But TechNet requires some
skill. The right answer first demands the right question
and can involve 10 pages of detailed information written
for experts only. Moreover, sometimes you won’t find
an exact answer, but will have to synthesize “sort
of close” answers from scraps of information gathered
here and there, drawing on your personal knowledge base
to devise a solution.
The best way to cultivate that knowledge base is to surround
yourself with people who know more than you. The industry
truth is that without experience, certification elevates
you only in the eyes of HR administrators and contractors
eager to sell your services. When your newly certified
feet hit the ground, they better be running, because you’ll
still need to prove yourself. And that’s when you’ll
need other people—people who have actually been in
the trenches and through the IT battles, and are willing
to help you. These early days may not be glory days, but
the skills you develop now will help you navigate along
the path to success.
Once you’ve achieved the core requirements, you’re
ready for some electives. Let’s hear from some of
you out there—what do you think they should be?