A professional certification helps with your – “career prospects” mostly an entry level, if the certification is for a skill that’s mandated by an employer or an industry. For Example: It makes sense if a networking professional at an entry level and for operational roles has a CCNA or CCNP certification.
Experienced professionals can benefit from relevant functional and technical certifications, which aligns with their future work aspirations. Normally, for experienced professionals, a professional certification of any kind adds value to their career prospects, only if they are have been able to build on their conceptual learning by way of practice and application at a live workplace. So there is no substitute for live experience. A live experience or a “genuine” and “quality” internship for starters in the concerned area gives better and relevant learning. Also a live experience definitely helps you leverage any of your functional certifications in a better manner.
Multiple certifications and courses are not going to determine how well you are going to do in your career or what kind of opportunities are going to present themselves to you. Even if you acquire multiple college degrees and attend multiple courses, the same may not really lead you to a great career.
You need to know well , where and how the concerned certification and body of knowledge going to support you. The case with most fresh job seekers (especially those who miss the campus placements) is that they feel certification courses are one of the ways to make an inroad for any available job. The case with most working professionals is that they feel new certification programs may help open up – previously un-available opportunities for them. It does not normally happen that way.
What matters for employability in businesses and corporates today is learning orientation and awareness and expertise based on experience, experience that is well supported by any relevant acquired body of knowledge in any specialized area.
For self development: Learning , is an ever lasting process and we should never stop learning. You should really focus on building on and developing yourself on relevant body of knowledge that interests you and that aligns with your area of work. The body of knowledge could be built and augmented through any applicable method and not necessarily through expensive paid courses.
Don’t start accumulating certificates for the sake of ego enhancement and please stop living in a false hope that they would add the desired credibility and strength to your profile and your chances of better employment. Start learning to grow mentally and to start being more aware, try to get better exposure at work. Once the focus is on learning, and you are passionate about some thing, career growth comes along.
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Praveen is the Founder & Principal Consultant of KHEdge, a boutique HR & Business Process Advisory firm. Over last 15 years he has advised & worked with promoters, founders, business leaders, HR leaders in areas of - Business Strategy, HR Strategy, Organisation Design etc.