WHY DO YOU NEED TO BE CERTIFIED

Hi All,

I am a DBA Manager for a big company here is NY, I have hired at least 30 dba's
in my career and interviewed hundreds, my experience is if a person is Certified it
doesn't mean that he/she qulified for the job. All my employees are not certified
but they do exelent job.

In my opinion you need to be certified only if you are not
confident about your skills, i.e try to skip techinical interview.
The comapanies does the Certification process exploiting people so they can make money.
just like other certification process GRE, GMAT etc.. (By the way I got high score in GRE though)

Sorry some of you may not agree with me, But it is true and it's my opinion only.

Thanks
Mike

Why certification is needed?

I am a OCP. Partially I can agree with your points. I do not want to consider examples from other DBAs experience here, because every body has their own views. So I would consider myself for the example. I started my IT career in 1984 with COBOL, FORTRAN as my primary languages. In those days RDBMS was not popular. Mainframe COBOL and FORTRAN ruled the IT world. In those days either people got training within the organization or they got it from commercial Institute. Whenever I went for interview, I was purely tested my mathematical and statistics knowledge and my ability to solve business problems with the help of programming languages.

When Oracle, Informix become popular in late 80s, many companies started to develop application software in RDBMS. I started to learn what RDBMS was and then learned Oracle. My statistics knowledge helped to learn Oracle very easily. There was no OCP at that time. And moreover OCP was not needed because the product itself was small. I have experience in Oracle 5.1, 6.0, 7.0, 7.1, 7.3, 8.0.4 and 8i. I never thought of becoming OCP because I thought it was of no useful to me, but I was wrong. When the product (Oracle software) becomes big, it is impossible to learn all the software by one person. One can become master in one or two areas. A doctor who studied medicine can not become a good civil engineer. If he wants to be a CIVIL ENGINEER, he has to pass the engineering degree.

In most of the interviews, the Human Resource Manager or CEO was not in position to ask technical questions in Oracle to the candidates. Hence, he would just verify that whether the candidate has passed OCP or not. The certificate helps the candidate to be scrutinized in the preliminary stage.

I do not think certificate alone would help DBA to become a master. With certificate and with experience one can become a good Oracle DBA.

I would like to give an example. Few months ago I interviewed a candidate who had a OCP but with less experience. I asked him, “How do you do hot-backup?”. The person replied me “What is hot-backup?”, and “he never heard about it”. The candidate did not know the difference between hot backup and cold backup, because he never did it in his career.

New features added in every release of Oracle. And if I want to use those features, first of all I must know what they are and how they can be used. When I started to prepare for the OCP, I learned a lot which I never used my earlier projects. The certification keeps DBAs up to the knowledge and ability to solve difficult problems.

I saw in my life many good DBAs who are not certified. I would not blame them, because they do not have necessity. They are all aged and well settled. As well as I interviewed many young persons who did OCP, but failed poorly in the interviews.


Conclusion:
Necessity is the mother of invention. 5 Years ago I would say OCP was not necessary. Today I feel OCP is necessary.

Could you post the years of experience of the DBAs you had appointed in your organization?

I think it also depends on what kind of DBAs we are talking about here. It´s different between production DBAs, Development DBAs & Application DBAs. BTW i am not certified :o

My thought is OCP will not hurt you at all.
I heard some companies in CA will pay extra 5K
for OCP.

I am certified (Oracle 7.3.4, 8 and 8i),
but 95% compaines I interviewd
did not know what is OCP is. I am in Colorado.

Hi again..

I agree with you Tamilselvan partially, But still don't you think these comapanies conduct the
certification are just making money, like Sylvan learing center, GRE, GMAT, TOEFL and so many others.
I have from junior to Senior level DBA's in my group. It doesn't matter what DBA is whether Production,
Development etc... Job responsibilities are the same. A good DBA will take care of the problems easily
whether the problem is Development databases or not.

Thanks
Mike

I agree that institutes make a lot of money by teaching the OCP stuff to the aspirant DBAs.

I never attended any institute exclusively for OCP. I spent $600 for test fees, $500 for self test softwares, $100 for books. When I compare this amount with my earnings, it is very small. And more over all institutes teach only 10% of the subject. We have to learn the remaining 90% through practice.

What I am stressing here is: if a guy in US does not know abcd of Oracle, then he has to go to any commercial institute to learn Oracle; he has no option at all.

In US most of the companies do not take fresh candidates for DBA position and more over they are not in a position to train them also. Where as in India, the situation is different. Many companies in India recruit fresh college candidates and train them also in a particular area.

I am of the view that OCP gives self-confidence.

Hi, you two guys just talked about a very simple question which both of you covered pretty well, I just want to say that this is really depends on the person. Can you inmagine that the technical guy(except house-keeper) in ORACLE company need to passthrough the OCP exam? No, because they are one of the ORCALE family!

IF you think you have enough expenriences in this area -- you can compete with others, then you don't need to get OCP, and not all of the hiring manager even knows about OCP. Otherwise, go to get OCP to support youself -- to get a chance let youself get more experience, especially for the young guys to compete with others, not for the old one -- even though thay are more experienced, but they are old, limited to update new technologies.

