RE: Increasing certifications on oracle database, could increase reliability on dbas

I was trying to stay out of this one, but I must admit that I (being an OCP) take offense to that last comment so I'll have to stand up for all us OCPs :-)

I certainly agree that nobody should ever be hired based on certifications alone, but to go to the opposite extreme and say that someone should *not* be hired just because they *are certified* is completely ridiculous.

I think those who take the initiative to really read the documentation (aka RTFM - as posters are so often told on this list) to familiarize themselves with the product in the process of studying for the OCP are the ones that truly benefit from it. It helps to make them more aware of the different features, functions, commands, utilities, etc. that are available to them, which they may have never been exposed to if they only learned on the job from the senior DBAs. For example, when I first started working with Oracle - the old DBAs were still using utlbstat/estat on 8i and didn't know a thing about statspack. On 9i, they were still using manual memory management and rollback instead of auto undo and pga_aggregate_target. I learned about all the new features, and much more, in my OCP training - and then of course built on top of that with years of hands-on experience.

There is no substitute for in-depth personal interviewing to find out what a job candidate is really made of. Usually you can tell within about 5 minutes of talking to a "DBA" if they are worth making an offer to or not. Personally, I wouldn't even consider whether or not they are certified in my hiring decisions.

Regards,
Brandon

> -----Original Message-----
> From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
> [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Janine Sisk
>
> I could swear I read once that Jeff Bezos of Amazon said that
> Oracle certifications are very handy, because they help them
> figure out who
> *not* to hire. I've looked since and have never been able to
> find a citation, though, so it may not be a legit quote. I
> agree with the sentiment regardless.
>
> janine
>

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