Are professional cetifications really useful?

Question

I have a bachelor degree in computer science and I am ITIL certified. The only sources I found that claim that certifications are useful to improve job conditions are edutacion related, so their opinion is biased.
Have any of you gotten a raise, promotion or a better job because you got certified on knowledge you already have?
I find that my experience is more valuable (and cheaper to get).

The people I know and admire for the way they have progress on their professional world don't even have a bachellor degree and today they hold Senior Management mositions. They actually do badly on a training environment.

I understand they are required to apply to certain jobs, but do they make a difference to improve your exisitng job opportunities?
Have you notice that people with certifications actually have better jobs with better salaries than people without. I really haven't.

Furthermore, if you have the experience, I've seen employer willing to hire you without the certification.

Also, you have given examples of technical jobs, how about managerial, consultative or analyst jobs?

Answer 1

Yes, they are useful. I have worked in software companies and they used to hire without degrees and will some times but the degrees and certifications get you more pay and hired first.
I become a certified public accountant, even while working in tech support in software companies it helped. Once working in a software company a friend in another software company told them I passed the CPA exam with the highest scores she had ever seen and I think it helped me land the next job. A customer asked me if I knew anything about accounting and saying I was a CPA was reassuring to them.
I knew the same amount about accounting before being certified but it looks good on the resume and assures people of my having basic knowledge about accounting. The MSCE does the same thing for software it looks good on resumes, gets you more money and assures people you know the basics.

Answer 2

I work for one of the very large software companies as an engineer. My company will hire you without certifications if you have experience; for my job type (and most of our organization) there is no requirement for a degree. But once you're hired, you're expected to get certified and every year at annual review time, that's one of the things we are evaluated on. If you don't get certified, then you don't get as big a raise and you can't move up to the next pay grade level.

Answer 3

I currently hold associates degree in Computer science. its my own opion most Jobs will look for these certifications as a proof that you have certain level of knowledge vs if you just say you have a degree everyone that has a certification was tested all on the same information vs degree where it comes from any college you could be taught something way different then someone else. also certifications Prove that you have a certain knowledge example CCNA proves you know a little about Cisco routers . this isnt taught in computer science degrees.

Answer 4

Yes they are just for verification for jobs, businesses, applications etc. Just like you said in the first half.