Certification - December 2008 - (Page 35) lent; and 62.3 percent said the quality of a test or exam was excellent or very good — all increases over last year. Nearly 54 percent of respondents said the comprehensiveness of training programs was excellent or very good, and 46.5 percent of you said the quality of instructors was very good or excellent. But the question we’re all wondering: Is it worth the money? About 46 percent of the respondents said the value of the price paid for their most recent certification preparation was excellent or very good; 27.6 percent said good; 12.1 percent said fair; and 3.7 percent said poor — so you do the math. – Lindsay Edmonds Wickman, lwickman@certmag.com of IT specializations, still represents a respectable increase of nearly $2,500 from last year. Information assurance, which covers the areas of data confidentiality and integrity, was ranked third with an annual income of $97,930. Because of the rising pressures around privacy compliance, secure systems and risk management, this discipline has stayed near the top since it was introduced in last year’s Salary Survey. Another related field that typically places high on the list, security, came in fourth, at $94,740. This is a large rebound for this specialization, which fell from $93,500 (first place) in 2006 to $87,890 last year. Security also represents the largest segment of CertMag Salary Survey participants this year, with more than 3,000 U.S.-based respondents. The second largest? “Other.” how specialization Impacts salary Six figures! For the first time in the history of CertFinally, the fifth-place finisher was database design Mag’s Salary Survey, the average income of an inforand implementation, which reported average annual mation technology specialization has topped $100,000 earnings of $91,030. This field knocked Java developin the U.S., if just by a hair. Additionally, the rest of the ment out of the top five on the strength of a $4,000top five specializations exceeded $90,000 per year. To plus boost in income since 2007. truly appreciate the significance of these stats, con06STS0011 1/23/06 1:40 PM Page 1 sider that the top-earning field in the 2004 Salary Survey — system design — posted just $83,510. Incidentally, that’s what took top honors in this year’s survey, too. Well, technically, it’s “strategic systems design and implementation,” but it’s very close to the specialization that also claimed first place four years ago. IT pros in this area of expertise — which could include anything from enterprise resource planning to convergence — pulled in an average of $100,320 in the U.S. That’s an increase of nearly $10,000 from last year, when it came in third among the specialties, and a rise of about 20 percent in a four-year period (see Fig. 7, p. 36). Dropping from the top spot in 2007 to No. 2 this year was storage design and implementation. U.S.based techies in this field earned $98,400 on average, which, while not enough to put it at the pinnacle Scientists have determined that we only use 10% of our brains. Make the most of it. There’s only one way to prepare for your next certification exam and that’s with Self Test. It’s the only tool you’ll need to improve your IT IQ. Self Test Software helps you figure out what you know and gives you the answers to what you don’t. Hey, you’re already smart. We help you be smarter. w w w. s e l f t e s t s o f t w a re . c o m · 1 - 8 0 0 - 2 4 4 - 7 3 3 0 © 2006 Kaplan IT, Inc. All rights reserved. SELF TEST SOFTWARE® Kaplan IT, Inc. All rights reserved. be smarter http://www.selftestsoftware.com http://www.selftestsoftware.com
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