Published on June 27th, 2020 📆 | 5159 Views ⚑
0Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts and Certs Bearing the Promise of Fat Paycheck
- Written by Ed Tittel
- Published: 26 June 2020
Ed Tittel encounters another article linking huge salaries to certification ... and beats it roundly with his "But" stick.
Every now and then a big, fat obvious target comes along. I have to admit that these things are like pinatas for me: I just canât resist grabbing a big stick and taking a few swings. Today, the target comes courtesy of clearancejobs.com, a website that aims specifically at job seekers with U.S. government security clearances.
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By way of explanation, this typically means former U.S. servicewomen and -men, who obtained their clearances while in some branch of the military. Alternatively, there are sometimes longtime Department of Defense contractors, whose employers work on their behalf to shepherd them through the rigorous and often years-long process of obtaining such clearances.
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I have a lot of respect for these people, especially for the ones who have served our country on the front lines. I want to be crystal clear that my rant against the story Iâm about to describe (and deride) is by no means meant to reflect badly on those folks in any way, shape or form. Now buckle up and somebody give me a blindfold, because here we go!
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The Title Says: 'Top 5 IT Certifications That Will Get You Paid'
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The clearancejobs.com story comes from VMware expert Greg Stuart and makes no bones about its orientation. The tail end of his lead sentence reads â ... in order to stand out and get paid, IT certifications are what you need.â The beginning of that sentence also observes that âhands-on experience goes a long way in showing that you have the chops to do the job you are applying for.â
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Mr. Stuartâs premise seems to be that, while hands-on experience is important, IT certification is what makes a telling and vital difference when it comes to getting hired into a high-paying IT position. He then goes on to list his picks for the top five such credentials, along with a brief description of each credential and an assertion as to the âaverage salaryâ that comes with it.
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Here's his Top 5 table, abstracted from the story, and presented by ascending order of purported pay (or pay range, as in one case):
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Sponsor /Â Credential / Average Salary
Microsoft / Azure Administrator Associate /Â $125,993
(ISC)² / CISSP / $141,452
Amazon / AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate / $149,446
VMware / VCP or VCAP / $130,000 to $150,000
Google / Google Certified Professional: Cloud Architect / $175,761
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Where did Mr. Stuart get his salary data? How did he calculate his "average" figures? He doesnât say. As somebody whoâs compiled a lot of this kind of data for hundreds of stories, I can tell you how we do it, and offer my hopes that Mr. Stuart took a similar approach. Step 1 is to visit four or five of the leading job posting sites â lately, that means LinkedIn, Indeed, SimplyHired and GlassDoor.
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Step 2 is to scrape all the positions posted that mention a specific cert, extract salary data, and use that to calculate an average. See, for example, my team's February 2020 story, Best InfoSec and Cybersecurity Certifications 2020, or the companion piece that explains our methodology in detail: How We Pick the Best Certifications.
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Every Job App Tells a Story
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Alas, certifications are only a part of the overall story that a personâs job application (and the information obtained during the interview process) tells about them. My knee-jerk reaction to stories like Mr. Stuart's is to gently remind readers tempted to chase down a credential that appears in such a listing that a certification does not define the individual.
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Rather, the question to ask is: âHow would this certification fit your current job history, technical interests, and prior and current experience?â Iâm not quibbling with the choices Mr. Stuart has made, or really with the numbers he reports. Indeed, all of his choices are valid and the salaries and pay ranges he reports look like theyâre in the right ballpark to me.
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But the implication is clear: By obtaining one of these certs, you too can make the kind of money that appears as the average salary listed with it. Is that a valid implication? The frustrating but generally applicable answer is almost always some form of, "Maybe yes, maybe no."
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Salary is a function of location, educational background, prior experience, and "local" market conditions â an amusing concept all by itself in our ever-more-work-from-home-oriented employment sphere, but thatâs a topic for another story.
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People in major metro areas whose work experience, certification portfolios, and technical interests tell the right story will probably earn even more than the number reported in Mr. Stuart's average salary estimates. People in less densely populated parts of the country (or, more to the point, whose employers operate in such locations) will definitely earn less.
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Salary is, in fact, a highly nuanced number that reflects a great many factors. One reason for the high numbers for the items shown in Mr. Stuartâs table right now is a function of supply and demand: There are more employers looking for people who hold such credentials than there are credentialed professionals available to meet the demand.
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Both cloud and security (mostly cloud) expertise are in extreme demand right now. I just wrote in a Technical Brief for HPE yesterday that â70 percent of companies surveyed report that they are hampered in meeting their business and technology goals by a shortage of cloud experts to fill open positions.â
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Working from that premise, itâs not hard to understand why the Azure, Amazon, Google, and VMware elements made Mr. Stuartâs list.
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On the Other Hand ...
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But mere certification â and I apologize for putting those two terms together so wantonly, but thereâs hopefully some method in my madness â is not by itself enough to get a person hired for positions that pay more than $10,000 a month (and sometimes, a fair amount more than that). It takes time to get hired into such high-paying positions, even in a sellerâs market.
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Moreover, those who enter the intake path for such positions are going to be carefully scrutinized to make sure that they not only talk the talk, but can walk the walk. A big part of such scrutinization is making sure their prior experience is directly relevant and meaningful to the job at hand.
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Why is this? With big salaries on the line, companies tend to fill those positions slowly and carefully, because of the downside of making a hiring mistake. Simply put: It can be devastatingly expensive to make the wrong hire, because it often takes a year or more for such people to become fully productive in a new position at this level.
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As Mr. Stuart himself acknowledges âreal-world experienceâ counts a lot. I agree with that, and I also cautiously agree with his premise that âadding certain certifications to your resume will enhance your chances of landing a dream job or even boosting your salaryâ (emphasis mine).
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But gosh, the overall picture of a personâs career history and trajectory still matter a lot. If youâre going to pursue a certification, they take time, cost money, and usually require serious and considerable effort to earn.
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I can't stress this enough: If youâre going to make that level of investment in yourself by chasing a certification, then you need to be quite sure that it fits in well with your prior work and educational history, plays off your experience, and takes you someplace youâd like to stay for a while â in addition to maybe bumping up your take-home pay.
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Iâve said this before, and Iâll say it again: the thrill of a bigger paycheck fades pretty quickly, as your outflows expand to match your inflows. But the ability to wake up in the morning and actually look forward to going to work is something that will sustain and nourish your mind and spirit over the years, as well as enhance your bank account. Choose wisely, grashoppers!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ed Tittel is a 30-plus-year computer industry veteran who's worked as a software developer, technical marketer, consultant, author, and researcher. Author of many books and articles, Ed also writes on certification topics for Business News Daily, and on Windows desktop OS topics for TechTarget and Win10.Guru. Check out his website at www.edtittel.com.
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