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That's frankly a fascinating response. I have certs because my boss asked me to get them, as they play a part in his business' ability to obtain partner status
by jpitz 4y ago
That's frankly a fascinating response.
I have certs because my boss asked me to get them, as they play a part in his business' ability to obtain partner status with the various cloud vendors.
It is confusing to me that this chain of events would lead you to dismiss me out of hand, or make value judgements about what type of person I am.
- primax 4y agoI've heard that comment once or twice but never from someone who actually has experience hiring people
- mountainriver 4y agolol I'm a principal engineer now and previously and EM with tons of hiring experience
- dimmke 4y agoThis makes me curious. I have 3 AWS certs, that I was required to get because I work for Amazon. I put them on my LinkedIn (I'm proud of them, they were hard to get) but haven't considered putting them on my resume. Are they really that bad that I should consider removing them from LinkedIn too?
- mountainriver 4y agoI mean I'm just one guy with an opinion. I see them sort of in the same vein as CompTIA, and I prefer to hire people that think on their feet and can solve problems quickly using whatever skills may be required for the task. So generally I'm looking for creative problem solvers that do open source work and learn as they go on their own. I've just seen over my career that people who play the cert game are usually on the other end of this spectrum. I'm obviously painting in broad strokes here How I build teams has worked really well for me, but there are lots of great ways of building teams that create value which are likely very different from mine.
- ensignavenger 4y agoI've been involved with some hiring, but not a lot... and I would tend to agree that I wouldn't reject a resume just for listing certs on it. If I see a resume with experience and some cert listed at the end, I would not count it against the person. Now if their resume primarily focused on how many certs they have and not on experience, I would think they are entry level at best. If I am looking for entry-level, I may still give them a shot though.
- jpitz 4y agoI have experience hiring people.
- rnk 4y agoI have lots of experience hiring people. Usually the people with certificates don't have much experience actually doing work or they have narrow capability. The cliche is putting them on your resume is not an indicator of general capability. 25 years ago there were tons of people with novell netware engineer and similar things for various technologies, but it wasn't a good interview signal. I was looking for software engineers though, and even though we were on windows at the time mostly, I didn't care about certified windows developers, people with that type of cert were not usually good devs in general. I even worked on helping to write the test for sql server, and I didn't see a point to getting certified myself and I authored part of it ;-) I think it's really hard to get started in tech, and you can of course get benefit from actually studying the technologies and tools you'll be using in your job ;-) A certification is really good if you have a very specific use case and you need someone for a narrow type of work. I almost never want to hire someone for a narrow use case though. But if I was hiring contractors to fix something very specific on only aws say, then maybe it would be useful. Of course I'm just some random person on the internet; getting a few certs might help at the start, listing things on your resume that you worked on is much better as an aid to getting interviewed and hired.
- mudrockbestgirl 4y ago> It is confusing to me that this chain of events would lead you to dismiss me out of hand, or make value judgements about what type of person I am. I don't think he's making value judgements based on the fact that you have certs, but rather based on the fact that you choose to put certs on your resume over something else, like an open source project. When people write their resumes they usually need to cut out things and include only the most important qualifications and experience for the job. So he's making the value judgement based on how you think about those certifications. They signal "this paper that anyone can get with a bunch of memorization and studying is the best I have" I share a similar opinion. I wouldn't reject someone who put certs on their resume just based on that, but to me it's a negative signal. The same goes for people who put MOOCs on their resume.
- mountainriver 4y agoexactly
- antisthenes 4y agoCerts take a single line on a resume. Sometimes people don't have the pedigree or the opportunity to prove themselves in a high value position, so certs is the only thing available to signal competence. The fact that many people (in this thread) look down on it is directly responsible for putting a glass ceiling over some people and reducing upward mobility. It's just bad judgment. I mean it's one thing to require them to do a skill test, but to outright filter them or toss their resumes in the bin is unequivocally shitty.
- danwee 4y agoIt's not about having them, it's about putting them on your Linkedin/CV. I have read tons of tech books (many of them way better than certificates on the same topics). I do not list them on my Linkedin/CV.
- drpyser22 4y agoWhat if you haven't worked with AWS, but managed to get an AWS cert as stand-in to get you a chance at a job which relies on AWS?