So I looked it up and Google is offering certifications in various fields through Coursera, and they claim it’ll help one get a good paying IT job.
People have made videos on Youtube talking about them with varying answers and in the comments, people often discuss using them as a springboard to get CompTIA certs.
But are these certifications actually worth the money financially? Do people actually get hired if that’s all an employee has? Don’t employers want people with degrees too?
As a software engineer that is involved in hiring decisions, they are not worth anything with respect to software development jobs.
I look for, in order of importance:
- demonstrated experience - this is your work history
- academic achievement - this is college degree. I do not include certs
- additional skills - this tends to be a skills section - I expect people to not lie and will ask about this section explicitly in interviews
- external factors - previous job - circumstances around leaving
And that’s it. Certs don’t ever even get considered.
Conversely, as a system engineer that is involved in the hiring process for software development in addition to various types of platform and cloud engineering jobs.
I look for, in order of importance:
- demonstrated experience
- additional skills
That’s it. College degree isn’t even considered, but if you got relevant experience in college that can count.
Most of my interview time is spent digging into technical details to see if you can back up your resume claims. The rest is getting an idea of how you approach challenges and think about things.
As far as certifications, they’re often required to get in the door due to qualification regulations. Especially security certs. If you list them, I’ll ask a few questions just to make sure you actually know what’s up.
