Bonkers

[Adrian Howard]

On 9 May 2007, at 14:11, Dean Wilson wrote:
[snip]
> What's your view on technical certifications? Do they add to an  
> applicant?

Depends on the certification. For example I've found that folk who  
boast about their brainbench perl certificates are generally not very  
good at perl, so they act as a negative rather than a positive.

I've possibly unfairly generalised this to all brainbench  
certificates :-)

They'll also count as a negative if they're completely unrelated to  
the work the person is applying for. Not so much because they've done  
something unrelated, but because they've not taken the time to figure  
out that it's not relevant.

Java certification (on the other hand) does seem to act as an  
indicator of folk who have some vague clue about Java.

That's not saying I'd ignore folk without Java certification - but  
that it helps more than it hinders. Especially if I have hundreds of  
applications and need to throw half o them away.

> More or less than academic qualifications?

Depends on the degree. Depends on the certificate. Depends on the  
job. Could go either way.

Adrian