Took my first Microsoft Certification today and passed with an 867 (yea I could have done better). But hey I'm happy, I can add this to my resume and I feel pretty good about it.
During my preparation I ran across a lot of blogs arguing over Certs vs. Experience. What I found is that even though I feel very confident with my skills I did pick up a few new things that I was not aware of prior to my certification path. A lot of those things were new to me because I have never been exposed to them at work. For the most part I could figure out nearly every question that was presented to me in the exam if I could just have a default Web application project open with Visual Studio. I had a completely different outlook on certs now than I did before. Here are a few certification vs experience questions I wanted to answer:
- Is getting a cert worth it? Why? Yes. I believe the process of studying for the exam and reading the literature related to passing the exam gives you well rounded knowledge of the subject area. You'll probably pick up on something you didn't know before.
- Would you hire someone with less experience and a cert or more experience and no cert? More experience and no cert. This is because although the cert is "proof" that you know your stuff a seasoned developer has been exposed to much more than just questions and answers. In the programming world we all know how brain-breakingly dynamic an environment can be.
So that's my take on the whole cert vs experience scene. Anyways! If you're interested in taking a cert here are some of my personal recommendations:
- Get an exam prep book. The exam prep books go over what you will be tested on, source code, samples and study questions. The book will tell you how Microsoft wants you to answer the questions.
- Take a skills assessment test on Microsoft Learning: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/assessment/default.mspx - This is a great way to prepare for an exam. The only issue I had with this is that it does not tell you which questions you had wrong. It only states what you should improve on. However it does give you many resources such as books and instructor-led training that will help you focus on the areas you need improvement.
- I stumbled on a great site that was loaded with practice questions: www.certyourself.com - Here you get to go over the answers to the questions and they give you explanations as to why the answers are right or wrong.