September 11, 2013 at 2:09 am
krowley (9/10/2013)
But once again work experience is much easier to lie about than a certification. At least with the certification you have Something you can verify about a potential job seeker.
Easier to lie about on your CV, maybe, but once you're called for interview the fact you haven't done what you say you did becomes very obvious indeed to anyone even remotely familiar with the field.
September 11, 2013 at 5:09 am
paul.knibbs (9/11/2013)
krowley (9/10/2013)
But once again work experience is much easier to lie about than a certification. At least with the certification you have Something you can verify about a potential job seeker.
Easier to lie about on your CV, maybe, but once you're called for interview the fact you haven't done what you say you did becomes very obvious indeed to anyone even remotely familiar with the field.
It's no easier to lie about experience than about certifications. The number of degrees (or other certifications) claimed on CVs that were never actually obtained is quite high, and most employers don't bother to check because they think people will have more sense than to lie about something so easily checkable, not realising that many cheats will bank on them thinking like that. There has been headline news when people in very senior positions in famous companies have been discovered, years or even decades after the event, to have lied about their certifications. Someone (can't remember who) tried to estimate the number of undetected cases and came out with a shockingly high number.
Skip the rest of this if you don't want anecdote.
No-one has ever asked to my MSc certificate or any of the various certificates certifying me as a professional mathematician, professional IT practitioner, and professional engineer. Nor did anyone ever ask me for a BA or MA degree certificate, possibly because they were aware that Oxford didn't issue such certificates (there were other, more reliable, methods of checking those qualifications, which as far as I know no-one ever used to check my degrees) but more likely because they assumed no-one would lie about degrees or other certifications on their CV. (Oxford now does issue such certificates, and sent me BA and MA certificates approximately 45 years after I was granted the BA degree - don't be confused by the name BA, all Oxford first degrees are BAs whether in Arts, Scientific, or Engineering subjects.) So it looks as if people could get away with claiming all those qualifications. When I taught (briefly) research students at a university in the late 60s I found it impossible to persuade people not to call me Dr Thomson, although I had no doctorate, so probably I (or anyone else) could have gotten away with falsely claiming a doctorate. Checking is clearly pretty uncommon. Even worse, of course, checking by looking at certificates is pointless, they are too easy to forge - but the fact that Oxford now issues certificates is probably the result of potential employers (who probably think the effort of writing a polite letter to the university and reading the reply outweighs the risk of hiring an lying, unqualified cheat) asking for them.
Tom
September 11, 2013 at 7:52 am
Jim P. (9/10/2013)
And if you worked for a company that did annual performance reviews, include those as well (as appropriate).
Never considered that, that is a very good thought.
September 11, 2013 at 8:45 am
krowley (9/10/2013)
I still don't see a lot of good answers to the basic question. If I wanted to apply for a job as a DBA (mid level or higher) and you were in charge of looking over my resume etc to decide if I am qualified enough to interview what can I do to prove I am qualified outside of a certification?
I suspect few companies will, prior to an interview, check your certs or even your references. Perhaps we should use certs as a simple lie detector - do you claim a cert you don't actually have? Does anyone know how we can, with nothing but a resume, actually check that easily? Better yet, how to automate that check? If you lie on your resume, I'm going to mark you as "never hire" immediately.
What I do look for first is correct spelling, no more than 2 pages (headhunters and recruiters screw up both of those criteria when they edit your resume - demand to review and correct what they're sending out before they do so, every time). Fail either of those (or fail badly if a recruiter is in the mix) and I toss your resume in the first few seconds; I don't have time to waste.
If it's a full time position, that you don't switch jobs too often (contractor positions, I don't care).
Show what languages and technologies you know, and how well (roughly) you know them - this means I can test your knowledge in the interview (note: most interviewees claim they're good at X, and know very little). Show a broad range of languages and technologies, indicating a willingness to learn different things - again, you'll be tested on a set of them.
