IT Certifications: 3 Ways To Judge Value

the skills and knowledge needed to do the work. Proxy test-taking is also a real problem. All these factors contribute to the number of individuals who have certifications but not skills.

Of course, boosting security increases the complexity and cost of getting candidates through the process, so vendors may respond by increasing participation to offset the cost of protecting program integrity. Here are three questions to ask:

3. Determining competence
Unfortunately, even the most stringent security efforts cannot address the final complaint: the inability of exams to measure competence.

Fundamentally, the problem is the perception that multiple-choice, standardized exams are incapable of measuring competence. In other words, they're designed to measure knowledge, while competence is the efficient and successful application of knowledge. A common perception is that only practical, lab-based exams are capable of determining a candidate's competence.

In reality, multiple-choice exams can measure a lot more than many people understand, and practical exams are much more limited than many realize. The degree to which multiple-choice exams can determine competence has to do with the way they're developed and the cognitive complexity of questions. Here are two questions to ask:

A well-designed exam can differentiate competent candidates from weak ones. Certainly anyone can guess a few correct answers, but the exam should take that into account and ensure that candidates cannot pass strictly on the basis of lucky guesses.

Many employers gravitate toward certifications that require practical, lab-based examinations that require candidates to demonstrate their capability, arguing that these determine competence more effectively than multiple-choice exams. While practical exams can be great for showing competence, their scope can be limited. They also have other limitations: They're more expensive to create and administer, measuring success can be subjective, and they often sacrifice breadth of knowledge for depth within a limited domain. In short, a certification that's based on only a practical exam remains subject to the other two validity issues and does not by itself guarantee that any given candidate will perform competently in the varied contexts of the real world.

Ideally, certification programs should use multiple-choice exams of escalating complexity to identify which candidates are most likely to have a good breadth of knowledge, and then subject them to a practical exam that lets them demonstrate their ability to apply that knowledge.

The takeaway
In an ideal world, certifications have value and provide the real-world, job-specific skills employers are looking for. When evaluating the validity of any certification, ask these questions:

To get the full value from certifications, CIOs and hiring managers must start asking the right questions.

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