[Linux-aus] LA Certification

[Adam Nielsen]

> As it happens a colleague of mine recently put the view (paraphrased 
> slightly) "If I see lots of certifications it's a bit of a warning flag 
> - why not put that time into contributing to a FOSS project they care 
> about?" a fair point I thought.

This matches my own experience too.  I presume a lot of certifications
focus on memorising things rather than applying knowledge, because
people with a lot of certs often seem to struggle to come up with a
solution for a problem.  If you tell them the solution they can usually
implement it no problem, but you often have to hold their hand a bit
while you're trying to work out what the solution might look like.

There are of course exceptions to this - some of the well known Cisco
ones seem to be fairly good, but there are many more that don't really
tell you much about a prospective applicant's true capabilities -
especially if you're reviewing job applications and you've never heard
of them before!

So if you want to create a new certification, the most important thing
is going to be its reputation.  Each person you certify is going to
advertise the worth of your certificate, so if you give them out to
anyone it's going to be worthless.  But if only the best are capable of
passing, it could easily become a sought-after meaningful indicator of
a potential employee's abilities.

Cheers,
Adam.