Are entry level certs important to hiring managers?

[DGreen]

How much weight do you place on entry level certifications (e.g., A+, Security+, CCNA) for people entering the IT career field from a 2 and 4 year college?  Do they need to have these certifications on their resume to get the interview?  Are you hiring these folks?  What are your thoughts?

[Radioteacher]

Not everyone needs a bag of certs to land a job.  A few years ago we hired a person who has well-rounded skills in many of the areas we needed to fill a certain job. It worked out great and they succeeded in their position without certifications.  They were great with the Cisco CLI, monitoring, SAN, VMware, Windows AD administration, and phone systems.  All around a well-skilled generalist.  

For other types of people and positions, some certs are required but for this position their skill set was perfect.

Paul

[DGreen]

Well said.  I worked with a team that was made up of 12 people.  About 10 of them were people that someone knew.  I always stress the importance of having a good network.  Thanks.

[DGreen]

With no certifications, how did that resume land in your hands?  Were there few applicants?  Friend of a friend recommendation?  Thanks.

[cybersmitty]

There are pros and cons to any type of certification. I do believe that certifications are important, as they are a means to measure ones ability to articulate a specific subject and entry level certifications are especially important to see if someone has the foundational understanding if they decide to pursue a career field like cybersecurity. The cons that I am referring to are for those individuals that are excellent test takers but cannot apply the principles in a real world scenario. I have worked with folks in the past that were book smart or had photographic memory but didn't understand anything about the concepts they were attempting to learn. This same individuals also were able to accomplish certifications like Security+, CASP, and CISSP but would never truly get anywhere in the future because they always had to consult Google for the answers to simple problems. I do believe that these certifications are key to landing interviews but the interview should include an assessment of their skills to see if they match up. I would not hire anyone based solely on certifications or a well written resume.

[Radioteacher]

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@DGreen wrote:

With no certifications, how did that resume land in your hands?  Were there few applicants?  Friend of a friend recommendation?  Thanks.

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I would think that HR just sent most of the lot through for our manager to examine.  The person had over 10 years experience at a single company.  It was a law firm of over 120 lawyers and 3 or 4 in IT.  In short, they were short-handed and dealt with a high stress, low downtime environment for over a decade.   

Smart and tough.

Two interviews later we hired them.

During the second interview, they reminded me that we had eaten lunch together at VMworld in 2011 and met at a local VMUG.   

They were the best candidate for the job and now an asset to our team.

Paul Guido

[mwapemble]

Rarely. But they are often important to HR departments 🙂

[bobkorz]

How does one get an entry level job without experience when a career changer's previous experience is not counted? 

[cybersmitty]

Everyone with experience in something has experience in other fields. You just have to sell yourself and reword your resume to match what the employer wants and how it applies to you. For example, if you have years of customer support in retail, you can easily get a job in help desk/system administration. You work with customers, you are organized, you have great communication skills, and you are able to work well with others and accomplish set goals. These are just a few examples but the list can go on. Try to search the internet on how to apply your experience to any other field you desire. It will work out and best of luck to you.

[Karlos]

I've hired people with certs, and I've hired people with no formal qualifications but years of experience whom have left the guys with certs in the dust.

I'd like to say that for me, it's more experience that matters.  Unfortunately today there is usually some form of pre-vetting of resumes done by HR and this usually means those without any kind of industry certs are going to get pushed to the bottom of the pile.

It also depends on the cert.  Many on here will remember the days of Windows NT4 and the "paper" MCSE's.... guys who just sat a week course with an exam at the end and got their MCSE and this totally devalued the cert until Win2k was released and Microsoft made the exam much more experience/hands on focused and not just questions based on what you'd learned on the course.

You mentioned CCNA as an entry level cert however full CCNA isn't easy to get (at least it wasn't when i did it many many years ago).  I would say CCNA would demonstrate the user has a good fundemental understanding of networking with some specialization in Cisco technologies.

CompTIA for me are like the McDonalds of industry certs.  They don't really make someone's resume stand out for me.

[bhutfless]

If you are counseling people on what they need to do to enter the market, it will be hard to advise on a one-size fits all basis. If it were me, I would tell students and others wanting to break into the industry to look at the type of jobs or positions they are interested in (if they know - which is another topic altogether). Tell them to look at a dozen or so job openings in the field that are a good match to their interests, gather the list of certification requirements, and build out a plan from there. 

The bottom line is that if a certification is listed as a requirement and an applicant lacks the certification, most recruiting systems and HR teams out there will eliminate the applicant immediately. There is a very low chance those profiles will ever be seen by the hiring manager.