Get Certified

Certifications are expensive—both in time and money—and the return on investment isn't always obvious.

IT pros and their employers who often foot the bill—in time and money—for the certs have to ask: Does it pay?

In most cases, yes, experts say—for many reasons. Not only does it make you more marketable in general, but it could mean the difference between a cost-of-living raise or a bigger boost. What’s more, it shows your employer that you are continuing to update your skills, making you a candidate for promotion.

There are three basic categories of certification: Product Certification, Technology Certification and Business Process Certification.

Product- and Technology-oriented certifications are provided by specific vendors and are designed to show proficiency in a specific product or technology family. Hiring managers differ in what they consider valuable, but VARs and SIs selling their technology services to others value these credentials above all others , since they must prove to customers that their IT staff is credentialed in key areas, said Patrick von Schlag, president of Deep Creek Center, an enterprise training and skills development company in Clarksville, Md.

Although there are dozens or hundreds of such certifications, von Schlag said the top certifications include:

• Cisco’s Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE)
• Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
• Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD)
• Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)
• on the Linux side, go for Red Hat and Novell SUSE certification

The third, burgeoning category is business process certifications—IT best practices, project management and business analysis. Most prominent among them by far is ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library), a methodology that provides eight sets of management procedures. Other hot business process certifications include the Project Management Institute’s PMBoK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) and PMP (Project Management Professional).

If it’s money you’re after, focus on security and architecture/project management certifications. According to a new study from Foote Partners, a Vero Beach, Fla., consultancy, certifications in those two areas were worth the most. The average certification pay premium for a certification in security is 9.2 percent, while it is 20.3 percent in architecture/project management. Going down the list, the premium for networking (mostly storage area network) certifications is 8.4 percent, 7.9 percent for database, 7.2 percent for systems administration and engineering/network operating systems, 7.1 percent for programming languages and application development, 5.6  percent for Web development ,and 4.2 percent for training and general IT certifications.

Do It for Yourself

Beyond pay, however, it’s most important to focus on certifications that make sense for you, where you are in your career and your aspirations, von Schlag said.

“If you are entry-level, your goal should be to build some basic capabilities, so go to CompTIA, or get entry-level Cisco or Microsoft certifications,” he recommends. “At the midpoint it’s less about technology expertise and more about business capability, so go for business process certifications.”

It doesn’t matter so much the size of the company as the size of the IT shop when it comes to how much certifications are valued, said David Foote, CEO of Foote Partners.

“The smaller the department, the less insistent they are on certification, because people wear a lot of different hats. They want more of a generalist with strong, demonstrable skills,” he said. “The larger the IT department, the more they want IT certifications because each person is more specialized.”

Even if your company won’t pay for your certification, do it on your own, von Schlag advises.

“Not only is it tax-deductible, but it will pay off during the course of your career,” he said. “It will keep you rounded and more employable.”