Microsoft Certified Professional

All,

did someone of you got such a certificate ? Is it worth the effort and also the money ? Is that certificate recognized in Europe ? Is a valuable add-on for a programmer arsenal ?

Please discuss.

Sergio.

I's a valid way for Microsoft to make more money ;-) I I interviewed someone who had it, it would show they made the effort to get qualified, which is more than some. However, it would be a tiny part of my overall consideration.

I've been an MCP and MCSE for many years now - Its another string to your bow and allows the company I work for to become a Microsoft Certified Partner. That in turn gives me higher pay and more holidays - yes very valuable !

How would someone go about getting this certificate. I'm 17 and this is the sort of stuff that interests me,

probably go to microsoft.com and look up taining. There may be a list of trainers in your area. btw I'm sure it costs a fair bit.

Very good thing to get if you are into windows coding for commercial development.

I did an A+ and could also do the MCSE at Matthew Boulton College in Birmingham. Its always good to be qualified, but experience accounts for more of it.

IIRC, You can have a "cool motif" if you start your own company and only hire A+/MCSE qualified personnel.

Personally? The A+ sucks because the tests are random. The guy i learnt everything off? he failed. I passed. why? Because every question he got was on Windows NT, while we had learnt about WIndows 95,98, 2000 and at the time, XP was brand new, a bit of that. I got tons of 2000 questions and passed within 15 minutes of the start time.

I hope the MCSE isnt the same, But i may consider doing it soon.

Yes.
No.
Yes.
No.

Certifications in general (A+, Cisco, Microsoft, whatever) is something companies with certain (and very specific) support policies obtain for some of their employees. It is not going to make a difference on whether you get a job or not. Also the certification is only valid for a certain period of time, and needs to be renewed regularly.

im not sure about the UK or where ever flameduck is from but here in the US having certs does help. Most IT jobs require atleast an A+ . I have an A+,MCP,and MCSE as well as the Microsoft Office Certs im about 6 months away from graduating college. It depends on what field your going into but I dont really see how any of these certifications would help programmers much as its all mainly hardware orianted except the windows test which is xp and server.

All qualifications suffer from a potential lack of relevence to whatever job you end up getting. They aren't a bad thing unless you study them full time and opt out of real life whilst learning to pass an exam which may or may not help you in later life.

I am a MCP (C#.NET), it may impress some employers but I think anyone could just learn the answers...

That's the thing, if you are skilled, someone can give you a problem (and even language) you know very little about and you can find out and do it quickly.

Sorry, can't agree (and I am in the US). I have out done many of my certified co-workers not only in pay but in position many times.

My personal opinion based on what employers have told me in the past....

It doesn't matter in the slightest whether you have an I.T. qualification or not. The only advantage it has is that it can get you to an interview. After that, it is a case of....

1) Do we like this person?
2) Will they get on with the other employees?
3) Are they capable of doing the job?
4) Can they be controlled and manipulated?

Pass all 4 and you have a good chance of getting the job.

Failing that, you can always go self-employed.

I agree with Prof (point 2 should read employees not employers) except to say that 4 had more positive connotions when we were hiring developers, more like 4) Will they be able to accept constructive critism and are they willing to self-improve under a system devised by us. In other words if they were just going to get on an do their own thing regardless of what we said, forget it.

Microsoft Certified Professional? That's the dumbest thing I've heard in years.

What do you have to do to achieve this, prove that you can create buggy software?

Almost.

Prove that you can USE buggy software.

Does it help, that depends. I have seen a number of jobs listing one of them as a requirement, so to get past the personnel drones who search through resumes it would be a good idea.

That said, I've never bothered to get one myself - but I've been in the business a long time now, back when I started getting a job without even a degree was pretty normal.

The only thing a certificate seems to be good for, is to increase your chance of getting an interview.

Especially if some HR department pre-screens resumes of applicants, listing some certs makes it a little more likely for your resume to end up in the pile that makes it to the hiring managers.

