Do certs have any value in 2021?

now originally in this video i was only going to talk about the five top networking certifications that you should get in 2021 but i think even before we discuss which certifications are important we need to discuss if certifications are actually important and actually valid and in this video i'm going to give you my opinion there's going to be some hard talk in this video so please don't get offended i'm going to give you my thoughts based on my years of experience so a lot of this is my opinion based on my personal experience and based on what i see in the industry you may or may not agree with me put in the comments below what you think so let me know if you agree with what i'm saying or if you disagree and that's fine one thing i've learned the older i get is people have different opinions and there's no i'm right you wrong necessarily for a lot of situations it's often not just one option or another option you often have multiple choices and things aren't always as clear-cut as we might want them to be so my experiences may be different to yours and it may vary from country to country okay so let's not waste any time are certifications important in 2021 and i would say they are i think certifications are still very valid and very important and i'm going to give you some reasons for that the first one is certifications can get you past gatekeepers or get you to the interview think about it if i'm looking to hire someone and i actually did this recently i hired someone to support students on my courses and the first thing i did was go onto a job site and type in ccmp because in this example i wanted someone with ccmp level knowledge having a ccmp differentiates you from someone with no certifications having a ccna differentiate you from someone with no certifications if i'm looking for someone or a company is looking for someone one of the easiest ways to filter or sift through resumes or cvs is to say this is the minimum criteria if you have this certification i can assume that you have a certain level of knowledge so i wanted ccmp level knowledge so rather than trying to go through thousands and thousands and thousands of resumes to try and find out if someone actually had a certain amount of experience it's a lot quicker and a lot easier to just set a minimum bar if you like or a minimum level you need to have ccna level knowledge or you need to have ccmp level knowledge if you've got a ccmp i can safely assume that you should have a certain amount of knowledge but as a lot of us realize in the real world some people and unfortunately this is true there are people who have ccmps who don't actually have ccmp level knowledge they've used brain dumps or other ways to pass an exam so they have the certification but they don't have the knowledge but those are the kind of people that you're going to find out in an interview so i think certifications are really important because they get you to the interview or they get you to the first stage of getting hired now a lot of companies will have a trial period so you'll be hired but you're on probation if you like for the first three months so that is a way for the company to actually verify or test that you know what you say you know so a lot of companies will use this initial 90 days as an example to verify that you know what you say you know and they have the option to fire you or terminate your employment or let you go if they feel that you don't know what you said you know or you don't fit into the company culture so they'll use that initial period to verify your skills and verify your knowledge so when i was hiring someone to support students one of the first criteria is do they have a certain amount of technical skills and during the interview one of my team members was quizzing the people based on their technical knowledge but that wasn't all they were also quizzed on the ability to answer questions in english so english may not be their first language but we needed someone who could write well in english and communicate well in english so during the interview process we verified did they actually know what they said they know and do they have soft skills which are also really really important in today's world so the first important reason to get a certification is it gets you past the recruiters it gets it gets you past the gatekeepers basically it gets you to the interview when scanning job applicants recruiters or companies may just say anyone who doesn't have a ccna as an example won't even be looked at they cv will be just set aside so a reason to get a certification is to get past the gatekeepers first big reason now that's for jobs but i think for yourself there's another big reason to get a certification i've been in this game a long time it's amazing i just looked it up today i passed my ccna exam over 20 years ago that just makes me feel old but i passed my ccna many many years ago and i've seen a whole bunch of changes in the industry but i still see certifications as a way to help you and me learn knowledge big tip you don't know what you don't know that's one of the big things i learned when i took my ccie as an example i've seen this so many times i've trained many many people over the years and please don't take this the wrong way but this is my experience and my opinion once again i've seen this so many times at ccna level a lot of people say they knew they're hungry for knowledge they don't assume that they know a lot but when they come on ccmp courses and this happened a lot when i was training face to face some people assumed that they had arrived they knew everything big mistake because the level of knowledge that's required for a ccie is a big jump from ccmp courses so i'd have these guys come on courses and they would try and explain to me about bgp as an example or about ospf and you very quickly realize that you don't know what you don't know the more you learn the more you realize that there is more to learn and don't be despondent by that just realize that that gives you an opportunity because the world constantly changes as an example