Category: certifications

Off-topic: Maybe it’s you, not the Internet

Scott Berkun has (yet another) fantastic article on his blog: a teacher was complaining that the students use Facebook or check their e-mail in class. Scott’s response? Maybe it’s the teaching skills and the fascination with one-way lecturing, not the Internet, that’s at fault. Read the whole response; if you’ve been faced with too many narrow-minded teachers in your life, you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

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Certifications and the hiring process

My good friend Stretch wrote an interesting article about the usability of certifications in the hiring process. I can’t agree more with everything he wrote about certifications, it nicely summarizes the various topics Greg Ferro and myself wrote about during the last year (please note: I’m not claiming Stretch was in any way influenced by our thoughts, anyone seriously considering the current certification processes has to come to the same conclusions).

Regrettably, I have to disagree with most of his alternative approach (although some of the ideas are great). It would work in an ideal world, but faces too many real-life obstacles in this one.

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Simulations in certification tests

Anyone who has ever had the “privilege” of interviewing a certified individual with purely theoretical knowledge appreciates the value of hands-on tests. The creators of certifications in the IT industry (including Cisco Systems) have responded by including more and more hands-on exercises in the certification exams. Unfortunately, Cisco decided not to use the real equipment, but rather simulations. While this is definitely better than relying exclusively on multiple-choice tests, students can still work their way through the simulations without having a decent level of hands-on experience.

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Writing good exam questions

Readers who commented on some of my previous certification-related posts have complained about the vagueness of exam questions. I have to agree with them; I’ve seen my fair share of dubious questions in the exams I’ve taken. For example, when I was developing EIGRP and BGP courses for Cisco, my lowest scores on the CCIE recertification exams were in those two categories. I knew too many details and was confused by the vagueness of the questions.

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Is it wise to use certifications in the candidate selection process?

My previous certification-related post described how some companies use certifications to filter job applicants for networking-related positions. Should you follow that example? If you’re in a country with a saturated job market, where the number of applicants far exceeds the number of job postings (consider yourself very lucky if you’re an employer), you should certainly use whatever filters you can to screen the hundreds of applications you receive … but be aware that you have potentially lost a few gems hidden in the flood.

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Certifications: a new barrier to entry

Recent blog posts indicate that, in at least some market segments, IT certifications are becoming a new barrier to entry: companies require a specific set of certifications in their job offerings and use those requirements to filter the candidates who are invited to the initial interview. Obviously, IT vendors pushing the certifications are getting some real traction. On the other hand, anecdotal evidence indicates that certification holders are sometimes able to memorize vast amounts of information without being able to put it to use (I don’t want to imply that they used other, less honest methods).

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Random “Scenic Route Certification” thoughts

The “Sometimes the path is more important than the destination” post has generated numerous highly interesting comments. I already planned to write about some of the issues raised by the readers (certification grind mill) or wrote about others (knowledge or recipes), so I’ll skip those and focus on the other interesting bits-and-pieces (but please make sure you read the original post first).

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Sometimes the path is more important than the destination ...

I received an interesting comment on one of my knowledge/certification-related posts:

I used to think that certifications were a useful indicator of knowledge or at least initiative, but I’m changing my mind. [...] I feel like I’ve gotten a lot out of studying for certifications, especially CCIE, but I’m starting to wonder if that’s the exception.

I guess a lot of prospective internetworking engineers are thinking along the same lines, so here’s my personal perspective on this issue.

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The best way to learn: solve a hard challenge

We’ve spotted some of our best engineers when they were in the final years of their undergraduate studies. To continue the trend, NIL offers a student-engagement program that attracts highly promising candidates each year. They offer them CCNA training (after which the students have to pass the exam), a few weeks of hands-on instructor-led introductory bootcamps and the first CCNP course. These training courses should give students a solid foundation and a framework that they can expand on their own—which is the point where it's time to stress-test them with advanced bootcamps.

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Gaining Knowledge - what’s the best way to do it?

A few days after my “Knowledge or Recipes” post, Greg Ferro started his “Experience or Certifications” series with a radical “I would always choose certification over experience” approach that quickly moderated into “Knowledge is more fundamental than experience … but you need both”. It’s nice to see someone else thinking along the same lines as yourself.

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CCIE is devalued? Get real.

My favorite provocateur has dreamed up another sensational story ... and even has numbers to back it up. Reverse engineering the increase in reported number of CCIEs and taking in account the estimated number of seats in Cisco's labs worldwide, he concluded that the pass rate for CCIE R/S is currently at 35% whereas in the past the rumors claimed it was only around 10%. The conclusions in the story should not surprise you ... it must be the braindumps and the devaluing of the CCIE program. Of course it's the braindumps: people like Petr Lapukhov, Jeremy Stretch, Arden Packeer, Joe Harris and tens of others (including yours truly) are dumping the contents of their gray cell matter into blogs and wikis, creating astounding amount of information that we've never got from Cisco in the past.

The CCIE preparation programs also cover an enormous amount of scenarios and variations, giving you lots of material to practice (BTW, when I was teaching CCIE preparation bootcamps 15 years ago, the pass rate of my students was over 90% as I simply forced them to configure all the possible stupidities Cisco IOS could do at that time). The tests don't have to get any easier; the participants (if the calculations are correct) are simply better prepared. Whether the increased number of CCIEs results in the perceived devaluing of the program is another question (remember: the supply/demand rules), but I am absolutely sure that people passing CCIE lab exam these days know approximately as much as those passing it two or three years ago.

Of course you could argue whether someone who did tens (or sometimes hundreds) of scenarios in his lab and then passed the CCIE test is an expert or a braindump cheater (let's wait for the first blog post that claims that), but I doubt anyone is able to remember so many recipes and apply the correct one without a profound understanding of the underlying issues.
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