Wednesday, January 21, 2009

John Doe, MBA, PMP, EIEIO

Just ran across a profile of an ex-colleague who had abbreviations following his name on a networking site.

We should all be proud of our educational accomplishments and certifications, and they certainly hold a place in the job-search process. But I find the addition of these attributes to be out of place in many environments (e.g. Linked-In, Facebook, and resume titles).

Joe Schmo, HS Grad, BSCS, MBA, PMP, CSM, MCSP, MCP, NCP

Let's remove the certification crutches and talk about what you're doing and how you add value.

- Cranky

1 comment:

Steve Moyer said...

Alternatively we could get create some certifications which have some (positive) correlation to skill or achievement. In the case of certs I've generally found that they have a negative correlation to skill. That's not to say that everyone who has them sucks, specifically the MS certs and the PMP have really been a better indicator that someone is a D-Bag than anything else. None of those are as bad as having taken the course to become a certified scrum master, which from every account I've heard is essentially just a pay for Acronym shakedown. It's possible to get a lot out of getting these certs, however if your goal is really self improvement(and not just marketing) there are better ways to spend your time. For example I know someone who got two months of one on one training to get three MSFT certs and came out the other side with no more knowledge of software or databases than a random person with no technical training. While it seems like you would rather talk about experience and achievement(I agree), any thoughts on how to make these acronyms useful?