two years ago cisco didn't have a devnet track but they now have a devnet track so if you want to get into network automation and net network programmability cisco have now created a track to teach you from zero basically to getting a certain level of knowledge they've given you a clear path to knowledge so one of the big advantages of certifications i think is it gives you a clear track to go from somewhere to somewhere so devnet associate i start with no knowledge of very little knowledge and afterwards i have associate level knowledge of development topics ccna i start with very little knowledge once i get my ccna i have foundational knowledge of networking so it gives you a clear path another big reason to take certifications or go through the certification process is you are forced to learn stuff that you don't like think about it you may enjoy writing protocols i personally prefer writing protocols over technology such as spanning tree i prefer layer 3 over layer two it's just what i enjoy so i'd rather talk about bgp or ospf and it's funny i had a conversation with someone recently and they called me a nerd so david how can you be excited about bgp well it's for me it's interesting so i enjoy bgp but i don't enjoy spanning trees so much but by going through a certification i'm forced to learn about spanning tree i'm forced to learn about different types of spanning tree as well as the writing protocols that i enjoy so basically you are forced to learn a certain amount of work i had someone on twitter just yesterday tag me and say i'm going through david's course i i'm not enjoying binary and someone else said they don't enjoy hexadecimal yeah unfortunately sometimes you have to go through a bit of pain to learn foundational knowledge so that you can get where you want to be as they say in the gym no pain no gain so you have to go through some pain to get somewhere and a certification gives you this path if you like or this track forcing you to go through certain steps to reach a certain level of knowledge you remember you don't know what you don't know these tracks have been designed by people who have been in the industry for a long time they've learned over the years that this kind of knowledge is important to learn this kind of knowledge is important to learn so that's going to go into the curriculum now it's always easy as they say to throw stones it's always easy to criticize it's very difficult to create very easy to criticize very difficult to create so they don't always get it right but i think the ccna has been around for so long that it is one of those foundational certifications that you want to get and it's actually my top certification for someone starting out in the industry if you want to learn networking get your ccna it will give you a very good foundation in networking and i'll talk about this in a moment because i'm sure a lot of people are going to say david you are a cisco fanboy you what about juniper what about hpe and unfortunately a lot of people forget that i'm old i've been in this game a long time i have actually worked with other vendors but i'll give you my opinion in a moment about why i think a ccna is definitely the certification to get rather than other certifications if you're starting out and it's not just because i'm a cisco fanboy it's just what i see in the industry but again you're more than welcome to disagree with me another big hot topic is degrees and again don't be insulted by what i'm going to say now this is life and life is often not fair this is hard talk if you're an employer in the united states or you're an employer in the united kingdom and this is actually my personal experience so let's say you're an employer in the united kingdom and you want to employ someone would you trust someone with a degree from the university of oxford university of cambridge perhaps harvard would you take someone who's got one of those degrees or would you take someone who has a degree from africa let's be honest what would you do candidate one oxford or cambridge degree candidate 2 degree from the university of south africa or university of nigeria what would you choose let's be honest there are universities and then there are universities and there are there are universities if you've got an ivy league degree as they say if you went to oxbridge so in other words oxford or cambridge or some of the top universities in the uk or mit or harvard or one of those universities you have a much better chance than someone like me who's got a university degree from the university of south africa degrees are not created equal that is just the way life works proven by the metrics in the uk there's this big drive in the uk to try and diversify people in the universe in oxbridge universities because it they say that it goes to just a certain group of people now i'm not going to get into the politics that is just life so let me give you my personal experience i moved from south africa to the uk what do you think opened the doors for me was it my degree or was it my ccie and the obvious answer is it was my ccie if you get a certification from a company like cisco cisco are certifying that you have this knowledge of ccie as an example that is valid no matter which country you go to so if i go to the u.s or i go to the uk or i go to south africa or i go to singapore i have a ccie ccie is certified by cisco that in my opinion carries a lot of weight it opens a lot of doors now i know what's happening in the industry unfortunately there's been a lot of cheating in the industry it's really sad what's happened how people are cheating and they are devaluing a lot of certifications unfortunately unfortunately in today's world people try and circumvent the process circumvent the rules but in a lot of cases they're going to be called out so so i've often heard this in the uk they will hire someone and this person has a ccnp certification as an example but they don't know how to configure ip addresses on a cisco router so they don't last very long but does that mean that you shouldn't go for certifications and i would say you still