microsoft.public.certification - How do we educate HR types about what cert does what?

Author

How do we educate HR types about what cert does what?

Scott D

2003-10-26, 10:24 pm

1st off I'd like to say kudos and "about time" that a
certification was developed for the largest staffing
compliment within most large IT organisations, the
helpdesk/desktop teams.

Having said that, I see massive problems with this.

For at least a decade the HR world has beaten into the
heads of its non-technically inclined recruiters and
account managers that you can't present a candidate to a
15 dollar an hour IT job unless he/she has a valid MCSE
(Engineering) cert. While we all appreciate the
absolutely grotesque absurdity of a support tech needing
an engineering cert based on their job description and
career path having absolutely nothing at all to do with
engineering, the fact remains that your employed IT
Support people likely all have been forced to take, pay
for and pass the MCSE requirements just to get a job.

The HR world, moves slower than most as its staffed almost
exclusively with non-IT career folks who know only what
they read about in the news regarding IT certifications,
qualifications and trends. Enter the MCSA certification.
HURRAY!!!

Finally something about Administering a network rather
than how to build one. But do any HR people know about
this? How many contract companies do you think are
willing to admit that they've turned away qualified
administrators and instead hired engineers for server
admin, network Admin, LAN admin jobs based solely on
thinking an MCSE was the holy-grail catch-all one required
before getting one's resume looked at or indeed rescued
from the trash can?

Now we add a "Desktop Support" certification and might I
also point out that for some reason the
terminology "Desktop" seems to no longer be used.
Apparently HR folks have re-labeled things as Helpdesk II
or Helpdesk Support, or Support Analyst II etc... and when
you mention the term "Desktop Support" they say things
like "what's that?", or "never heard of that before",
or "oh you mean helpdesk!"

My main issue with this wonderful Cert which I applaud
whole heartedly and look forward to getting is this: how
many MCSE's are entrenched in Desktop Support... I
mean, "helpdesk" positions who have been trained how to
buil,d a network but not to administer or support one, and
how many contract, staffing, sourcing firms are going to
look at anyone without the sacred talisman and admit these
shortcomings, opting to hire staff with this new unknown
certification despite it being the defining qualifications
test of a productive support analyst?

Do we fire the MCSE's who are whoolly unskilled and
untrained in supporting a network or a desktop environment
being as they should have never been hired into support
and instead placed into the Infrastructure divisions where
their certifications would be valid, and replace the mis-
employed by those with the right qualifications?

Do we sit all the HR staffing people in a room and once
and for all try to teach them who is qualified to do what
and why and hope it actually sinks in being as these non-
IT people are in complete control over who gets the
interviews and who gets shunned?

How does one correct the indoctrination that MCSE is all
one needs to do anything IT related and disseminate new
policy that actually makes sense to people who can't think
for themselves and only look at resumes that contain "what
the end client specifically asks for"?

How do we re-educate the end clients all over the world
about why their own hiring practices are costing them
money and lowering their TCO strategies and present them
with a cost effective TCO solution with "the right cert
for the right task"?

Maybe I just think too much, but I've done work at
Building 25, at Texaco Corporate in Houston, been a NOC
manager for a Chevron company and done training for a MS
Atec and I still come up with almost every huge
multinational telling me I either need an MCSE for some 14
dollar an hour help desk job which is personally insulting
to say the least; or when I apply to Admin jobs with the
MCSA material I have taken they say things like "what's
that?", or "the client wants an MCSE not whatever you
have"? I get way too frustrated with IT managers who know
nothing about IT but have management jobs simply because
the group they used to manage over in finance, or sales,
or some other non-tech related division downsized and
he/she just happened to land in IT where they've managed
to screw up the entire inner workings of business flow,
productivity and have staffed with capable, but grossly
mis-placed employees.

Perhaps someone from MS or Volt redmond reading this would
like to shoot me an email and let me know what I can do to
help.

I live in Ontario Canada and was just offered a position
with Volt in Toronto for 17 bucks an hour doing phone
support work for MS SMS. Tell me that isn't insulting
considering I'm a seasoned US Fortune 100 IT Manager.

Is there anyone out there who can tell me how these new
Certs will work for me or how I can drive the re-education
of the HR people? I'll step up to the plate and run with
it. Anyone want to help me to help us all?

Anyone?

scott@weblife1.com

Yoshi

2003-10-29, 5:24 pm

Yes, I know exactly what you mean.

The job agencies annoy me greatly. They haven't a clue, they bounce
your cv round the web and do very little to earn their fee. (For
example, one guy who came for an interview where I work turned out to
be a skinhead with swastikas tattooed on his knuckles. So what
"selection" did they do there then?)

Personally, I can't stand the term "desktop". It means the top of a
desk, surely? And I hate the term "HR" too.

Anyway, life's a XXXXX and the idiots who make the decisions about
your career couldn't change a light bulb if their lives depended on
it. I don't think much will change, but good luck with the crusade.

Scott D

2003-11-05, 11:23 am

Thanks for the words of agreement you've all shared with
me. It's both comforting and disturbing at the same time
to knnow the trend with ill-equiped human resource people
is a global problem we all see but have no power to solve.

Perhaps some day when companies finally figure out that
contracting is not actually cheaper, being as the
contractor is only making a mere fraction of what's being
charged to the end-client and the contract company itself
is pocketing the bulk of the cost. Try offering a
contractor exactly whjat their HR company is paying them
to come onboard as a full timer and the company will in
almost all cases get off with a new employee at less than
60% of what they were in fact being charged for by the
staffing firm for the same body. Win-Win.

But I digress... hopefully to get back to Cert topic, all
these new certs that keep popping up out of the collective
woodwork are not simply designed as income for Microsoft
and its global training and book writing apparatus and may
possibly do something more than confuse the living crap
out of the already dumbfounded staffing folks around the
world.

Is there a light at the end of the IT tunnel, and if so,
is it the light to a clear career path or simply the warm
glow of a CPU reset indicator?

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