An IT Certification White Paper
Written by Gerry Mimick
Have you ever found yourself struggling to understand what IT certifications to obtain to best manage your career path? You are not alone! IT is a lucrative career field in our increasingly technology-dependent world. However, with the vast number of certifications and ever-changing job roles, it is quite the challenge to understand the options, tradeoffs and differing benefits that thousands of certifications from hundreds of different providers can offer.
The ITCC has taken a look at this industry problem that every IT professional faces throughout their career and has created a white paper – The Certification Journey. The paper introduces three different career profiles:
- The Newbie: a new graduate entering the workforce
- The Career Changer: an employee moving from one role into a completely new IT career path
- The Upskiller: an employee moving up in their existing career path
Each profile assesses unique challenges faced when navigating which IT certifications to pursue. It identifies how a certification roadmap could help guide them to better understand career choices that apply specifically to them. Equipped with this tool, the Newbie, Career Changer and Upskiller can “see” several steps ahead and make better career choices that get them to where they want to go in a more efficient way.
Finally, two well-known industry certification roadmap tools are highlighted: (1) CompTIA’s IT Career Path Tool and (2) The Credential Engine. The white paper explains both what these tools can do to help guide certification decision-making as well as point out what challenges the IT industry still needs to solve for to help today’s IT professional.
You can find this white paper in your member-resources page after you log into the ITCC website: https://itcertcouncil.org/members/member-resources/
Finally, we welcome your feedback! Please complete this short survey to provide information about the job roles covered by your certifications, to ask questions, and to leave your comments about the white paper.
