IT Certification: Hire the Real McCoy
by Laurel Hyatt
If you screened
in an applicant for an information technology job who said on their resume, “I know Windows XP, Oracle, and can do a cartwheel,” the last skill would be easy enough to test in an interview. The first two would require you to practically do gymnastics to figure out if they really did know the software.
HR professionals and non-technical hiring managers are at a distinct disadvantage when recruiting IT professionals. Unless you ask them questions fed by your IT department with a crib sheet of answers, chances are you will have a take a candidate’s word for it.
Seal of approval
But there is another way. The IT community—both employers and professionals—is working hard to set up standardized tests to certify IT professionals as the real McCoy. When you see that accreditation on someone’s resume, it’s like a seal of approval that they have the technical skills to master the software.
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Evan Leibovitch
President, LPI
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“There are so many new technologies that are coming out, it’s just asking HR a bit too much to get into the geek world and know the details of what’s Java, what’s Linux, what’s this, and what’s that,” says Evan Leibovitch, president of the Linux Professional Institute (LPI), a non-profit international body based in Brampton, Ont. that administers exams to certify junior and intermediate system administrators on their knowledge of the Linux operating system. “What professional certification does is it makes that role much easier on the HR department. You don’t necessarily need to know the technology you’re hiring from, if you trust the certification body.”
And recruiters should trust LPI, Leibovitch says. For one thing, its exams tend to be tough—participants have a 50% failure rate, he says. “It’s our intention to make sure you don’t just walk off the street, take the exam, and pass it. If you don’t know your stuff, you won’t pass. That’s important for us in terms of getting the respect of HR. If HR is to respect certification such as LPI, they have to be reasonably confident that we’re not just going to let anyone pass.”
"Narrow" skills
But Leibovitch cautions against hiring IT people entirely based on having a certificate. The LPI exams measure a “narrow” (although important) set of technical skills. They don’t assess “soft skills” such as communication or management. “Anybody that hires somebody solely on certification deserves what they get, which is generally not good. The approach that we take is that certification is part of a ‘balanced breakfast.’ It doesn’t replace a good interview. It doesn’t replace checking references. It’s part of the whole package in picking the right people.”
Nor is holding a certificate a substitute for education. LPI doesn’t offer training, and anyone can take the exams without preparing for them, although Leibovitch recommends taking some Linux courses from private training institutes or community colleges. He predicts that more Canadian universities will offer shorter computer courses lasting around one month to help IT professionals prepare for such certification tests, to fill the gap between one-week private courses and four-year university degree programs. Still, passing the LPI exam is the final arbiter of whether someone is proficient on Linux. “Where somebody got their training is less relevant than the fact they know their stuff,” Leibovitch says.
While LPI is a non-profit organization since Linux was developed by the IT community, most IT certifying bodies are run by the software companies that created the programs, such as Microsoft or Novell. Their principles are the same: a certificate tells a recruiter that the candidate knows what they’re doing.
Even in a skills shortage where employers may not have the luxury of being choosy when hiring IT workers, it’s still a good practice to look for accreditation on job candidates’ resumes. “You don’t deal with a shortage by hiring people that don’t know their stuff. If that’s the case, you might as well just pick people off the street. Even in the case of a shortage, you still have jobs that have skills requirements and either people meet those requirements or they don’t. Otherwise, you’re just hiring with your eyes closed,” Leibovitch argues. “When there is a surplus of people for a particular job, the certification certainly helps whittle down and makes the selection criteria easier.”
Since the IT field doesn’t have legislation to control access to the profession like doctors, lawyers, and engineers, certificates are the next best thing to separating the wheat from the chaff.
Laurel Hyatt is Managing Editor of Workplace Today®.
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