Show that you've used the skills I'm actually looking for in your work experience section. Again, I'm going to test that in the interview, and many people fail. No, you don't know what I'm actually looking for based on what HR used as a job description.
September 11, 2013 at 8:52 am
Jim P. (9/10/2013)
Actually the best bet is to build a portfolio. The portfolio will have a sections with job history, certifications, education, work samples, and in my case a section on my military history including my USAF performance reports. And if you worked for a company that did annual performance reviews, include those as well (as appropriate).
A lot of companies operate really awful performance review systems which are organised not to evaluate good performers and excellent performers as excellent and hopeless performers as hopeless and poor performers as poor and merely competent but nothing special people as merely adequate but to ensure that people are slotted into boxes representing percentiles of performance of staff within their department and treat people as if that evaluation determined where the fit in the distribution of performance across the profession as a whole. Such systems are designed to produce "good" or "excellent" grades for something like 25% of people, and "poor" or "hopeless" grades for another 25%, leaving 50% graded as "merely adequate". It's probably a bad idea for someone who has been mixed up in one of those to include performance reviews in his portfolio, unless he is in the bottom half of performers but not in the bottom quarter: almost everyone in the top 50% of performers will be made to look less good than they are in such a system; it's even worse if the company doing this has managed somehow to recruit a high-powered team, because someone in the to 50% of such a team will be in the top 25% of the profession as a whole, but stands an even chance of being evaluated as providing "merely adequate" performance.
Some (fairly rare) companies have more sensible annual performance evaluation systems, in those cases it may be sensible to include them in your portfolio.
Tom
September 11, 2013 at 9:00 am
L' Eomot Inversé (9/11/2013)
Some (fairly rare) companies have more sensible annual performance evaluation systems, in those cases it may be sensible to include them in your portfolio.
To sum up:
Your resume is untrusted.
Your previous performance reviews are untrusted*.
Your certifications are untrusted.
Your references are untrusted*.
Interviews not done in person are untrusted.
No, this really doesn't help anyone, either looking for a job, or hiring, and thus has it always been.
*Unless they actually came from someone who is trusted, and were checked through a trusted means (i.e. not just the applicant/recruiter).
September 11, 2013 at 9:23 am
Nadrek (9/11/2013)
To sum up:
Your resume is untrusted.
Your previous performance reviews are untrusted*.
Your certifications are untrusted.
Your references are untrusted*.
Interviews not done in person are untrusted.
No, this really doesn't help anyone, either looking for a job, or hiring, and thus has it always been.
*Unless they actually came from someone who is trusted, and were checked through a trusted means (i.e. not just the applicant/recruiter).
Yeah, that's about what I was feeling about now. There is no good way to prove to a potential employer that I am basically competent at what I do.
Hence the need for some kind of REAL certification system that can say "this person has the basic knowledge and skills required to do these things" and a way to match these to real job requirements.
September 11, 2013 at 9:41 am
krowley (9/11/2013)
Nadrek (9/11/2013)
To sum up:
Your resume is untrusted.
Your previous performance reviews are untrusted*.
Your certifications are untrusted.
Your references are untrusted*.
Interviews not done in person are untrusted.
No, this really doesn't help anyone, either looking for a job, or hiring, and thus has it always been.
*Unless they actually came from someone who is trusted, and were checked through a trusted means (i.e. not just the applicant/recruiter).
Yeah, that's about what I was feeling about now. There is no good way to prove to a potential employer that I am basically competent at what I do.
Hence the need for some kind of REAL certification system that can say "this person has the basic knowledge and skills required to do these things" and a way to match these to real job requirements.
BINGO!
Hiring is very frustrating and we do everything to get the best candidates we can, but yes we get good salesmen sometimes and don't discover until they are unable to complete the task. You are just selling us on a set of goods and we hope we get the right set. I have had only a few instances where someone came in and we discovered they were oversold, but we have also had some that were more amazing than sliced bread, however they turned out to be incapatible with the team in the long run and we had to decide talent isn't worth a team of upset developers.
