Protect Your Tech Career with These 'Recession-Proof' Certs
Tens of millions of workers got clobbered earlier this year by the collapse of the U.S. economy precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. There's no guarantee of recovering or restarting the careers that got put on hold, but one thing that could help, whether you're intending to reskill completely, or just to reinvigorate your existing skill set, is getting a certification. Before you go getting just any old certification, however, you might want to consider reloading with one of five highly-affordable tech credentials deemed "recession-proof" in a new post this week to the official blog of IT training provider CBT Nuggets. There's no certification that guarantees employment in a flourishing economy, of course, let alone in an environment where millions of individuals are competing for jobs, but the recommendations put forth by blogger Knox Hutchinson constitute a solid list, especially bearing in mind that each of his selections has an exam cost of less than $400. Two of the certs listed are managed Cisco, and the others are offered by Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and CompTIA.
Woz U Teams Up with University of Phoenix for Apprenticeship Program
While we're on the topic of seeking out transformative learning opportunities with the goal of re-entering the workforce, a new partnership announced this week aims to help tech novices bolster their skills and education. The University of Phoenix, the grand daddy of modern for-profit institutions of higher education, and Woz U, a technology learning institute launched in 2017 by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, have created an apprenticeship program aligned with the U.S. Department of Labor to help individuals advance their qualification and preparation to enter technology jobs. The goal of the program is to help individuals learn while at the same time working in STEM jobs and collecting a salary. Woz executive Chris Coleman said in a press release announcing the new program that it will help people advance their skills and find employment while also shrinking the tech industry's problematic and long-established hiring gap. "Truly offering relief to this talent-starved industry, at scale, requires collaboration from the private, education, and government sectors," Coleman said. "This apprenticeship model is the game-changer we have all been looking for."
CompTIA: All Tech Workers Are Data Stewards
If you are an information technology (IT) worker, then somewhere along the line your job either directly or indirectly intersects with data curation and data protection. That's the point that James Stanger, chief technology evangelist for tech industry association CompTIA, wanted to make when speaking to a group of tech workers about information security. Stanger got some kindly no-nonsense blowback over his choice of the word "custodian" to describe the role that every IT worker has in the overall labor of data assurance and wrote a new post to the CompTIA blog to explain himself further. If you work in IT, then it's probably worth taking the time to read through what Stanger has written and think about your own position in the data food chain.
Where In the World Is Your Ideal Tech Neighborhood?
Over the past handful of years, the team at Certification Magazine has given a considerable degree of thought to the question of what places in the wider world are the best places for IT professionals to seek work and establish careers for themselves. The first article in the series, which has remained popular since it was published, identifies six countries that are particularly friendly to those individuals who are carving out their own IT niches in the world. A follow-up articled pinned down six further countries that IT professionals should consider, and then an article in the January 2020 issue of the magazine singled out the six best U.S. states to incubate budding IT careers. Now there's a feature from the recent July 2020 issue of the magazine that follows up the January list with six additional U.S. states deemed especially worthy of consideration. If your tech career is currently in a fluid or moveable phase, then you might find something here to tempt you to spread your wings.
That's all for this edition of Certification Watch. Please keep your certification news and tips coming to the GoCertify News Editor.
