Certification Magazine - December 2007 - (Page 20) Brocade Certified SAN Manager (BCSM) moved into first place — up from second place last year — with an average salary of $117,110. ISACA Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), a consistent performer in past years, came in second place with $115,720. Cisco CCIE, which dominated the Salary Survey in ’03 and ’04 but slipped out of the top five thereafter, came in third this year with $111,090. Brocade Certified SAN Designer (BCSD) follows in fourth place with $109,510. ISACA Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) placed fifth with $98,740. See Figure 1 for a list of the average salaries of 95 of the top certification programs listed in this year’s survey. Overall, IT professionals saw their wages increase by 17.1 percent, a slight improvement over last year’s increase of 16.7 percent. More than a quarter of respondents received at least a 25 percent increase in pay, which is also an improvement over last year’s numbers. Not surprisingly, the top-performing certifications saw percentage gains over last year’s numbers in terms of salaries earned, with the top five seeing growth rates at 31 percent to 55 percent. The certifications with the five lowest average salaries, meanwhile, trended downward — they were down 27 percent to 41 percent from the average salaries in 2006. Last year was the first time in the Salary Survey’s eight-year history that even the lowest average IT salary (by certification) charted was more than $50,000 annually. This year, that figure slipped back down to less than $50,000, with the lowest average IT salary at $44,820. These numbers indicate a disparity of sorts between where the highest- and lowest-earning certs are headed (the rich get richer and the poor get poorer), but they also demonstrate the role certification increasingly is playing in helping fledgling IT pros get their feet in the door and into that first job. Companies offering certification programs have been quick to recognize this trend — many introduced entry-level certs this year, including Cisco. Jeanne Beliveau-Dunn, senior director of product and technology marketing, said career development was a driving force behind this change. 20 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE December 2007 “It’s really about finding a way to recognize those people who have developed some skills, learned the fundamentals and want to eventually move forward into the other career certification tracks but want to get into that first job and have some kind of proof of their talent,” Beliveau-Dunn said. “As we look at the talent pool that’s out there to support the growth of the industry, we’re definitely running into some constraints. “We have partners and customers out there trying to hire talent, and they’re not able to fulfill all their needs and, of course, it only gets worse as the market keeps growing. So, what we’re trying to do is make some major investments to reshape the whole learning environment and get it thinking forward, not just to what today’s careers and jobs are but, hopefully, setting them up for the future.” This year, Adobe Systems launched a line of certifications for its software targeted toward individuals at high school, college and workforce-entry levels. Adobe partnered with Certiport to produce these entry-level certifications. “As a country, we’re extremely focused on funneling people into IT, and this is one of those areas where we can say there are programs that meet industry standards and prepare people for IT careers,” said David Saedi, Certiport president and CEO. The United States is focused on funneling people into IT because doing so is essential to remaining competitive globally well into the 21st century. “The U.S. is at the frontier of modern scientific and technological advances, which means that sustaining economic growth depends substantially on our ability to advance that frontier,” said Peter Orszag, director of the Hamilton Project, an initiative by the Brookings Institution intended to formulate an economic strategy to advance domestic opportunities and growth. “We don’t have the advantage other countries have in moving up to the technological frontier — we need to be pushing it forward. The way that we can best remain at the technological frontier is by investing in individuals.” As such, IT is an industry that continues to grow, providing an arena for careers from the entry level to the C-level and everywhere in between. And it offers a wide range of salary opportunities, most of them trending upward.
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