Importance of IT certifications
Getting any kind of certification is important, especially in the field of IT. Certifications help you grab the basic concepts of most IT skills, the skills you acquire or repolish during any certification are also tested with real-world examples throughout the course, and most importantly larger organizations require or prefer employees with certifications on the domain.
There has been a rapid boom when it comes to IT certifications. Since this is the age of IT and there is no question about it, various online certifications have captured the attention of the IT market. Recruiters in the IT industry focus more on the individuals who stand out from the bunch. Certifications are a great way to stand out of the bunch, even for professionals who are happily employed, certifications help them understand their own level of expertise. It is always a good practice in the IT field to keep challenging your knowledge and keep improving it. Certifications help you do just that.
For beginners who are willing to dive into the field of IT and have no prior experience, certifications are a great starting point. As throughout the certification there is at least one professional available to guide you through it, also answer your questions and keep you motivated to complete the whole certification. After completion students are mostly given some kind of badge to show off their achievement. These awards are more than just showpiece as they help bring authenticity to your skills at a very early stage or the start of one’s career.
Certifications in any domain of IT helps guide the way for beginners, as guidance is crucial at this point. It helps unlock more than just what that one certification has to offer. For beginners, IT certifications help set a very direct path to follow and a way to keep adding more glitter to your skills or gaining new ones in the right way with professionals of the domain as trainers.
In-demand certifications for 2020
Some of the most in-demand certifications for the year 2020 are as follows.
- Project management training (PMP)
- AWS certified solution architect
- CompTIA A+
- Certified public accountant (CPA)
- Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
- Cisco Certifications
- Agile and Scrum certifications
- Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)
- Microsoft certified solutions expert (MCSE)
- Global Information Assurance Certification (GIAC)
Jobs, payscale and responsibilities
After getting any of the above-mentioned certifications you can easily score a good-paying job in the respective domain.
For example;
- Upon completing PMP certifications one can get hired as Project Manager in a software house of any scale. A single project can be assigned various projects at one time. It is the responsibility of a project manager to make sure all the deadlines of a project are met, and quality work is delivered on time. Project managers act as a barrier between client expectations/requirements and the organization’s resources.
Project Managers usually earn an average of $90,000 annually.
- Upon completing the AWS solutions architect certification, one can land a job in an organization that focuses on AWS deployments. Understanding AWS is a whole field of its own, companies which have many applications deployed or even a single software with extensive features need a sound AWS architecture which focuses on the key features that AWS offers along with cost-cutting methods that don’t affect the whole system/application’s architecture. This is a relatively new field but a lot of job openings have been seen last year, and growth is expected for 2020.
The average salary of an AWS solutions architect is $140,000.
- The CompTIA A+ certification opens up doors for its students to be hired as an IT support engineer, IT technician or IT engineer. Companies throughout the world require IT technicians, these days, this the most simple or entry-level job that the IT industry has to offer. The CompTIA A+ certification provides the basic knowledge of setting up and maintaining interconnected computer systems in an office environment. This certification is really helpful for people willing to step into the IT industry without prior knowledge and get hired pretty quickly as well in an IT company.
The average salary of an IT technician is $50,000.
- The ITIL certification offers different levels of completions and students can get employed at different pay scales depending upon their level of ITIL certification. The most basic level of ITIL certification is an ITIL practitioner. Upon completing this the students can get hired in the service sector of companies and can land a job of a service strategy planner, customer service expert, IT administrator or senior technician.
The average salary for these positions is $70,000.
- Cisco certifications offer more than just one particular certification. There are many certifications that fall under the cisco umbrella, all are related to network engineering. All IT companies require a soon networking infrastructure which helps ease the process of intercommunication of an organization. Upon completing any Cisco certification, the students usually get hired as a network engineer.
The average salary of a network engineer is $75,000.
- The Agile and Scrum certifications have been very high in demand for the past couple of years. As more and more companies are following the agile approach the demand for agile and scrum experts has increased as well. The agile approach has been more favorable in the past year because of its robustness as throughout the agile and scrum process new features/services are continuously added to a project/product and this keeps the project/product relevant with respect to time. Although many project managers are hired with Agile and Scrum certifications around the world, the most favorable job title for people holding this certification is Scrum Master. This is a newly introduced job title in the IT industry but highly in demand as well.
An expert Scrum master earns an average salary of $90,000.
- A Certified Ethical Hacker is not your common hacker trying to conduct malicious attacks from his/her dorm room. Rather a CEH is a trained individual who knows numerous loopholes and backdoors that might be created automatically by organization during the development phase. After completion of CEH certification an individual can be hired as security expert or security analyst. Both of these positions require continous monitoring of systems, analyzing and reporting security issues, and continous upgrade in defensive security systems.
The average salary of a security analyst is $85,000
- A Microsoft certified solutions expert can effectively run and administer a whole data center. This kind of expert is responsible for managing the systems, storage units, their networking, and virtualization. This position plays a key role in data centers and mostly when anything goes wrong at a data center, these people are the first ones to know and provide valuable feedback.
The average salary of a Microsoft certified solutions expert is $90,000
- The Global Information Assurance Certification is an essential security certifaction that any security expert should obtain. There are many sub level certifications that come under GIAC, most prominent being GIAC Information Security Fundamentals . This certifcation highlights all the basic and some intermediate level security skills that organizations expect from GIAC certified individuals.
The average salary of GIAC certified technicians is $120,000