Melvin Bennett Jr. always thought he might like a career in business technology. The 26-year-old majored in business management at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and considered careers in music, journalism, and photography, but he never gave up his passion for technology.

Bennett graduated in the fall of 2000, right at the height of the dot-com boom, and he was enticed by entry-level technology-job ads that offered high starting salaries and required minimum experience. But "minimum" experience didn't mean little or no experience, which is what he had. He discovered that he wasn't eligible for many of the jobs because he didn't even have an entry-level IT certification. "I was trying to find a job doing technical support for computer systems," he says. "But they prospective employers kept asking for A+ as a minimum requirement."

A+ and Network+ are two certification developed by CompTIA, a technology trade organization, that are designed to demonstrate that an aspiring IT professional has completed the first level of training in computer troubleshooting and networking.

Bennett discovered that A+ training can cost from $700 to $2,000. He signed up for a $900 A+ course that Xincon Technology School offered in New York. Xincon is an IT training and certification company with offices in Edison, N.J., and Toronto. He also signed up for Network+ lessons. In the end, he dropped out of those courses to save money and taught himself using self-study manuals and training guides. He passed the required tests to gain A+ and Network+ certifications.

Bennett credits the certifications with helping him land a job as a broadband technician at AOL Time Warner Inc. He'd just passed the A+ certification exam when he got the job. "If I didn't have it, they would've sent me right home." A+ certification was a requirement for the job, which Bennett got six months ago. He now spends his time working on the help desk to provide assistance to AOL broadband customers.

The market for tech talent has changed in the past 2-1/2 years. Unlike in the boom days when tech-savvy job candidates were few and far between, an entry-level software or hardware certification and some basic technical experience isn't always enough to land a job in today's tough economic climate. In an IT job market that's saturated with skilled and unskilled candidates in search of work, the level of certification required by many employers has been raised to more mid-and high-level certifications.

Technical certifications have evolved from a hiring tool to a screening tool: If you don't have them, you aren't viewed as a serious candidate. Budgets are tight, workloads have increased, and CIOs and other hiring managers are more discriminating about who they hire. Certifications can help them identify potential candidates based on skills.

Certification doesn't guarantee that a person will perform well, says United Cerebral Palsy CIO Brown, but it could get a high-level designer or technician in the door and maybe even into a job.

"If I was looking for a high-level technician or designer and they had Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer MCSE and Cisco Certified Networking Professional CCNP certification, that would get them a foot in the door, and maybe hired," says James Brown, CIO of United Cerebral Palsy of NYC Inc. Of course, once hired, IT professionals need to prove they can do the job, Brown says. A certification is no guarantee that a person will perform well.

But learning new skills is always a good thing. Bennett, who's aware that the tough tech job market isn't getting any better any time soon, is pursuing a more advanced certification to help further his career. "MCSE is more common for networking positions," he says, "because most every company you go to will be using Microsoft systems and will need support."

The MCSE exam, like many other mid-to high-level certifications, requires IT professionals to pass a series of qualifying exams before obtaining MCSE certification. Bennett aims to take the seven exams by the end of the year.

Bennett isn't unusual. Developing new skills is a high priority for many IT professionals, who typically earn more as they learn more. Both IT staffers and managers expect to receive further education and training as an employment benefit, according to the more than 10,000 IT professionals who responded to the InformationWeek Research National IT Salary Survey.

Most don't expect to get reimbursed for the cost of obtaining a certification, the survey results say. However, those figures may be somewhat misleading, because many companies pay for training costs in advance, which eliminates the need to reimburse employees afterwards.

At United Cerebral Palsy of NYC, Brown says he shells out an average of $15,000 per year to keep each high-level technician current on the latest technologies being used by the company. The money is spent on classroom training, online training, conferences, and books, and most of it helps staffers prepare for additional certifications. "They need three weeks worth of training every year to keep up with Cisco, Nortel, IBM, and Microsoft platforms," he says.

With an IT department of 12, who together support 1,500 employees, the not-for-profit organization doesn't have the resources to hire experts to train IT staffers in-house at the level needed and still be able to do the work, Brown says. "So we'd rather just pay for it."

For many companies, providing certification reimbursement or training-related bonuses is viewed as a staff-retention tool. More employers are absorbing the cost of IT certification according to recent data from IT research firm Foote Partners.

For the first three months of this year, half of more than 1,800 employers paid the full cost to certify IT workers. That number climbed from 45% last year and 43% in 2000, when the majority of IT workers paid the total cost for certification.

Most technology professionals who have certifications have several, usually three or four, says David Foote, chief research officer of Foote Partners. Companies are willing to pay annual bonuses for certain certifications that are in high demand.

IT workers with Project Management Professional certification commanded bonuses worth 15% of median base salary, Foote Partners says. Holders of Oracle Certified Professional, Microsoft Certified Database Administrator, and Global Information Assurance Certification--Certified Intrusion Analyst certifications all earned 12% bonuses. Business spending on certifications has picked up despite widespread layoffs in tech industries and among IT personnel, Foote also says. In some cases, "employers pay for certification for people they laid off to keep them off the market," he says. Some companies are willing to subsidize health benefits and certification for laid-off IT workers if they sign a document promising not to work for competitors.

When IT jobs do become available, CIOs and hiring managers are inundated with resumés from skilled candidates. Screening for specific technical certifications is one way to reduce the number of eligible candidates to more manageable numbers. "The average recruiter goes through 200 resumés a day," says Heidi Golledge, a partner with CyberCoders, a Web-based IT recruiting firm in Aliso Viejo, Calif. The lack of certification can cut out three-quarters of the candidates. "Then you can focus on the 25% that are certified," she says.

Certification screening becomes particularly important for recruiters when they're scouting for consultants to fill IT contract positions. The need is usually immediate and there isn't much time for IT consultants to prove their skills before taking an assignment. "If an IT consultant isn't certified, it's difficult to ascertain whether he has the skills, because it's such a quick hiring process," Golledge says.

Certification can also help a CIO gain gain clout and credibility with technology vendors. "I wouldn't presume in a large organization that a CIO would be looking for skills to operate the network themselves," says Don Field, senior manager of certifications at Cisco.

But learning how a network operates lets a high-level manager or CIO pitch in and help a small staff. That's one reason Brown took the MCSE and CCNP certification exams shortly after joining the health organization as CIO two years ago.

Brown says he also obtained certification to be able to converse and negotiate knowledgeably with technology vendors such as Microsoft and Verizon that he works with on a regular basis. "Can I configure routers with the best of them? No," Brown says. But getting certified is about "letting the vendors know there was somebody on this side of the phone that had a higher certification than they had," he says. "And they had better be straight on describing sales pitches and why they can't resolve a technical issue." If they're not, Brown knows enough to call them on it.