Professional Certifications - More Important than Ever

As short as 6-7 years ago, having your MCSE or CCNA was almost a guarantee to an administrator role with a hefty salary in the IT market. Candidates with certfications were highly sought after and were being offered management positions. This article will show you how things have changed.

Candidates with certfications were highly sought after and were being offered management positions and were recruited by many suitors.

This is when things began to change, people began hittting the books and labs and realized the importance of having the qualifications to bank in on the growing technology market and dot com craze. The market became flooded with certified professionals who were hungry for knowledge and success. The salaries began to drop and most analyst and administrator roles suddenly required and MCSE to even get an interview. Saying you have an MCSE does not even raise an eyebrown anymore, the only way to set yourself apart from a crowded IT market is to continually keep studying and attaining more and more certifications and qualifications. But is there an end in site?

This is the question that seems to be haunting IT professionals in this day and age. We are studying and getting those certs that we need to get the jobs we want, but will we ever stop studying and will any number of certifications ever be enough? At the moment, the answer seems to be no. With Microsoft, Cisco and every other hardware and software vendor constantly updating their software and their certification programs, even the most skilled professionals will have to keep up deep into the future with the new products and the new age of technology. If one decides to stop studying, they will be left behind in a game that seems to be gaining steam and competitors.

All of this is not to say that work experience is no longer as important as it used to be. Having a job with hands-on experience is still as important as ever. All of these certifications are useless unless you have a position where you can actually put these skills into use in the real world. So the task has become even more difficult, not only do you have to keep working your full-time jobs, you will have to make time after work and on weekends to study and further your education in the field that you are already working in.

So the message to all of you people out there deeply immersed in your Cisco press or Microsoft select textbooks at 2am, cramming for the next in what seems to be an endless line of upcoming tests on your schedule is: keep your heads in the books, in order to stay ahead of the game, you're going to have to keep studying and taking standardized tests deep into the future. About Author

Robert Vartanian is a skilled IT professional who runs a Los Angeles based Business consultancy named RSV Consulting ( http://www.rsv-consulting.com ). He graduated from the University of Southern California in 2002 with a B.S. in Business Administration and has since become an IT professional who has worked in two countries, has countless IT certifications and is an expert in Technology management and budgeting.

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