Anyway, COMPANY = OLD(40) + YOUNG(60)
and MONEY = EXCEPRIENCES(80) + OCP(20). More importantly, OCP for youself is ticket for the chances, for the experience, for your basical skill, etc., don't care about the OCP business, it is the rule of the whole world, everybody needs make a living, but they must help each other to make money at the same time.

BTW, MR. tamilselvan, it is really fair to pass OCP with that amount of money.

Take care

Hey.

I still think it all depends on whose shoes are you in!! For people with great experience in IT field, Oracle, in this case, will never think of getting any certifications at all! On the other hand, people who is NEW to this field (like me!), where in the world they can get that kind of experience that companies want? Obviously, by getting some sort of training and certification. Though it might not guarantee them a job, but at least an opportunity for an interview, something is better than nothing! That's why you can see so many IT trainings everywhere....because companies are hunger for IT people and they can never get all EXPERIENCED people to work for them, these SO EXPERIENCED people come and go, that's when we the inexperienced people come in (with our little experience and certifications).

Bottom line is, people with experience will never understand how tough it is for inexperience people to step foot in the IT professional arena! That's why it would be an big discouragement when people out there kept saying "These people who went for certifications without good experience will not get a job!" We are working as hard as those EXPERIENCED people, in fact, harder than them!

The inexperienced who is working on OCP,
RAY

Ray,

I understand what you said, and believe your
hard work will reward you in the near feature.

Get cetified, you will and can find an DBA job!

Good luck with OCP exams!

Best wish!

Hi All,
I strongly disagree with Tamilselvan on example
he posted:

'I would like to give an example. Few months ago I interviewed a candidate who had a OCP but with less experience. I asked him, “How do you do hot-backup?”. The person replied me “What is hot-backup?”, and “he never heard about it”. The candidate did not know the difference between hot backup and cold backup, because he never did it in his career. '

Com'on Tamilselvan, do you believe that guy???
what you think? Without knowing what is Hot Backup
and Cold Backup, he can pass the OCP paper???

Mr DBMANAGER, Did you interviewed both candidates
'with OCP+Experience' and 'with Only Experience' ???
bcoz I believe that, if i have candidate with both(OCP+
Experience) than i'll give him priority on hiring process.

How come you didn't find any DBA with OCP (+Experience)
for your organization??
What is your background? I'm asking this question bcoz
i heard that if hiring manager is not OCP (or Certified)
than they don't like to hire Oracle Certified candidate!!
Why? And my last question, If There is no DBAs in your company with OCP how you come to this opinion without
giving chance them to work for you?? just conducting Interview only??

Correct me if i'm wrong!

[Edited by vimalp on 11-03-2000 at 09:04 PM]

OCP is a milleage in your career I think .
I think there are maybe some people who are lack of DBA experience but they are OCP. But comparing with many other
DBA which don't have OCP certificated , OCP is much better
(It's not because I have certificated) .

So OCPs , don't lose your confidence and keep on studying !

totally agree with dbmanager.

I think that a good interviewer will easily spot an OCP who studied to the exam just for the sake of passing. A good interviewer will ask situational questions and seek in depth answers that would take more knowledge than answering a multiple choice question. Therefore, it is my opinion for inexperienced DBA hopefulls that yes, OCP may get you more interviews than those without OCP, but once you step up to the plate, it would be very easy to see if you are ready to take the job. I think Tamil's example illustrated this very well.

As for me, I started in the DBA world fresh out of a 4 week crash course at a Tech School. Yes, they charged me an arm and a leg for what was less than minimal knowledge for my first job. However, the pay increase I got compared to my previous carrer in Teaching, it was worth it. My first employer gave me a chance because I did not pretend to know everything or much at all for that matter. I was very honest and showed enthusiasm to learn whatever they threw at me. They decided it was worth it for them to take me at a minimal pay, send me to training, and train me in how they want the job done, rather than hiring someone with some experience for a higher pay only to hear, "Well that's now how I did it at my last job." They wanted a fresh thinker.

So as with what everyone has basically said, it depends on the person, depends on the position the employer is looking to fill and it depends on the person conducting the interview.

The reason I went for OCP is to improve my skills and like Tamil said, it gave me a great oppurtunity to learn things that I was not actively doing at the position I was holding at the time. There are so many features with Oracle that there probably isn't one site, except Oracle, who uses every feature they offer to the fullest extent all the time. By learning features we weren't currently using, I was able to make recommendations for my company to start using new features that would help their operations, which were not considered before. It not only helped me advance in my DBA career, but it helped my company benefit too.

OCP is like icing on the cake. Cake without icing isn't bad, it may be excellent, but wouldn't everyone like a little icing anyway?

I must say this particular thread is quite encouraging... I am young and was hired by a software company last year... since then I've worn several different hats... all of which I had to make myself... and now I've been tasked with learning Oracle... I have not yet examined STS options, mainly because my boss sent me to an Oracle Education Center... however... my concern is this... In OEC I did not learn any real life exspirience... we didn't even install Oracle... which puts me between a rock and a hard place... because yes I can pass OCP with no problem... but I don't want my boss to think that I have the knowledge to take on huge tasks just because I passed a few tests...

What can I do to gain that valuable real-life exspireince other than just playing around on a test database? I'd like a short turn around as possible...