Ask Slashdot: How To Prove IT Knowledge Without Expensive Certificates? 186
Posted
by
timothy
from the use-these-stickers-and-sparkle dept.
from the use-these-stickers-and-sparkle dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I'm starting my Ph.D in psychology this year and plan to finance this period with IT freelance work, mostly building websites with Drupal and setting up Linux networks, servers, etc.. Now I have a little problem: Since I never studied ICT nor followed a course that resulted in a certificate, I can only prove my knowledge by actually doing stuff or showing what I've done so far. Unfortunately that isn't always sufficient to convince potential customers. So I was wondering what other slashdotters do. Are there any free or cheap alternatives to get certificates or other more convincing ways to prove your IT knowledge?"
Show em your previous work. (Score:5, Informative)
Been a developer since 1999, no degree, no cert (Score:4, Informative)
1) User groups, conferences: network network network
2) Volunteer to speak, and put that up on your blog
3) Oh yeah, start a blog. Blog regularly
4) Build your own sites/sample sites
Good approach to getting work: build site, find clients later. Most websites aren't that different. Pick an industry (say, air conditioning repair). Build a generic air conditioning repair site. Then go pitch it to those businesses (Google and start with the ones with current ugliest site); they'll always have you make customizations.
Re:med school gives you real knowledge (Score:5, Informative)
"I would call this misleading. It think the quality of the people they accept to some of the schools is lackluster, but if you're a good student (i.e. one who is willing to question and go beyond the actual coursework), you can get quite a lot out of those types of schools."
I think this reply is misleading. It misses the boat in at least two ways:
First, the quality of the people they accept is completely irrelevant. The quality of the people they graduate is the only thing that matters.
But as for the second point: actually, most of them -- if you want to be honest -- are low-quality schools. They are primarily designed to milk the students for as much government money as they can, then dump them out the door.
Don't blame the students for this... the schools' advertising, promises, and application procedures are outright predatory.
Re:How to prove medical knowledge? (Score:4, Informative)
Certs are an indicator that someone can learn information in a formal setting.
Not always. A lot of certs are cram-and-barf and all they really indicate is that you can hold the information necessary to pass the test long enough to pass the test. Many of the better-known certs never require any formal setting at all. And all too frequently, the information necessary to pass the test is not the information that the daily job requires. I've seen too many practice exams that focus on obscure features, decoding code that's so awful that in real life, the person inheriting it would be more likely to ignore it and rewrite it (after assaulting the original author), or revelling in quirks best left alone.
Holding a lot of certs indicates that you have an aptitude for acquiring certs, but that's not a position that's commonly hired for.
The only certs that really impressed me were the RHCE and CCNA, and that's because they closely mimic the kind of things people actually do on a routine basis and hence need to be able to do well.
Conversely, I've never seen a programming cert that impressed me, because an industrial-grade real-world software system isn't something you can whip up in a 2-hour test session - anything realistic would take weeks or longer (despite what the boss/users think). The only "cert" I'd accept for that would be experience. And people have been known to fudge on the experience.