need to because how do you get past the gatekeepers number one how do you get past the gatekeepers number two how do you learn what you don't know so you want to go from zero to being a network engineer cisco have done this really well where they've got ccna ccmp ccie and other certifications you've got a clear path of where to go so you know that if you get your ccna you have a certain level of knowledge ccmp you have a certain level of knowledge ccie it gives you a path to study forces you to study certain materials that you won't study gives you a clear path and it allows employers to easily say that if i want a certain level of knowledge so you must have a basic understanding of spanning tree basic understanding of writing protocols i'm going to look for someone with a ccna if you need more advanced knowledge so you need to understand sd-wan as an example i'm going to look for someone with a ccmp with the sd-wan concentration it makes it much easier for employers to find hopefully the right person than just having a thousand c resumes or a thousand cvs and then trying to work out based on their experience who has what another thing about certifications is we as humans like to be rewarded look at my kids i give them a book to try and learn a topic they hate it perhaps but give them a game on the ipad where they are rewarded for completing a set of tasks and they love it and they want to do more and more and more so gamifying education is a great way to impart knowledge rather than just boring steps if we gamify a learning process people tend to learn better and in a way we've got that with certifications think about it you have a list of tasks that you need to do writing the tasks down is not very rewarding but ticking off a task is really rewarding so in the same way getting a ccna is rewarding you get an acknowledgement you get a badge of the work that you've done it's a great reward you can chat about it on social media you can share it with people that you have completed a certification go to the next certification tick ticket off gives you a reward it's very rewarding to complete something and i think that's another reason why certifications are great rather than just taking a python book and reading it getting no reward at the end if you get your cisco devnet associate certifications you get a reward you have completed this cisco are certifying that you have a certain level of knowledge so that's another great reason for getting a certification is a company like cisco are saying that you have a certain level of knowledge rather than you just saying i have that level of knowledge so another party a trusted party the vendor of cisco equipment cisco themselves are saying that you have a certain level of knowledge and i don't want to just make this a cisco video what about juniper if you're a juniper person and you get a juniper certification juniper are certifying that you have a certain level of knowledge if you get the associate certification same with hpe so hpe will say or ruba will say that you have a certain level of knowledge when you get to their certifications now there's another big reason to get certifications companies such as cisco or hpe as an example will give cisco partners discount on their equipment and give them options to sell equipment only if they have a certain number of certified individuals on staff so as an example they'll need a certain number of ccnas certain number of ccmps or certain number of ccies and based on that they can get silver status or gold status or whatever the cisco partner status is that they're trying to achieve they have to have a certain number of certified individuals on staff to get cisco partner status so think about that if you and someone else are applying to work at a cisco partner and everything else is equal same experience same knowledge etc but you have a ccmp and they don't and the cisco partner needs a ccmp to get a certain status with cisco in other words get partner status at a certain level get a certain amount of discounts it's more likely that they're going to hire you than the other person if everything else is equal so having certified individuals on staff makes monetary sense to a lot of companies and think about it if a company can get extra discount from cisco because they have a certain number of certified individuals on staff it's in their best interest to hire certified individuals so big reason to get certified is it often opens up doors at cisco partners i've experienced that personally multiple times in my life i've had doors open for me because my ccie was needed for partner status always needed for something so i was employed to work for the company for my knowledge and my skills my experience etc but my ccie sealed the deal if you like they hired me because they would get discounts and they would get me at the same time so double bonus for the company if you like so big reason to get certified is it can open up doors with partners such as cisco partners or other vendor partners okay so there are probably many other reasons to get certifications the video however is getting too long so i'm going to end it here in a separate video i'll talk about the five top certifications for networking i hope you enjoyed this video i hope it's helped you if you did please like it please consider subscribing to my youtube channel and clicking on the bell to get notifications i'm david bumble i want to wish you all the very best [Music]

Channel: David Bombal

Views: 55,864

Rating: 4.9746838 out of 5

Keywords: ccna, devnet, devnet associate, ccie, devnet cisco, devnet certification, python, linux, aws, azure, gcp, cloud, networking, ccnp, api, apis, vmware, docker, david bombal, ccna training, ccna 200-301, ccna study, cisco ccna, cisco devnet, ccna certification, free ccna, ccnp training, new ccna, ccnp study, ccna exam, cisco devnet associate, cisco, ccna routing and switching, how to study for ccna, are comptia certs worth it, are cisco certifications worth it, certs worth it

Id: LW56JL4Jsig

Length: 19min 3sec (1143 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 04 2021