Re: Yet another certification question, with a twist

mlm_at_mintorealestate.com (MM) wrote in message news:<f18e04f8.0307142312.24b8216d_at_posting.google.com>...
> So I'm thinking about getting an Oracle certification. I realize that
> this is not necessarily a guarantee in the job market and many people
> differ on the real impact of an Oracle certification for employment.
> My background is mainly with MS Access and Web databases with
> ColdFusion, so I have some of the SQL basics down and a good general
> idea relational databases. But this is the extent of my related
> knowledge, besides one C++ course a couple of years back, which was
> good, but was a long time ago. So I feel that taking a couple of
> Oracle certification courses may be the easiest way for me to get
> exposed to the application. The certification itself is somewhat
> secondary. In fact, I was thinking of doing the Oracle9iAS Web
> Administrator track because there's only one test involved...(except
> that it doesn't seem as in depth as the DBA track, which is more what
> I'm familiar with, I think). I don't think I'd want to get too deep
> into the process, but go just to the Associate level to get my feet
> wet and then see what I can do on my own from there. Any thoughts?

your wasting your money. certification helps people who already have experience and can earn you more money. they do not really help people without experience. 9iAS certification alone is worthless. Now that certification appears to be useful when experienced DBAs do consulting work for people who need to setup 9iAS. It will not help you at all without 5 years experience.

There is no such as an entry level dba. Ill say it again. There is no such thing as an entry level dba. ITs a myth put forward by the training companies who want you to spend $1000s on their worthless courses. Now there were entry level DBA jobs back in 1995, or earlier. Not anymore. The market is tight. You will often find 5-10 people with 5+ years experience applying for the same job.

Nearly all DBAs these days get started by being a programmer or system engineer and then taking an interest in DBA work by helping out a DBA or their on a small project and someone needs to do it. They do that for 3-5 years at that company.

your money is better spent at a state college on a computer science degree or if you have an undergraduate degree on a masters. Its not a guarantee of a job, since the market is tight, but its better than the 0.0% chance you will have doing the certification route.

btw, you can test this. Go to all the job boards. put up a fake resume with a fake name. State your background and add ALL the oracle certifications(accept masters since noone wil believe you have one).

see what calls you get. only ones will be from people who 'think' you have experience. test it before spending the money. Received on Tue Jul 15 2003 - 09:22:06 CDT