Your Boss Wants You to Get Certified—Find Out Why That’s a Good Thing

Recently I received a mail from Cisco with the text in the title of this blog post. Obviously I was curious, so I read it. The report focused on "The Impact and Importance of Technical Certifications: The Management View". You can get the report here.

There has always been and (more than likely) will always be a debate about the relevance and importance of certification. Cisco focuses on this from a general certification perspective and Cisco specific perspective looking at both the employee and the organization. When it comes to this debate, I'm on Cisco's side of the argument. I place heavy emphasis on certification during my interview of potential candidates and as part of my team members career development. Now if you are thinking interviewing with me and showcasing that you have a ton of certification will get you the job, unfortunately I can tell you from now it more than likely will not as I do more than just focus on those certs. The certs tells me you are interested in your career development and thus took the effort, it does not confirm that you have all the knowledge or are the best fit for the job.

Anyhow rather than getting too long winded and deviate from the main focus of this post, here are the 10 take away I believe you should focus on from the report. Fortunately or unfortunately, I agree with all that the report says:

1. Employees with technical certifications drive value.
2. Certified employees are more effective (improved service quality), drive efficiency (operational excellence and return on investments) and are more engaged (workplace satisfaction, attraction and retention).
3. Technical certifications helps your informal learning as well.
4. Certified employees advances the knowledge of their colleagues through mentoring, collaboration, project contributions, etc.
5. Certified team members teamed together provide benefits to each other and the organization.
6. Technical training and the resulting certifications are seen as strong medicine for many of our technology workforce ills.
7. Certified employees produce better results than their non-certified colleagues.
8. Compared to non-certified team members, certified team members complete their tasks 31 percent faster, makes 29 percent fewer error and reduces the cost associated with projects by 29%.
9.  Increased salary is typically a general benefit of gaining additional certifications.
10. Become certified (and become knowledgeable) and you will be rewarded either by your current employer or the next.

I believe the above represents some very excellent reasons as to why we should all strive to achieve our certifications (be it technical or not) in a timely manner.

If you are reading this and have an opinion on certifications, then drop me a line in the comments section let's continue the conversation.