Does MCSE still pull weight? Are there newer certifications that matter now?
What fields do you think will benefit from this certification? In design (one of Lynda's pillars), half of hireability is portfolio. I suppose in production roles, you'd want to know you're hiring technically proficient people, but that too you can mostly tell from the work.
Perhaps this works as well, or better, from the angle of "People who had this skill got looked at 3x more than you. Go get that skill."
I think in some realms MCSE does pull some weight, such as large financial institutions and non-tech companies. There are newer certificates such as those from Coursera and Udacity that are starting to pull more and more weight from the industry, mainly tech though.
The main fields that benefit from this are business and technology. Human resources and recruiters tend not to be technical: they have no idea if you actually know Java or not. They simply know you have it on your resume. This gives them at least some peace of mind that you know at least some Java. Conversely, Business people can be evaluated on whether they know how to do basic things like rate of return or efficiency metrics.
This does help in that realm, but it helps in giving some people confidence as well. Some people have imposters syndrome so a certificate saying they know it alleviates that feeling.
Depends where you are in your career. I've heard it claimed that an MCSE can be a stand-in for a degree (yes, I know that makes no sense, but I mean from a recruiter's perspective when reviewing a candidate's overall qualifications, rather than relating to technical skill/knowledge).
So in your first 1-10 years? It might help. I will say eventually you have to remove an MCSE from your CV/resume as it does more harm than good (e.g. if you had a Server 2000 MCSE on your CV right now, it's just going to make you look out of touch).
> Are there newer certifications that matter now?
Timeless is key(!).
A cert' which is tied to a specific piece of software only helps you while that software is relevant. So getting a cert on something like Project Management, Project Planning, or a broad cert' on security (with a focus on policy, not systems like CISSP or Security+).
That's why degrees are a no-brainer. They're always timeless. People list their degree in their first and last job. Few certs survive more than fifteen some odd years.
It shows you haven't done anything worthwhile for 14 years(!). If you have to pad your CV out with stuff you know won't be relevant, then you're in a weak position professionally (or are just too lazy to update your CV, which might be worse).
A lot of older employees (late 40s or 50s) make this mistake. They leave experience on their CV which is not relevant because it is twenty or more years old, and then wonder why they struggle to find work.
Look, someone somewhere might legitimately want an SCO Unix expert or something to migrate them from Netware or NT 4.0 but in those rare cases customise your CV to put that experience back on, rather than making it the default for a lot of businesses that just don't care.
I'm in my 40s and been on disability since 2003. My skills are out of date, and I've been out of work for far too long.
Been trying to learn the new technology, but knowing the old technology makes learning the new technology easier.
I haven't updated my resume in a long time, been meaning to do so. Still list Novell Netware, Commodore Amiga, COBOL, Wordperfect, Visual BASIC 6.0 etc and never updated the resume since 2001 or so. But I never handed out my resume because I've been disabled. Time to trim off the old stuff and add on my new experiences.
Actually that is spot on. The problem of the line is that it shows something positive ( got a cert 14 years ago ), but also something negative ( there have been 4 generations of servers in the meanwhile, where are the cert )
Obviously that is easy to explain in an interview, the problem is getting the interview in the first place. Resume are not analysed, they are scanned by irrational human, sensible to effect similar to https://xkcd.com/641/
I had always heard that MCSE was considered a joke. I've heard positive things about RHCE and some of the Cisco networking certs, but I haven't been around that world for several years now.
What fields do you think will benefit from this certification? In design (one of Lynda's pillars), half of hireability is portfolio. I suppose in production roles, you'd want to know you're hiring technically proficient people, but that too you can mostly tell from the work.
Perhaps this works as well, or better, from the angle of "People who had this skill got looked at 3x more than you. Go get that skill."