5 Reasons Why You Should Get Certified.
It’s usually the old school IT folks who are 20 years into their careers that discount the value of certifications.
I’m calling you out!
You’re wrong.
And we’re going to work together and change that perception.
Think about this for a second.
Schooling costs an arm and a leg.
Single-income households are non-existent.
The middle-class is rapidly shrinking.
Degrees are increasingly becoming irrelevant.
The least you can do is support low-cost learning with no barrier to entry.
The most prominent organizations in the world encourage certificate learning across their enterprises…
Including Google, AWS, and Azure.
And they see massive gains across the board — talent, culture, financials, and so on.
Certifications have also evolved, significantly, over the last 10 years.
So dial in and hear me out.
Let’s focus on supporting continued education — put all your past experiences aside.
The world is changing faster than ever.
The world has changed, rapidly through digital transformation, and given the fact that long-distance learning has been exponentially catapulted into the world due to COVID-19.
Online learning is becoming smarter, more technical, and increasingly focused on real-world challenges.
The data available to this industry is richer than ever, companies are fine-tuning their exams and crowdsourcing the knowledge.
Exam-writers for non-agnostic certifications are usually employees of the company who specialize in the space.
Why do you think the Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure certifications are the top-paying certifications and not the CISSP?
They crowdsource the questions by leveraging employees who have the domain expertise and real-life experience to build the questions.
So while just reading and prepping for a cert is still largely theoretical, you get first-hand insight into the real scenarios professionals face.
We live in a remote world now. There’s no hiding from that.
Top 5 reasons why certifications matter.
1) Certifications provide theoretical knowledge with a low barrier to entry.
Jobs provide experience-based knowledge with a barrier to entry, that barrier is
Building a really good resume.
Needing 5 years more experience than the job actually requires.
Applying to a thousand jobs and repeating everything you wrote on your resume each time.
Networking like your life depends on it.
*Crickets chirp for a few months* then finally getting some calls.
Finally landing a job and panicking your way through the infinite stages of imposter syndrome.
Certifications provide theoretical knowledge, and there’s no barrier to entry. Even if you don’t meet the qualifications to be accredited upon passing, you can still take any of them and learn the content.
It costs $100,000 of debt to go to school for four years and graduate not knowing what the hell you have learned.
It costs $60 to buy a book.
Pair it with lab-based training like Coursera or Qwiklabs and you’re golden.
Even better, build your own projects on the side or participate in volunteer work.
Become more well-rounded, do both.
2) Certifications offer diverse & underrepresented groups access to learning.
Speaking of a barrier to entry…
Men, let’s face it — we’ve had a lifetime of access to learning computing concepts and have easier access to careers in tech, access that individuals with diverse social identities traditionally do not. Tech has been a male-dominated industry, and that industry doesn’t just translate to the workplace.
It translates to how boys are raised at home, how they’re given access to technology, how they’re empowered by their parents, and how it’s perceived in the media — which as a result means there are many fewer opportunities for anyone else to get involved in the industry.
And by the way, my dear male tech friends, think about how you were introduced to computing. Most of us had access to a computer at home and the internet.
Hell, I was lucky I had a nerd uncle who had been in America for many more years than my parents. He’s the one who introduced us to computers. Had it not been for him, my folks were trying to figure out how to survive in America, not afford a computer…
Side topic — It boggles my mind that the internet is not an essential service.
Do you know how many people live under the poverty line and don’t have access to high speed internet? How many people don’t have decent computers?
How can we help people who are struggling grow, when they don’t even have access to the same tools we do?
The world went remote and suddenly we expected everyone to have a nice computer to do work, webcam, private place to work, and a high speed internet connection.
This is the type of inequality we as technologists need to think about when trying to make the world a better place.
Positions of leadership have also been predominantly held by men.
Certifications allow us to improve representation in our industry. Representation increases revenue.
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters
3) Certifications will make you a better communicator.