September 11, 2013 at 10:04 am
Antares686 (9/11/2013)
BINGO!
Hiring is very frustrating and we do everything to get the best candidates we can, but yes we get good salesmen sometimes and don't discover until they are unable to complete the task. You are just selling us on a set of goods and we hope we get the right set. I have had only a few instances where someone came in and we discovered they were oversold, but we have also had some that were more amazing than sliced bread, however they turned out to be incompatible with the team in the long run and we had to decide talent isn't worth a team of upset developers.
While there are personality tests out there I somehow doubt any test can really tell you if a particular person has a personality that is compatible with a particular existing team.
September 11, 2013 at 12:48 pm
krowley (9/11/2013)
Antares686 (9/11/2013)
BINGO!
Hiring is very frustrating and we do everything to get the best candidates we can, but yes we get good salesmen sometimes and don't discover until they are unable to complete the task. You are just selling us on a set of goods and we hope we get the right set. I have had only a few instances where someone came in and we discovered they were oversold, but we have also had some that were more amazing than sliced bread, however they turned out to be incompatible with the team in the long run and we had to decide talent isn't worth a team of upset developers.
While there are personality tests out there I somehow doubt any test can really tell you if a particular person has a personality that is compatible with a particular existing team.
Exactly right, and much as you can try and find this out in the interview process well beforehand, the bottom line is a lot of people tend to change over time anyway. I have seen these kind of personality transformations personally many times through the years. So, there is no real way that I know of to guarantee this in the interview process or guarantee they won't change 6 months to a year after they are hired. You just don't know what people are dealing with in their personal lives many times. Walk a mile in someone elses shoes... Anyway, people, always tend to put their best behavior out there at first TO GET THE JOB. No kidding? That's the REAL world that we all work and live in unfortunately, so best to just deal with it. 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
September 17, 2013 at 5:48 pm
Some years ago I took a sample of the standard MCDBA (or whatever it was called) test. I quit in disgust when it asked "How many tables can a SQL Server database contain?"
September 18, 2013 at 5:04 pm
bcb (9/17/2013)
Some years ago I took a sample of the standard MCDBA (or whatever it was called) test. I quit in disgust when it asked "How many tables can a SQL Server database contain?"
That's a nice example of utterly pointless knowledge that, if one needed it, could easily be looked up; and certanly isn't going to be needed often enough to be worth learning to avoid the necessesity of that look up. In other words, something which is absolutely suitable for a "brain dump" and also absolutely useless as a test of how competent someone will be.
So it's a perfect exampleof how utterly meaningless certifications at that level are.
Tom
September 18, 2013 at 5:22 pm
L' Eomot Inversé (9/18/2013)
bcb (9/17/2013)
Some years ago I took a sample of the standard MCDBA (or whatever it was called) test. I quit in disgust when it asked "How many tables can a SQL Server database contain?"That's a nice example of utterly pointless knowledge that, if one needed it, could easily be looked up; and certanly isn't going to be needed often enough to be worth learning to avoid the necessesity of that look up. In other words, something which is absolutely suitable for a "brain dump" and also absolutely useless as a test of how competent someone will be.
So it's a perfect exampleof how utterly meaningless certifications at that level are.
+1 True dat!
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
September 18, 2013 at 6:29 pm
L' Eomot Inversé (9/18/2013)
That's a nice example of utterly pointless knowledge that, if one needed it, could easily be looked up; and certanly isn't going to be needed often enough to be worth learning to avoid the necessesity of that look up. In other words, something which is absolutely suitable for a "brain dump" and also absolutely useless as a test of how competent someone will be.So it's a perfect exampleof how utterly meaningless certifications at that level are.
That type of question is unfortunately common in the sample tests, from MS and others, never seen anything like that in the actual exams, SQL 2000 or anything later. Sample exams!=real exams. They should be, but they're not. I've looked at practice exams from MS after having written the real exams they're supposed to help prepare one for, and they're often worse than useless with too many memorisation questions, which don't appear in the real exams.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
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