Do you need to get certified to further your career and your brand?

Certification refers to the confirmation of certain characteristics of an object, person, or organization. This confirmation is often, but not always, provided by some form of external review, education, or assessment.

There are numerous types of professional certifications. Some are required for particular jobs, such as a CPA being a requirement for working in the public accounting space, some are needed for climbing the career ladder such as those in the field of actuarial science, and some, while purely optional, can definitely help you get the next job.

Speaking to many hiring managers, it seems that the importance assigned to certifications when it comes to sourcing candidates for jobs varies greatly.  My strong belief is that certifications provide value in certain ways –

1. They indicate ambition – these certs take time, effort and money.  Hiring managers will see that you care about your knowledge base and are willing to expend some effort in extending it.
2. They demonstrate some level of knowledge and competency.  While most certifications are not practical in nature, they do require a high and detailed level of understanding in the “common body of knowledge” (CBOK) within the area of study.
3. They help the interviewer draw a baseline for the candidates they will consider for any given position.  Think about it this way – if the hiring manager was able to give you a detailed interview on how to configure a network router or create a pro forma balance sheet, they might not need to hire you in the first place.  View the certification process as being a pre-qualification interview.
4. Certification courses provide opportunites for networking with your peers and often lead to access to the hidden job market.

So, I think that the time and effort in getting certified is worthwhile.  Being certified won’t necessarily get you the job, but it may help find you a spot on the short list for an interview. Take these steps before, during, and after deciding to get certified:

1. Look at job descriptions for the kind of work you are seeking – if more than a third of them say required or desired for any certification or designation – go for it!
2. If your peers are certified, then you should be as well.
3. Assess the certifications that are available in your field – there is a balance between very common and very uncommon certifications.  If too many people have them, they lose value. If not enough people have them, you need to figure out whether the cert is very hard to get,  very new, or unknown.  Hard = valuable, whereas new or unknown, not so much.
4. Do a cost benefit analysis – some of these certs, between training, testing and dues can run to thousands of dollars – will you make thousands more dollars?

In a nutshell, if you do your homework, you can reap significant benefits from getting certified, just don’t focus on getting all those letters after your name; Instead, focus on a few key certs that align with your career goals and level. Don’t be Bob Smith, TMCTL (Too Many Certifications To List).

Good luck on your next exam!