School, at least for technologists, is often a topic of debate where you have folks like Elon who will publicly bash public schooling, and then folks who won’t let their kids marry their lovers if they don’t have a degree.
In my opinion, while I didn’t learn a lot of any one thing in school, I learned a lot of loosely connected topics that help me become better at critical thinking, comprehension, communication, and problem-solving.
Certificates are the same.
You won’t get the CISSP and know how to design the encryption stack that your organization will employ in their public cloud.
But, all of those concepts you learned will help you understand these real-life problems easier and communicate them more effectively to your stakeholders.
Communicating complex topics to stakeholders the most valuable skill in the workplace.
I’ve worked with hardcore engineers who are really technical but don’t know how to communicate the issues. I’ve also worked with incredibly non-technical folks who understand the problem really well but nothing beyond.
Both challenges can cause problems within a scope of work.
Lead through influence — become a better communicator and a better problem solver with certifications.
4) Certifications help recruiters find you.
Hiring is a pain in the ass. It’s not easy. Especially when you start getting to more prominent companies that have a higher bar for talent.
A recent example, I was looking to hire a HIPAA Cloud Architect on the Google Cloud PSO team.
This person needs to have a solid architecture background in the public cloud, know the healthcare industry extremely well, be client-facing, and good enough to pass the Google interview gauntlet.
If you know Security & Compliance well, you know that most people are either purely Program Managers, or they are hardcore architects without customer-facing/program management experience.
So the solution — filter the cloud professionals that also have the Healthcare Security certification (HCISPP). If they have cloud experience and a healthcare certification, then surely they have worked or are working at a healthcare organization. Or, vice versa with healthcare professionals that have the Google Cloud Architect certification.
Certificates help recruiters find YOU. And your #1 job if you want career growth is to bring awareness to your work.
Beyond that, I also work with many partners — the Deloittes, Accenture’s, and so on.
Every enterprise organization needs partners to fulfill its objectives. Partners help execute objectives.
When I need to onboard security engineers who know GCP onto my projects, how do you think I sift through the candidates?
The easiest filter is to find who has the certifications. At a minimum, it’ll get you seen.
You’ll still need to be an expert, and that’s where pairing your certifications with hands-on projects helps.
5) Certifications increase total compensation!
Yes — I’m talking “gimme guacamole” at Chipotle money.
According to the Global Knowledge 2020 survey, the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect certification is the highest paying certification in the world…
Don’t expect to ask a company to give you more money for your certification, or even expect more money in general due to your certification. It doesn’t work that way.
Basically, the idea is, certified candidates are getting hired by more prominent organizations, therefore, the average salary for certified candidates is much higher.
Also, more prominent organizations encourage and offer certificate-based training to their employees, hence the higher average salary for certified vs non-certified workers.
Case in point — If you had an HCISPP, lived in the USA, worked on public cloud architecture, and had LinkedIn — my recruiter is probably qualifying you for a high-paying role at Google Cloud.
Top Salaries
I will help you get each of your certifications in 30 days or less!
There’s no asterisk, if I can do it, you can do it.
I’m going to give you the advice straight.
You need to do the work.
I won’t guarantee you’ll pass, but I damn sure know you’ll have a much better chance of passing if you follow my strategy.
I have a strategy I use to take certifications. My average certification time is 9 days. My longest certification prep time was the CISSP (28 days). My shortest was the HCISPP (2 days).
Some certs I’ve sat on without even reading material (CISM). There’s a method to the madness.
That’s what you’re all here for, but I’m going to spare that post next.
I believe in you.
I want you to believe in yourself.
Lastly, if you loved this article, please (YouTube Line) Like and Subscribe below! If you didn’t, tell me in the comments, I love critical feedback because it helps me become a better human.
*Lastly Lastly, if you want to become a Google Cloud Architect, or want a really strong reference guide about the life of a Cloud Architect, pre-order my book!
