Jeremy D. Miller -- The Shade Tree Developer

I agree that hiring should not be made on the fact the the developer has a certification or not. I also agree that it is great for personal growth plan, but nothing else. My certs never got me a job, but they did give me the confidence to personally display that i know what i say I know.

The worst part about the cert process is that they can be circumvented by 3rd party sites like TestKing.com. They're a complete rip off and ruin certifications for real test takers who have actually studied hard to pass.

Its a shame, but its reality.

Most people that i know don't bother with them unless their company foots the bill, which makes them even less meaningful in my opinion.  

A colleague of mine took an Microsoft cert exam and passed it and inadvertently discovered that the questions in the exam and those in Braindumps are verbatim.

He's been seeing those in Braindumps for years and Microsoft, and other have been telling the local MS offices about it, so they could've and would've known about this, but still did nothing about it.

Jeez,  every time I turn around you seem to post something that makes you think that you and I share some wierd connection in event scheduling.

I find in giving interviews, the candidates who flaunt the certs, often have the least amount of real world experience and understanding of the universe.  They're quick on the gun to explain the ins and outs of the api's as you say, but when faced w/ more real world types of scenarios, they typically stumble....

which is when I crush their dreams and send them back to cert school...  ;)  excellent smithers.

We've just gone through the interview process and I definitely agree that certifications should not be used as part of the hiring decision. However, I realized that HR firms definitely look for certifications. I think it's because these HR consultants have no work experience in IT, so they have to filter on something. It's a shame. In the end, the ability to describe the details of prior project work provides a better picture than reciting from memory what you know about APIs.

I know that I wouldn't want to work in an environment that only looks at certs. Communication and great personality coupled with solid foundation in basics is better in my opinion.

I agree, but what about those businesses that look for certifiactions because they need a certain number of people to be ceritified in order to get the benefits of being a Microsoft partner?  

geekswithblogs.net/.../114282.aspx

I'm not saying that people evaluating on the basis of certs are places you want to go, but that might be part of the motivation, and thus the problem?