Do You Need IT Certifications?

tom here for more systems we're going to talk about i.t certifications college degree and well let's get this right off the rip and out of the way because this question comes up quite a bit i want to have this video as my go-to reply for what are your thoughts on these things first my thoughts are i don't have them i do not have a college degree i do not have it certifications so if that's enough to make you stop watching this video because you shouldn't listen to some guy who doesn't have certifications talk about certifications that's perfectly fine that's why i like to disclose things up front and maybe you've stopped watching there if you still are watching the video let's talk a little bit about this because as a business owner one you don't need at least here in the us any type of certification on a business so that is just something that doesn't come up even though i've had a tech company and i've worked in technology since 1995 it is not required that i have certifications to do what i do there are specific exceptions where there are licenses that you may need or qualifications you qualifications that have to be vetted by state agencies to be very specific in certain areas and cabling and wiring is one of those areas but michigan where we are located is actually an exception to that but some other states do require certifications that you have to get for that but that's a little different than the it certification so at least i'll mention because we do cabling and wiring and people ask well what search do you need to get started in michigan the answer is not back to the actual topic one of the problems is a lot of people are they see these headlines and they drive me nuts you know and i could sit here and be all high and mighty about it going i'm successful in tech and i'm all about the acquisition of knowledge not the validation of institution but that doesn't really help anyone in their i.t career that's just a clickbaity headline to say that someone dropped out of college and built some big company and it's some article you'll read and there'll be this implementation that you can do it too just because they did it the reality is you're probably going to need some certifications to get an i.t what certifications is going to vary greatly based on where you're going and the cyber security world and especially some of the application pen testing world is some of the crazy side where there's certainly a lot of people without certification to get in there but there are skill levels or where they prove it and one of the the ways especially when the cyber security side especially if you go into application pen testing and just collecting bug bounties well there's no certifications you just have to be good enough to do it that's the bar of entry can you do it can you dive into that and go in that market but if you're looking for a regular i want to work at a company with a job it's important to have certifications they're what make you marketable they are what make the prospecting employer when they're going around going through places to go alright a person's got a few certifications and then like the college degrees as well those are things that are looked at as qualifiers to kind of filter out and that's how hr departments will make the most determinations now there is another video i'll link to kind of talking about getting started in cyber security where a couple of people who are experts in cyber security that i had on my channel uh discuss that i'll leave a link below and it's xavier and chris roberts and they talk about hacking getting into there maybe even how to get around hr and things like that soft skills are where i have always worked at and that's what's helped my career more than anything else i've had the skills by reading books i've done lots of hands-on labs i've been working in tech for 25 years the other side of that is i know a lot of people in tech and it's because well i've been social in that realm i take an interest in what they do i've been someone who's worked on a lot of this myself and having a lot of friends in the industry is what gets me a lot of the connections you're probably thinking well i don't know a lot of people well there's a time in my life i didn't either i don't come from anyone in my family who does any type of tech but i will tell you those type of soft skills in going to conferences or online forums is actually where i meet a lot of people too over the years i'm talking like from the earliest days i was i met people in the bbs dial update where we dial in the bulletin board systems and have discussions with people about networking and it's been ongoing those conversations then it moved to irc now it's moved to you know me hanging out in everything from discord to slack channels randomly that dive deep into those technology topics but having those circles of friends and technology is another part of your career path it's kind of a conglomeration of everything together pick your passion decide what you may need to get certified in whether you're going to the network engineering side whether or not you're going into some of the microsoft certifications which of course are extremely popular and microsoft and cisco collectively represent a massive part of our industry those are still going to be popular relevant certifications now i'm not going to really send you down a path of which one because i don't know what you want to do but i will say that they're relevant now the final thing i'll answer because this is part of the question that comes at me is do you have certifications what are you certified in or what's your college degree which like i said was none but do i require that of my staff and wouldn't that be kind of hypocritical and not really i don't require it right now as a hiring mandate but i've also only hired mostly my friends and people i knew so it hasn't really been a bunch of random people that have come in here i've had a few um that have come in that you know i didn't really know but yeah i did some q a and being that i am technical i'm able to see through people who don't you know really understand what they're doing but put it on the resume that they did that's not as easy for your average hr person to do but the vetting process i go through and it's not something i require now it is something that i think is important in any of my staff that want to go and pursue certifications relevant to their career and here yeah i cover that i do provide training i.t pro tv is one of the things i have an affiliate link down below but we actually use it internally tell them take the tests i've bought books for them these are all things that are not a problem now the final thoughts are on certifications do i think they're any good this is a real fuzzy thing because i will admit they were really bad in the beginning and they really have changed a lot now so i will say that my opinion if you were to find some old comments that i had left somewhere where you don't need certifications and they're not really relevant and all they do is regurgitate information versus how i look at it today i think they're a pretty important part of the industry our industry probably needs more of that because we have a lot of things that are not done properly and making sure that the certifications and people that are qualified to do the jobs are the ones doing the jobs is going to be a part an important part of the maturation and the how we get it more organized and a little bit better and more secure is going to be through some organization like that and putting together proper certifications and proper understandings of the parameters needed in order to you know make sure that people know what they're doing when we sit them down in front of the keyboard or whether they know what they're doing when they wire up a cabling whether or not they put things together in a secure manner when they're building an application so that's my thoughts on it for here in 2020 and i'll leave a link below to the chris roberts video with xavier and diving in a cyber security topic because that's an interesting one all together that they are experts in thanks and thank you for making it to the end of the video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you like to see more content from the channel hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon if you like youtube to notify you when new videos come out if you'd like to hire us head over to lawrences.com fill out our contact page and let us know what we can help you with and what projects you'd like us to work together on if you want to carry on the discussion head over to forums.laurensystems.com where we can carry on the discussion about this video other videos or other tech topics in general even suggestions for new videos they're accepted right there on our forums which are free also if you'd like to help the channel in other ways head over to 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Channel: Lawrence Systems

Views: 20,125

Keywords: lawrencesystems, it certifications, information technology, cyber security, it certification, it career questions, microsoft certifications, it careers, it professional, information technology degree, information technology jobs, i.t. certifications, comptia a+, comptia security+, cisco certifications, cisco certification, ccna certification, information technology certifications, comptia network+

Id: EdPPXRVR6Gs

Length: 7min 53sec (473 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020