Archive for the ‘Certification’ Category
February 12th, 2009 by Ivan Pepelnjak
Anyone who has ever had the "privilege" of interviewing a certified individual with purely theoretical knowledge appreciates the value of hands-on tests. The creators of certifications in the IT industry (including Cisco Systems) have responded by including more and more hands-on exercises in the certification exams. Unfortunately, Cisco decided not ...
Posted in Certification, Remote Lab Exercises, Training | 1 Comment »
February 3rd, 2009 by Ivan Pepelnjak
Readers who commented on some of my previous certification-related posts have complained about the vagueness of exam questions. I have to agree with them; I've seen my fair share of dubious questions in the exams I've taken. For example, when I was developing EIGRP and BGP courses for Cisco, my ...
Posted in Certification, Training | 1 Comment »
January 30th, 2009 by Tilen Mlakar
Before I started working for NIL as a Cisco Systems Instructor, I lectured at a local Cisco Networking Academy (CNA) as an academy instructor. When I came to NIL, I found out that CNA was not very well-known among my new colleagues. That’s why I decided to emphasize some differences ...
Posted in Certification | No Comments »
December 24th, 2008 by Ivan Pepelnjak
Brain dumps are the biggest threat to the certification industry these days, significantly devaluing certifications that rely primarily on multiple-choice answers. Similarly to the threat-prevention measures adopted by airport security (read the insightful analysis of their behavior from Bruce Schneier, a renowned security guru), IT vendors are responding with high-tech ...
Posted in Certification, Training | 5 Comments »
December 19th, 2008 by Ivan Pepelnjak
Numerous companies use certifications to screen job candidates. Even if all the caveats associated with this process are given, you might encounter candidates who have multiple high-level certifications but cannot differentiate a router from a box of cheese. How can you identify (and reject) such people?
Posted in Certification, Training | 1 Comment »
December 16th, 2008 by Ivan Pepelnjak
My previous certification-related post described how some companies use certifications to filter job applicants for networking-related positions. Should you follow that example? If you're in a country with a saturated job market, where the number of applicants far exceeds the number of job postings (consider yourself very lucky if you're ...
Posted in Certification, Training | 3 Comments »
December 4th, 2008 by Ivan Pepelnjak
Recent blog posts indicate that, in at least some market segments, IT certifications are becoming a new barrier to entry: companies require a specific set of certifications in their job offerings and use those requirements to filter the candidates who are invited to the initial interview. Obviously, IT vendors pushing ...
Posted in Certification, Training | 2 Comments »
November 25th, 2008 by Ivan Pepelnjak
I received an interesting comment on one of my knowledge/certification-related posts:
"I used to think that certifications were a useful indicator of knowledge or at least initiative, but I'm changing my mind. [...] I feel like I've gotten a lot out of studying for certifications, especially CCIE, but I'm starting to ...
Posted in Certification, Training | 1 Comment »
November 21st, 2008 by Ivan Pepelnjak
Let's assume that you're the manager of the internetworking team for a large enterprise network. You've just decided to migrate less-critical sites in your network from traditional (expensive) WAN offerings to IPSec running over the public Internet. Your internetworking architect has worked with the vendors to select the best technology ...
Posted in Certification, Training | No Comments »
November 11th, 2008 by Marjan Bradesko
Recently I have seen numerous discussions in various blogs and forums, particularly in those related to Cisco Systems Career Certifications. Heated discussions about why, what, how – even if? So I asked myself, how do I see my own certifications?
I'm a certified individual.
I'm an employee of a Cisco Gold Partner. ...
Posted in Certification, In general, Training | No Comments »
