What certifications are the most cost effective ?

I pose this question as I am in the position of looking for work. After spending close to the last 5 years working as a Technical Account Manager and then a Senior Merchant Risk Investigator (Fraud), I am once again looking to get back into the IT field. The majority of the jobs that I am looking at require either an M.B.A. or Cisco or Microsoft M.C.S.E. certification . I am not in a place where I have any disposable income to afford expensive classes such as these:

http://www.globalknowledge.com/training/coursepdf.asp?pageid=9&...

What in your opinion, gives you the most bang for the buck in terms of certifications?

Tags: career, certifications, cost

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Permalink Reply by John Roig on January 3, 2009 at 8:24am: Hello Jose,

I'm still in IT (19+yrs. now) and - as most of us do from time to time - I've thought about a 'career change.' Interesting to talk to someone who has done it. As far as getting back into IT - on the tech side the resume culling process does search for key phrases and the like: MSCE, CCxx - Cisco stuff. etc. The certs have their merits but having been in IT I suspect you know that they have their limitations too. It is a 'weeding out' process unfortunately - gotten 'worse' I'd say in the last decade.

To your question directly: PMP and things along that line offer the greatest flexibility while allowing you to get your foot in the door. Companies still search for these things (and use them as weed-out) but they allow you to get into IT areas where you can effect real business change - and avoid the highly-siloed tech fields (umm...your job is to squeeze and extra 5.3% out of a stack of enterprise QoS routers and switches). Well - that's my take and my not-so-subtle comments on the cert process. Good luck.....; ▶ Reply to This

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