Computer Certification: 2007 in Review and a Peek at What Lies Ahead

By Anne Martinez

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Recently some of the certification vendors, not just the biggest, seem to have developed a new dedication toward remedying this. This is evident in some of the previously mentioned developments, such as the formation of the ITCC, but how many times have we seen similar promising announcements only to have them fade silently away without ever achieving significant implementation? Hopefully this time will be different. Certainly they must already have a long list of plans, but they, as well as individual certification vendors, might also want to consider some of the following steps:

• Provide concrete incentives of some kind beyond current marketplace forces. This may seem superficial, but the market can be slow to respond and sometimes needs an extra push, even if a somewhat contrived one. These incentives should be career related, i.e., not trips and merchandise, because people don't commit to time consuming and difficult tasks like training and testing in order to obtain a personal material reward, unless it's more money. Exactly what these incentives might be should be ascertained through careful research (see next item). Perhaps it would include regular access to free or inexpensive professional advancement or training opportunities, significant discounts on products or technical support to employers, or something entirely new. Certainly some of these incentives exist already, but they need to be bigger, better, and more widely promoted so that everyone knows about them and they become a driving reason rather than a nice aside.
  
  

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• Perform some heavy focus group activities with IT professionals to find out, if a certification were developed from scratch, exactly what they would want and expect it to do for them. Often such information is attempted to be gathered from test takers, but those are people who already chose certification. They will have good input, but the people who are not choosing certification need to be tapped as well. Rather than each vendor attempting this independently, pooling resources and quarterbacking via an organization such as the ITCC can make this much more possible.
  
  
• Renew activities to demonstrate to employers that certification is good for business and isn't just a way for their employees to buff up their resumes. Already studies have been done showing increased ROI and so forth when employees are certified, but many of these are years old. Also, specific incentives such as those mentioned in the first item but from the employers perspective should not be overlooked.
  
  
• Continue to defend the integrity of certification through exam security.
  
  
• Continue with testing deals and promotions to bridge that gap between training and testing and pursue ways to get individuals to take that first certification exam.

2008

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