Certifications: Can It Really Get Me a Job?

I was a 2-year old Software Engineer in a global company when I started to hear about Microsoft certifications.

It was a company that was a heavy user of Microsoft technologies and it makes sense that their engineers should demonstrate expertise on it. It was never promoted internally that getting certified would be sponsored, and I never saw the value of getting one. In my perspective, I'll just lose a few dollars with no promise of a better career.

When I transferred to another company, I started to meet a lot of colleagues with a number of certifications under their belt. These were not sponsored as well, but I came to hear a different perspective from these people about wanting to invest on themselves, and the willingness to risk some money with a foresight of a higher rank. I was still stubborn by this time and was a devil's advocate to certifications, saying there's no real value in getting one.

A few years later, my colleague/friend was about to go abroad and was going to take an ITIL certification (which was the only certification sponsored by our company back then) to enhance her chances of getting hired and invited me to take the exam with her.

We didn't wait for company sponsorship because she had a deadline. Being the good friend that I was, I took the test too, despite my negative thoughts about it. We passed, and it was my first foot in certifications. A few years later, I now hold 7 certifications in various subjects, and 2 undeclared ones.

Why am I even talking about this subject?

I might be considered a hypocrite, but I can say that I am now an advocate of getting certifications. From one of the sessions of an AWS certification mentoring program that I'm volunteering with, someone from the group asked...

"If I pursue this program and get certified, will it guarantee a job for me?"

It's a question that I think cannot be answered simply with a "yes" or "no", but with a few thoughts about my own experience to expound on what I answered that time.

1. It got me an interview

In the competitive IT world, where numerous applicants are applying for a single position, having a certification puts your resume on top of the pile. Some companies even require it to get a first interview.

Having a certification tells a company that you have a comprehensive knowledge of a technology, and that you care about your career to spend time and money to learn and get certified.

That said, having a certification is a double-edged sword. Be sure to be able answer any questions related to your certification.

I was interviewing a candidate who attended a Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt training and I was very interested to hear his ideas about it. He was honest to say that he didn't complete a project required to earn the certification, which is fine, but he wasn't even able to explain that the certification was related to process improvement. This caused his downfall because of my disappointment to his answer.

2. It adds "experience" to your portfolio

Getting certified on something gives you an opportunity to learn something even if you are not actively working on it in your current role.

In my first job as a DevOps Engineer, I was mostly exposed to learning about load balancers, EC2, security groups, NACLs and maintaining these compute and network resources. I didn't understand most of the terms when the team's architect was discussing about system design beyond what I was maintaining, so I studied about AWS and took a stab at getting certified.

That turned out to be very beneficial for me as I learned about regions, availability zones, edge locations, IAM, ECS, S3, and a lot more, things I don't normally touch in my day job. The design of the systems I was maintaining suddenly made sense to me. It helped me troubleshoot issues independently, as I understood how traffic works, and know the possible causes of failure. It helped me gain confidence facing incidents that happen, without bothering someone senior to me. I became a DevOps newbie, with "experience".

3. I interacted with a team that I wouldn't normally meet being a regular software engineer

When I was a software developer, my job scope was to translate requirements into code. It was a repetitive task, and I was a little bored doing the same thing for successive sprints, that I volunteered to join a Lean Six Sigma training program to provide more value to the company and I learned about the philosophy of improving the efficiency of processes.

I can't think of any particular project as a requirement of achieving the certification at that time, but was connected to a team that was doing a lot of manual processes that can be automated. I completed the project, and in the process, I gained the experience of interviewing a client, and helped improve my soft skills in communication--things I don't normally do as a software developer.

4. Certifications paved and continuously paves the way for career growth

Come to think of it, certifications did help me get hired for a job. I was transitioning to a DevOps role when asked "Have you ever done any automation work?". As a software developer, I apply logic and write code, but never did automation (which I think very much distinguishes the two roles).

My certification on Lean Six Sigma allowed me to answer the question with a "Yes", and I had the opportunity to passionately talk about what I did on the project, and probably added points to my interview assessment.

The second time was when I was rigorously asked technical questions in AWS. I was asked about EC2 and what recommendations I can provide for scaling the resource. I understood much about ASG (auto-scaling groups) and it's options and had the interviewer say "that is the perfect answer". It was a concept I learned just a few months ago.

I was asked how I would create an API using AWS resources. I didn't have any experience on it, but having learned about it in my certification review, I am confident the answer was to use an API Gateway and Lambda. I was honest in saying I never worked with it, but at least I knew where I would start...which again added points to my assessment.

5. Why not to get certifications?

A certification on its own does not guarantee you a job. The real benefit of certifications comes when you can apply it with what you are doing daily, or be able to think of improvements to make work more efficient.

Don't get certifications just for credentials. This mindset is limited and will hinder your ability to extract the value of studying.

I take certifications because I enjoy learning and preparing for one gives me an opportunity to know something that I will never know if I just do my work tasks. Things I learn in each certification journey gives me more opportunities at work, as I am trusted to do more advanced tasks.

Even without a certification, tinker with things, make improvements, and share what you learn to more people. For me, that's the real value of learning to your career.

Your story or perspective may be different with mine and I'd love to hear about it. Let me know in the comments!