The road to yet more certifications

You probably wonder why this blog has not seen much activity during the recent weeks. As it so happens I am finally trying to use my voucher for the SCJD exam which I enrolled for two whole years ago.

While doing it, a thought struck my mind: What are the benefits to me, to get a bunch of certifications?

Personally, I sacrificed lot's of free time getting a fair amount of certifications. I am the proud owner of two SCJPs (I believe it was for version 1.2 and then for for 1.5), SCWCD for Java EE 5 (which for some weird reason seems to be exactly the same as for J2EE 1.4), SCBCD for Java EE 5, a Project Management certification and - believe it or not - an MCP for .Net Server Component Development... Even though I am a Java Developer at heart, I have done some work with C# and at the time it felt right to get certified. You may call me pragmatic in that way. I use what gets the job done and even though Java gets the job done almost every time, I do prefer writing a Windows Desktop application with Visual Studio rather than Swing :-)

Anyway, back to certifications. I told you that I am currently sacrificing even more of my spare time to finish my SCJD and despite it being an exercise of following Sun's specification to the "T", I find it exciting to do something more involved than the usual two hour radiobutton-clicking.

So: What is the benefit? In my humble opinion, I think that a certification in itself doesn't hold much value compared to real-life work experience. However, I use it as a tool to indulge myself in the subject matter and possibly discover things, which I haven't previously known or which I was aware of, but never really had the time to test. After all, you never know what they are going to ask once you sit in front of "the" screen with a lot of checkboxes and radiobuttons on.

Being entrusted by my employer to interview some of our applicants, I rarely read the certification section of the CV and as it seems, neither does my manager. It's a "nice to have", so to say. Surviving a number of Java projects, however, gives a better indication of whether a person can apply their knowledge or not.

Nonetheless, having certifications at least establishes some sort of baseline. It tells me: "Yeah, he knows the language" or "good, he knows that framework" and together with your work experience it may give you the edge on a position you want to secure for yourself.

So, these are my thoughts and right now I would love to hear your thoughts on the subject!