Any of you out there have any experience with obtaining a MCSE or MCDBA certification? I am looking into wether obtaining either of these will benefit me in the job market and wether to take all the classes myself or go to one of the local technical schools?
Any constructive thoughts would be helpful!
what do they stand for, what are they certifications for?
classes are expensive, take that into consideration.
-Soup
I got my MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) in NT 4.0 a few years ago. But looking back, I think it was a big waste of time.
There'll be Human Resource departments that'll list it as a helpful qualification for a job, and everything else being the same, it can't hurt. However, the technical people who actually decide whether you get the job are only interested in your "hands on" ability. The MCSE to a large extent, ignored "hands-on" and was only concerned about theory. Really, I barely learned a d@mn thing through all the work.
People I know of caught on to the certification a while back and even have a term, "Paper MCSE" for it, meaning all theory knowledge. I'd go through CD tutorials and hands-on training in any way you can (on your own, college class, etc...). Then you can throw it on your resume as real knowledge. That's the real 'gold'.
I'm not speaking just for myself, but what I've observed with top notch I.T. people. MCSE is seen as a supplemental qualification at best and nothing at worst. With probably a year's worth of hard, hard work and at least $100 per test (7 tests I think) and specialized MCSE books (probably $75-$125 per) to get it, I'd say screw it and so are most people nowadays.
Learn what you need hands on. Maybe get 2 cheaper computers (for 3 total) and teach yourself networking. I was given that advice before and wish I'd taken it. The working knowledge is what IT people want.
I'm working on MCSE 2003 at the moment, but my employer is paying for everything. I think that it is always a plus on your resume if you can put it on there. If you have some spare computes and plenty of spare time then you can do a lot of what you need to do on your own. If you can get into an organization that will pay for your training, that would be best.
I've been working in IT for ~10 years, the job market seems to be picking up a bit ... but it is still anemic.
DBA might be a better field, supposedly Longhorn - MS next gen OS will be database driven, so it won't be long before sys admins also need to have database experience.
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