April 3, 2007 at 8:05 am
Many moons ago when I held an NT4.0 track MCSE it was possible to study and pass the exams without necessarily using the products on a day to day basis. These days however I get the impression the focus has changed to a more practical approach making this more difficult.
Having worlked as a general technical architect for several years now I feel my "specific" skills are zero and I would like to get back to being a specialist. However, it seems to be a bit of a catch 22 that you can't get the job without the certification, but you can't get the certification without having tho job to get the experience.
Is this view realistic and am I being overly optomistic thinking I can become a technical sepcialist again by trying to become certified while not "doing" the job?
April 3, 2007 at 12:01 pm
my take is that is is a matter of opinion. I think it's much easier to get certified if you have the experience. That doesn't necessarily mean you can't get a cert with no experience, in fact, a lot of people do. I found that on my cert tracks, experience was the #1 thing that makes getting certs easier.
April 3, 2007 at 12:21 pm
I'll say this. I've taken the 441, 443, and 444 exams. In the case of 441 I went in pretty cold and passed. I've done a little work with ss2k5, but not what I'd consider necessary to pass the exam, but common sense skills were enough to guess on lots of questions, especially in the case study approach. For 443 I'd done a lot of research in prep for writing an exam book, so I was prepared. I deliberately failed once so I could retake it again and see more questions. This was last year when there was a free second chance offer. I didn't think it was that difficult, but I had prepared.
I just took the 444 exam, going in fairly cold. I was writing about security and it seemed that only 20% of the questions were in this area. While there were 2 or 3 I had no idea on, I thought that general knowledge would pass most of them.
I think you need to get the job and then the cert. Most people looking will hire you with a 1 year probation to get the cert. If you think getting the cert first qualifies you as senior, it doesn't. The experience factor will still show up even without the cert.
Send a nice letter, explain you are working on the cert, you have knowledge and get the job and experience first.
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