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Prometric releases global IT training and certification study results

Findings indicate significant shift in priorities for pursuing certification.

Prometric, a part of The Thomson Corporation, today released study results showing that the top reason individuals pursued IT certification in 2002 was to enhance professional credibility - not to increase compensation or prepare for a new job as has long been the case.

This finding, along with others from Prometric's 2002 IT Training and Certification Study, indicates that the reasons individuals pursue IT certifications and the value that managers afford those certifications are changing in response to shifts and turbulence in the IT market.

For individuals, the value associated with certification is becoming increasingly personal in nature with respondents pointing to the increase in confidence and perception of competence that comes with certification. For managers, the benefits of certification can increasingly be found in the value that certification brings to the organisation. These findings are in marked contrast to those of previous years' studies, which found that individuals primarily pursued certification for higher salaries or better jobs and managers used certification as a tool to screen potential candidates.

Prometric has been conducting these studies for the past five years as a means of measuring the perceived value of and attitudes toward training and certification among worldwide IT professionals. This year, in partnership with co-sponsors Cisco Systems, CompTIA, Hewlett Packard and Sun Microsystems, Prometric designed a two-part study that included qualitative, in-depth interviews and quantitative surveys executed over the Web and the Prometric global test center network.

In total, more than 8,000 IT professionals from more than 50 countries participated in the survey. Thomson Marketing Resources, an independent research organisation with the Thomson Corporation, conducted the study. The qualitative portion of the study included in-depth interviews with 23 IT professionals in Chicago, London and Singapore. The quantitative portion garnered responses from: 887 IT managers, 2,149 certification candidates and 5,207 professionals who had already completed certification programmes. The study was conducted over a five-month period.

The 2002 findings show an increased focus on building credibility among candidates and already certified respondents. Thirty-two percent of candidates and 34 percent of already certified respondents cite credibility as the top reason to seek certification in 2002, compared with 27 percent and 12 percent, respectively, in 2001.

Candidates, in particular, are becoming increasingly less motivated to seek certification as a means for attaining a new position with only 14 percent claiming this reason in 2002 compared with 23 percent in 2001. There was also a shift among already certified respondents, with drops in the importance of increasing compensation (38 percent in 2001 compared with 25 percent in 2002), increasing productivity (28 percent in 2001 compared with 20 percent in 2002) and finding a job (33 percent in 2001 compared with 15 percent in 2002) as reasons to seek certification.

Regarding differences in responses due to age, IT professionals under the age of 30 tended to believe that certification is needed for career advancement, whereas IT workers over the age of 30 believed certification helps them stay up-to-date on new technology and communicate with other IT professionals.

In addition, motivations varied according to geography. Assessing knowledge levels and increasing credibility were the most significant reasons to train and certify in Asia/Pacific and Latin America, respectively. European IT professional respondents believed that increasing credibility and assessing knowledge levels were equally the most important. Africa and the Middle East IT professionals cited assessing knowledge levels and increasing productivity as the top reasons to train and certify.

Also significant was the number and variety of programs available, and the number of individuals seeking and achieving certification led some responding managers to dismiss certification as an employment criteria. These managers cited that certification has become commoditised and hampered by the fact that there are no experience-related prerequisites to obtaining certification. In fact, a majority of survey respondents (61 percent each of managers and already certified respondents, and 47 percent of candidates) agreed that there should be experience-related prerequisites for IT certification programmes. It's also worth noting that 70 percent of already certified respondents felt that certifications lost value when everyone has them.

These findings and others strongly indicate that the perceived value of certification, and the reasons candidates pursue it, are changing.

"In the nineties, technology companies were thriving," said Michael Brannick, president and chief executive officer of Prometric. "IT workers sought certification to learn technology and enter a challenging new industry with higher salaries. The IT industry has changed in the twenty-first century and IT professionals are expressing different motivations for pursuing certification. While the perceived value of certification remains high, those of us in the industry should heed these results carefully and work to ensure the preservation of certification's position as a high stakes/high reward venture."

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