During the dot com hype Help Desk or (IT) certifications gained great popularity among IT professionals and it was a secure path for someone to pursue when wanting to land a good job in the industry. But what about today, are they still relevant when pursuing a good job in the Help Desk industry? Let’s look at this question more closely.

Help Desk or IT certifications are important because they verify the skills a person has when it comes to do the job, and employers always want to make sure they hire the most certified and experienced candidate, and here is where I believe the trend has bended toward the latter. Some surveys show that employers now prefer candidates with real experience in technology, instead of paper certification with book learning. But with all other factors being equal certifications are the key to open opportunities to land a job.

One of the factors that still keep certifications alive is the expertise they suggest. Because when someone completes a certification program most likely has covered the general things required to perform the job well in that specific field. Let’s create a scenario for example when certifications become handy. Let’s say a company is hiring someone for a help desk entry level position to support hardware and software issues for their employees, and let’s supposed the hiring manager has two candidates for the job: one with 4 years computer science degree and one with a COMP TIA A+ certification, both without any real job experience. For this position is very likely that the candidate with the A+ certification will get the job, because even though the candidate with 4 years computer science degree might know a lot about computers in general, he might not know the details and specifics about hardware and software to perform the job like the A+ candidate does.

Nowadays it has become almost the norm of every IT company to create certifications and programs for their products. Novell was the first IT Company that started offering certifications for their products to insure people had the right skills to work on those products. It was actually Novell one of the first companies that recognized the link between product’s success and skills/education. To this innovation many companies have followed, the most famous are Microsoft, Cisco, Lotus, and Citrix etc.

When planning to start a career as a help desk technician is not recommended getting any vendor specific certification or training. COMP TIA offers neutral technical certifications in PC hardware, networking, servers, Internet, project management, training, Linux, security, home technology etc. COMP TIA is an association of IT industry with the common goal of standardized qualifications for professionals working in the industry. COMP TIA is recognized and supported by mayor hardware and software vendors like IBM, Dell, Compaq, Microsoft etc.

One of the top COMP TIA certifications is A+ and is a certification that anyone planning to start a career with the right foot in the help desk industry should look for. What makes A+ so special? What makes A+ distinguishable from other certifications is the widely acceptance it has received in the computer industry. A+ certification is backed by all the leading manufactures, vendors, service providers and professionals worldwide. A person with an A+ certification shows that has the knowledge, and customer service skills to support PC equipments and users.

Salaries for an entry level Help Desk support technician with an A+ certification ranges from 39K to 45K in the US as the graph below from salary.com shows:

As you can see the salary level is affected by the number of employees the company employs. The more employees it has, the fatter the check.

Network+ is another valuable vendor neutral certification for techies already in the industry wanting to tune up their skills. If you are already A+ certified, this is the next cert on the chain. It is intended for professionals with at least 18 to 24 months in the industry, but is not required. Anyone can take the test. Unlike A+, Network+ is a very easy cert that does not take much effort to achieve, but can enrich and give more value to your career greatly.

OK doc, I have A+ and Network+ certs what’s next? If you already have the A+ and Network+ certs under your belt, I think you are ready to give MCSE a shot. Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) is one of the most competitive certifications in the industry and one certification you should strive for. As you can see in the image below network engineers draw a good paycheck:

There are many more lucrative certifications from vendors like Cisco, Sun and Citrix which are worth pursuing if you want to climb to the top of the IT ladder.

The conclusion: yes, certifications are still worthy to pursue and they definitely bring value to a career.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.