Before you spend a great deal of time, effort, and money preparing to pass an Oracle certification test, it’s important to decide whether or not passing the test matters to you. If getting certified won’t have any positive effect on your career, surely there are better things you could be doing with your time and money than studying for an exam that won’t mean anything to you in the end. I see people posting questions about whether a certification will help their career quite often on the Oracle Certification forums. Rarely do the people asking the question provide enough information about themselves to answer the question. Almost any certification will be valuable to someone. However, that someone may not be you.
When you seek an Oracle certification, you may be doing so to add a new area of knowledge to your skill set that you haven’t had before. Alternatively, you may already have this knowledge and are taking certification to validate it. Ultimately, you might be doing a combination of the two: taking a test in an area you’re familiar with, but gaining new information during the study process. From the point of view of helping your career, the impact of a certification is on the perception of the competence it provides. If an employer perceives that you are more skilled because you have a certification, then this has the potential to affect your career in a positive way.
There are three main means by which this can potentially affect your career:
- Increase your job prospects.
- Add to your job security.
- Improve your chances of receiving a raise or promotion.
With the above, it seems I have answered the question. Certifications are great for your career. You should go out and pick up two or three, right? Possibly. However, the information you need to make the decision is in the following paragraphs. What has been defined so far is the basic principle for obtaining certification. You certify yourself in a particular area of expertise to present yourself as proficient in that area. It will only help your career if experience in that area is perceived to be valuable. You have to ask yourself these questions:
- What job are you currently doing?
- What work have you done in the past?
- What job would you like to be doing in the future?
- What certification are you considering?
The answers to those four questions can help determine if a certain certification will be useful to you. As an example, I work as a DBA and PL/SQL developer. On several occasions I have dabbled in Java. I could code in Java if I had to, but I’ve never had enough of a need in my job to get really good at it. I have considered getting Oracle Java certifications as a means of learning enough for it to become a viable option in my development. However, I’ve been working with Oracle for over fifteen years and haven’t needed to know Java yet. Improving my Java skills just for certification would be pointless. I am a skilled PL/SQL developer, this is how I present myself to employers (current and future). Adding a Java certification would not increase your perception of my value. Putting that in the perspective of the four questions above. I am now a PL/SQL programmer. I’ve been one for years. I plan to be one in the future. Adding a Java certification is not likely to help my career at this point.
Conversely, if a certification is closely related to work you’ve done in the past or, more importantly, what you’re doing now or want to do in the future, it will almost certainly help you in your career. Human resources staff and hiring managers view certifications favorably. They’re a search term recruiters use when pulling up LinkedIn. As long as you choose certifications that make sense to you, adding a few to your credentials is likely to benefit your career.