Certification Magazine - December 2007 - (Page 10) VIRTUAL VILLAGE On Easy Street DANIEL MARGOLIS Certifications can be challenging, no question. It varies, of course, but preparing for and then taking the test is a bear (with any luck, a bear worth bagging). Most IT professionals just accept this as a matter of course — if the test wasn’t challenging, it wouldn’t be worth adding to your resume. But our CertMag.com forum discussion boards recently saw a posting that sought the path of least resistance to certification. In a thread titled “Recommend two ‘easiest’ certs to get,” new member void wrote: “I need to take an industry-specific certification, but to qualify, you need a certain amount of points to take the exam. I need two points, and they give one point each for almost any IT certification. Included are all CompTIA exams, any MCP [Microsoft Certified Professional] and a large variety of other certs, but because my older IT background was desktop support, help desk, light networking support, etc., I figured CompTIA and MCP are my best options. I also had an MCSE back on NT 4 that I never kept up to date (kicking myself now). “Anyway, based on that information, I am looking for the two quickest certs to get. Is it just going to be A+ and Network+? Or is there any single MCP exam that is easier?” Prolific poster Wagnerk quickly pointed out it was difficult to give a hard answer for this question but provided helpful advice nonetheless. “The term ‘easiest’ is fuzzy — what may be easy for one person may not be so easy for another,” Wagnerk said. “With that in mind, I’ll tell you the two easiest for me. It was the two exams that make up the MCDST. If you take and pass the 70-271, you attain the MCP credential. After that, take and pass the 70-272 and attain the MCDST [Microsoft Certi- fied Desktop Support Technician] credential. Once you have a MCP, you can do the MCP to CNST [Certified Network Systems Technician] rollover offered by ETA-i via StudyExam4Less. This includes a certificate approved by ICAC and a year’s professional membership with the ETA-i. If you follow the above route, you’ll end up with three certs: MCP, MCDST and the CNST. However, like I said at the start, ‘easiest’ is a fuzzy term.” Void admitted it was a bad question to ask. “I cringed when I wrote it, but fact is I just need the quickest one — doesn’t matter about prestige, hireability, etc.,” void said. “I need to see if they count MCP and MCDST as two separate ones to get my two points to qualify to take the exam I’m really interested in.” Elsewhere in our General Discussion boards, we saw discussion of what Web development technologies and programming languages are seeing the most market demand, including an interesting call and response from a cert provider. New member montie2 posted: “I recently contacted CIW about its Master CIW Web Site Manager certification. A part of the certification requirements is a test on Perl fundamentals. With ASP.NET and PHP being popular Web development technologies, I thought that they would be appropriate skill sets to have as a Web site manager. So, I posed this question to CIW: Is there not a significant market and demand for PHP/ASP.NET professionals, or is PERL still that much in demand? CIW’s response was interesting. “Here is my e-mail to CIW: ‘Are there any plans to incorporate PHP or ASP.NET technologies in the Master CIW Web Site Manager Certification? A PHP/ASP.NET fundamentals test would be appropriate to this certification. Could the PHP5 certifica- 10 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE December 2007 http://www.CertMag.com
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