Why don’t let the candidates do a examination?

In my company, After candidates passed the CV check, we usually ask the candidate do one or more technical examination and evaluate them based on the result. In the interview, we only need to check the passion, the teamwork, the problem-solving and negotiate skill. Of course, we have to ask a few of technical questions.

Why even bother with those certifications anyway in the first place.

My personal reason is as simple as to gain knowledge. Usually each cert (CJP, CJD, MCSD.NET etc.) requires very specific objectives and that serves well for people who really want to learn about new things. Besides, for the MCSD.NET alone, which I start studying during my junior year, I did both want to learn about .NET (the university only has Java courses) as well as gain some advantages over other new graduates. On the other hand, I do know some people who take the certs because they just want to be certified (not to gain knowledge) and look good in the eyes of managers who could not assess their real capability. Because their goal is not to gain knowledge, but to be quickly certified, they take whatever quick-fixes they have a grasp of (brain-dump material produced by TestKing is an example)

I used to know some, who just with high school diploma, and happened to pass one of those certification test, automatically claim to be an ‘engineer’

That’s not the worst thing, though. I’ve even seen people with high-school diploma, without any certification, call themselves software engineer. Regardless, unless there are legal requirements for software engineering profession, I guess people can always call them software engineers if they think they are coding something.

Misleading and not a true measure

It is only misleading if the interviewers who cannot assess a candidate’s real capability and have to rely on the certs. On the other hand, I agree that it is not a true measure, since people with the same cert can perform very differently But that is sometimes true for university degree though - you can see very high-GPA graduates perform badly in their professional roles. The only true measure, to a certain extend, can only be discovered by competent interviewers via a good interviewing process, not via looking at the cert or degree.

Employers often do not care about them

I don’t know. That maybe true. Even if some do not care about the certs because for the knowledge sake, they may care because that’s what a MS or Sun Partner is supposed to :-).

3. Real contributions to an organization are always worth more than those silly titles.
4. Go ahead and take the tests anyway. Just be judicious. When you’re good, respect will come no matter what.

Can’t agree with you more!!!

By your argument :

“Look, I am not defending MCSD.NET, in particular, and certifications, in general, here, but while it is the truth that being certified does not necessarily mean someone is a good developer, it also does not mean that s/he is a BAD developer. In fact, I’ve seen many good as well as the very bad developers with certifications.”

My response is: Why even bother with those certifications anyway in the first place. I’m not very up-to-date with all those certifications being offered currently. But for a while, I know there are some with the word “Engineer” in the title. I used to know some, who just with high school diploma, and happened to pass one of those certification test, automatically claim to be an “engineer”. Very misleading and disturbing. My overall take on certifications:

1. Misleading and not a true measure.
2. Employers often do not care about them.
3. Real contributions to an organization are always worth more than those silly titles.
4. Go ahead and take the tests anyway. Just be judicious. When you’re good, respect will come no matter what.

Besides, just as great and mediocre people can get out of college, great and mediocre people can be certified as well - and the problem is even worse in the certification arena since it is much easier for a mediocre developer to gain certification (a few exams, easily cheat [either via loose monitoring or via braindump materials], can fail and register another quickly) than getting graduated (a few dozens of exams, a 100+ assignments, and hardly cheat).

Having said that, I do not say certifications have no value, they do have, as long as people gain good knowledge through the process of studying for them, and they value that achieved knowledge more than a piece of paper (or title). By acknowledging that there are bad as well as good “certified professional”, you’d better off interviewing a candidate without looking at his certifications list.

And note that I myself have a bunch of certifications (e.g. MCSD.NET, CJD), but I do not care whether the interviewers think highly of them or not, since I can always prove my knowledge (and I’d like them to allow me to prove it - instead of assuming me at the same level of some mediocre “certified professionals”).

Should not be distracted or overrate value of certification and should not ignore it.