But since a certificate still doesn't really prove that you know what you're doing (Quite a few people that have these certs simply crammed the answers to the tests, passed, and won't recall a thing a week later. sometimes those folks are referred to as 'paper' MSCE's -- you got the certificate, but it isn't worth the paper its printed on. The MSCE certification got a pretty bad rep during the NT4 days, although it's a little more solid again with the W2K/XP/W2K3 certs).
Still, there are some 9-year old MCSE's and MCP's, and at least one 7-year old MOUS (Microsoft Office User Specialist) out there.

Anyway, the real value of a certificate depends greatly on who you ask. To some managers, the universe revolves around certificates. To others, they can even be considered a negative if you have certification but little real-world experience, since that can indicate that you're into it for the money rather than the love of the field. Many a 'tinkerer' can be a better asset than a 'certified professional' who won't even touch a computer while off the clock.

A proven track-record of real-world experience can often be much more valuable to an employer than a piece of paper from microsoft saying that you crammed well for a test. Working your way up and getting some good references along the way can go pretty far.

(I don't have any certs myself, in case you're wondering, but have managed to get chosen over quite a few certified people over the years)

For some very elaborate discussions on this exact subject, check out this link: http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/26/1739234
They posed the same question on slashdot a while back, which resulted in a pretty major thread with 1,100 comments.

Or the executive summary:

- Certificate instead of real-world experience: Bad
- Certificate in addition to real-world experience: good

Yep, I agree with what Prof said. Nowadays it really doesnt matter and depending on what type of company you're interviewing for, they could care less. For example, a company that develops soley in Java and Linux wouldnt even glance at it.



But like Smith said. It does allow for your company to become a Partner and thus allows you to get all the free software from Microsoft. Perhaps other benefits along with....of course depending on the company.

Most lower level certs are useless now anyways due to the fact that....everyone has one....that its almost a waste of time. Also, someone else mention this already but that it IS possible to get the answers without actually learning anything........but then again, it you got some free time, and some extra cash....then it wouldnt hurt to have one.

Not entirely true. Whether a qualification works for you or against you is down to the person who you are applying to for a job. The very fact this question was asked shows that there is more than one answer to the question. Some interviewers look down upon qualifications, there's a game studio near me that wont even touch candidates with a degree.

I call it the mini-me principle, where employers have a set of ideals they want their candidates to have but without realising it what they really want is somebody like them.

Because some employers insist on a qualification (because they have one and they think it is essential), insist on you not having a qualification (because they dont have one and begrudge those who do), or dont care (because they're so busy hugging trees and treating rabbits equally) you are therefor better off without a qualification as it will save you expense and time that could be better put to use blowing yourself up with a screwdriver and a new graphics card.

There is one case where qualifications like that, and various web programming ones, can come in useful. If you are self-emnployed and people come to your website or get your business card and are interested in you making them a website or doing some consultancy or programming for them. If they are "lay" people, they may think, oh well he ought to be OK at web design as he has a qualification in it. It adds more credence to the casual employer but not to the full-time employer.

Thats troubling to hear. I would hate to work there then. That basically means that all the hard work and effort put into school and studying would be useless....for that particular job.

They want self taught coders because they're after technical excellence not somebody who can quote the rulebook of Jackson Structured Design (for those that dont know, JSD is the 70's equivellent of object orientated design, without objects and certainly no orientation - it's what you get taught doing a BTeC in computing, useful!). There's merits to their decision and helps them get the right sort of people for what they want - it wouldn't work everywhere.

If you want a valid reason to hate them, that would be because they're owned by Microsoft.

Um... "illiterate" ;-)

Um... "illiterate" ;-)

Anyway, very true. "Computers do what you tell them to do, not what you want them to do".

Um... The punctuation you are looking for is a semi-colon. It looks like a comma with a dot over it, like this ";". ;-)