How good is a MCTS microsoft certificate to have?
I have the opportunity to take a 6 month online course to get a microsoft certificate for MCTS: .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications, with an addition 3 months of commercial experience once i have acquired the certificate.
However, i am having reservations about doing the course. My main concern is that i am unsure whether this qualification is worth it or not, the guy i spoke to on the phone was clearly 'selling' me the course, so i have no real knowledge whether this a worthy certification to have. The course also costs a little over £2000 to do, but i have found that i could be earning quite a nice sum 'should' i get a job once i get the certificate.
My question is: Should i go for it? Does £2000 sound reasonable considering i will have regular online meetins with my tutor, and 24/7 access to online classes? Would this certificate be worth it?
A little extra detail, not sure if it is worth noting, but i already have a degree in Business Administration.
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If your a reasonably decent programmer, than a MS cert could be a good thing to list on your resume. In my experience, some employers don’t care too much whether an employee has a tech cert while some employers like their employees to be certified. I think a lot has to do if the company is a consulting company, they can say I have all these certified employees when the consulting company is bidding on contracts. But all employers care if the employees are productive(ie they can do the job). If you have certs (or a degree), but can’t do the job, the cert is useless.
If you don’t have any experience or a degree, a cert can be a good way to show prospective employers that you have potential for becoming a decent programmer. 2000 pounds (4000 US) seems bit expensive, but some of the courses for cisco certs cost a lot more. A lot of consulting companies make a lot of money teaching certification courses, so keep that in mind. You don’t need to take any courses to get the certificate. You can buy some books and learn the material yourself. I have a couple Sun Java certificates, and I passed those tests by only studying books, but I do have CS degree and work experience.
If your interested in programming and don’t have any experience and are a bit hesitant to spend all that money for a course, I’d enroll in a course at a local community college. Intro programming courses wouldn’t be more than a few hundred dollars. That would be a good way to see if you really are interested in a computer programming career, but without the large capital outlay of the MS cert course.
This is no easy answer. This is one you will have to answer yourself. But the questions you must ask yourself is do you want to be tied down to just one vendor for your career. Once you complete this training you will most probably be a microsoft man the rest of your programming career. But..If you want to learn open source languages and Operating Systems there are other certifications you can get to serve you better.
Just know this. Whatever your first certification and professional position is in is probably the technology you will work with the rest of your life.