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Thread: WHY DO YOU NEED TO BE CERTIFIED

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2000
    Posts
    2

    Thumbs down

    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

  2. #2
    Join Date
    May 2000
    Location
    ATLANTA, GA, USA
    Posts
    3,135
    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?


  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jun 2000
    Location
    Madrid, Spain
    Posts
    7,447
    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

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jun 2000
    Posts
    295
    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.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Nov 2000
    Posts
    2
    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

  6. #6
    Join Date
    May 2000
    Location
    ATLANTA, GA, USA
    Posts
    3,135
    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.


  7. #7
    Join Date
    Oct 2000
    Posts
    123

    Smile

    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






  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jul 2000
    Posts
    7

    My opinion!

    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

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Jun 2000
    Posts
    295
    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!

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Mar 2000
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    213

    Red face Just Opinion!

    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]
    Regards,
    Vimal Patel
    OCP DBA 7.3, 8, 8i, 9i
    Sun Solaris 8 Sys. Admin.
    A+

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