{"id":196,"date":"2007-09-03T16:22:07","date_gmt":"2007-09-04T00:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/testblog.sapien.com\/index.php\/2007\/09\/03\/certifications\/"},"modified":"2007-09-03T16:22:07","modified_gmt":"2007-09-04T00:22:07","slug":"certifications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/03\/certifications\/","title":{"rendered":"Certifications!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Those of you who go back a few years with www.ScriptingAnswers.com<\/a> probably remember that I at one time considered launching a VBScript certification of some kind. A lot of excellent feedback, some logistics issues, and frankly the cost of doing so (a good exam can run upwards of $250k to create, believe it or not) made me put the idea on a back burner.<\/font><\/p>\n

I’m still not sure the idea’s ready for the front burner :). However, I have to admit that I’m completely out of touch with how folks feel about certifications in general, these days. I used to be pretty “connected,” but frankly am not in a position where I personally need to take exams much, anymore, and I haven’t worked in exam development for about three years, now. So I’m curious: Do certification exams still matter?<\/font><\/p>\n

Folks sometimes ask me if Microsoft is producing a Windows PowerShell exam. I have no idea. I suspect not; they tend<\/em> to produce more task-based exams, so I’d expect to see PowerShell questions, for example, on an Exchange 2007 exam – and I think I’ve been told that there are<\/em> such questions out there (or maybe it was PowerShell content in the Ex2007 training – I’m not an Exchange guy, so this one slips my mind a lot). But, more to my point – if there were<\/em> a PowerShell exam, would you care? Why?<\/font><\/p>\n

I’ll tell you my perception – which is very possibly misinformed: Folks care a lot less about certifications these days, unless they’re very high-falootin’ exams like CISSP or something, which is perceived as very difficult to achieve (I’m not trying to imply it isn’t difficult, as I’ve never taken it, but folks definitely tell me “they hear it’s tough.”)<\/font><\/p>\n

So I’m very curious, and I hope you’ll indulge me: Hop on to http:\/\/surveys.sapien.com\/poll.asp?z=1<\/a> and take a quick poll on the subject. I promise to share the thrilling results with you when the poll’s over (say, October sometime – I have a crazy travel schedule in September). And get some of your peers and co-workers to participate, too – I’m really interested in seeing what folks think, and the broader a cross-section we get to take this, the better a feel we’ll all gain for the industry’s take on this issue as a whole.<\/font><\/p>\n

One area I’m especially intrigued by are third-party exams (like, CompTIA and others), as well as niche-technology exams. I’ve used PowerShell as an example for some questions related to that, since it’s currently an emerging and somewhat “niche” technology. I realize every technology has its own merits, so just think about PowerShell in particular for those questions and answer as best you can.<\/font><\/p>\n

The survey doesn’t require a login and doesn’t ask for any personal information. Thanks for helping me satisfy my curiosity!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those of you who go back a few years with www.ScriptingAnswers.com probably remember that I at one time considered launching a VBScript certification of some kind. A lot of excellent feedback, some logistics issues, and frankly the cost of doing so (a good exam can run upwards of $250k to create, believe it or not) made me put the idea on a back burner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}