Kaplan IT Training Blog

Does Certification Prove You’re #1?

It’s that time of year when the football talk begins at the office. Recently a friend told me that his team was ranked #1 in the nation. What I want to know is, how is this possible? The team has not played a single game yet, so that team has not proven itself worthy to be #1. I feel the same way about tech job candidates. When applying for a job, you have to have a lot more going on than your tech recruiter’s hype. You have to prove that you are the #1 candidate. A certification is great, but the certification has to prove that you know your stuff.

If you have taken any certifications for Microsoft Office, you might be familiar with the Microsoft Office Specialists exams. These exams incorporate “Live-in-the-Application” technology. Test candidates are graded solely on their ability to perform tasks within Microsoft Word, Excel or Powerpoint. If you know how to do the tasks, you swim and pass. If not, you sink and fail. This is a great idea for testing – but it’s only implemented for the Office exams. It wouldn’t be feasible to give a candidate, say, a server farm to manage in order to administer a Windows Server 2008 exam.

Recently the friendly folks at Microsoft started to “kick it up a notch” with some of their exams by including simulation questions. Keep reading…