Microsoft again offers free certification exams to failures Microsoft looks like it's made its “second shot” free certification exam offer just about permanent. “Second shots” are available to those who fail Microsoft certification exams, despite the tests sometimes succumbing to six-year-olds. If you flunk out the first time, Microsoft and its examination providers don't ask you to …
... unless you are in a very narrow band of places, isn't having an industry certification, particularly one from Microsoft, proof that you are a failure?
I mean you either understand the basic principles behind a certain technology in order to build up from that to any product in the field in short time, or you specifically do the least amount of work by studying exam question for version Y of product X. Few people take such exams when they already know what they are doing.
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If there is no tie-in with a license as with other professions such as engineers, physicians and lawyers, it is mostly there for recruiters to use as a check box when shuffling through resumes/CVs. I happen to work in an area that requires a number of certs, but my experience is that there is little correlation between being able to obtain one and being able to do the job. Alas, I will have to obtain two more in the near future.
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... unless you are in a very narrow band of places, isn't having an industry certification, particularly one from Microsoft, proof that you are a failure?
Between a competent professional, and the interview for the job they want, stands an army of recruiters and HR "professionals" with zero understanding of what is written on either the role spec, or the applicants CV. Certs are just a way of bypassing some of their talent deficit, as opposed to signifying anything of your own.
I first did mine back in the dot com boom because my then employer got busted by FACT and signed up to the program as part payment of penalty, and because of the cheap/free licences it entailed. As .net was box fresh, certs were the only way to prove you knew it, as nobody had any real experience.
When I became MCP (Windows 2000 Server), it was a useful exam in that it taught a broad range of general stuff (RAID, DNS, DHCP etc).
I looked at updating to Windows Server 2012, but now the exams have become just a case of learning a load of PowerShell.
Not for me.
The focus on PowerShell is down to the fact that in a lot of areas (most, I reckon) the advanced configuration is no longer accessible through the GUI. And, to be fair to it, PowerShell is pretty useful once you've gotten to grips with it.
The Windows Server exams still require you to have a pretty good understanding of various concepts before letting you past - the fact that you're using Powershell to do it doesn't negate the fact that you need to understand how the technology works. There's some tedium involved in the nomenclature, admittedly, but if nothing else it's a way of proving you do in fact know what you're doing and don't have any enormous gaps in your knowledge. (At least, when priced at £99 per exam with a free resit if necessary. If they moved towards Oracle-like pricing they'd be told to GTFO...)
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I recently completed the MCSA 2012 (having done the MCP and MCSA 2003 many years ago).
The final exam was ridiculous. I had five attempts over 12 months and my scores (until the fifth attempt) were getting lower: 620, 630, 520, a gap of 10 months, then 450. The 450 was especially galling as I'd done a lot of study for it.
The exams were just getting harder, with steadily more emphasis on obscure details of the OS and PS cmdlets. I just passed the fifth attempt with 700.
There's little requirement to understand concepts, it's just about knowing MS products is minute detail.
I'll never do a MS cert again. I intend to stick to vendor-neutral certs from now on.
I've passed seventeen Microsoft exams over the years, and although the entry level ones are easy enough, when you've forked out £120 of your own money (seeing as your employer is too stingy) and you fail (as I did three times on one particular stinker) then yes, give me a damn retake. Why I get charged VAT on learning in this country I don't know - rant rant rant #ripoff Britain
Yes, a clever six-year-old can pass the Clicking on Word 2010 exam - let them try 70-293 or 70-291 and they'll have nightmares for years.
Everyone thinks they know their stuff but when you need to pass an exam you are pretty much forced to learn the lesser-used bits as well. I did the NT4 exams back in the day and made a point of implementing everything I was learning on some test servers. For a short period in my life I did actually know what I was doing. Although having said that I couldn't agree more with AMBxx, the NT4 track had a lot of useful generic networking,not just learning product features A to Z.
My then employer went certification crazy in the early 2000's. I gained various and numerous certifications on MS, CISCO, etc... and ITIL certification to service manager level. Without exception these certifications were a waste of time (except certain small areas of the ITIL certification). They taught me very little about actually doing my job, they just caused a lot of stress and wasted time obtaining them. There is no substitute self-taught skills, experience and common sense - none of which you will get from these certifications.
Learn Linux! It will see you in much better stead in the long run. Most good companies have way more Linux than Microsoft, especially financial organisations where you will earn a lot more money working for them.
I would rather everyone learn Linux and become a competent dev/ops guys so that they can build solutions and not just buy off the shelf products which is what Microsoft certified guys do.
....and I will just leave this link below - it is nice being an expert in the same kind of operating system that runs on the most powerful computer in the world - well actually most of the most powerful computers in the Top500 list by a huge majority - and also what runs on a humble Raspberry Pi :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianhe-2
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