He left with 17 years of IT experience and a résumé that runs the gamut from COBOL programmer to IT director. He left with skills in programming both Java and COBOL for financial institutions and with Microsoft Corp.'s Access database and SQL Server engine skills. But with all those skills and all that experience, Harrill left without a single IT certification.

Would that really matter? You bet it would. As Harrill quickly found out, the days when IT hiring managers would snap up experience like his without requiring skills certification are over, blown away by the stagnant economy and slow IT hiring environment. Even in the face of lingering concerns over certification credibility stemming from exam content piracy, attitudes toward IT certifications have transmogrified from the flush time's "nice but not necessary" to the current "don't leave home without it."

"Everybody told me, 'You've got great experience, but we need the piece of paper,'" said Harrill, in Knoxville, Tenn. He only recently landed a new position, and only after forking out $14,500 for a training and certification program.

What kind of payoff can IT professionals expect for that kind of investment? Better salaries and bonuses. Even in this recession, the value of certifications has held steady, earning those who have them bonuses that continue to average between 8 percent and 8.6 percent of base salary over the last year, according to the recently published Hot Technical Skills & Certifications Index from consulting company Foote Partners LLC.

Compare that with what employers are willing to pay for skills that haven't been certified. In a sampling by Foote Partners of 29,400 employers, premium bonuses for all skills—including database, development tools and networking—shrank 13 percent from the third quarter of 2000 to the fourth quarter of last year.

That new attitude among IT hiring managers wound up driving Harrill back to school—at the age of 40—to conquer a slew of Microsoft certifications. He's now attending New Horizons Worldwide CLC Inc. classes full time, having signed up for a year's worth of classes. He fixed in his mind what his colleagues and prospective employers had been telling him: If you want to stay in IT, you need the MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) certification. Now, Harrill is working toward the MCSE, his MCDBA (Microsoft Certified Database Administrator) and his MCSD (Microsoft Certified Systems Designer) certifications.

What's driving hiring managers to demand skills certifications? For one thing, in light of the recession-driven hiring slowdown, they can afford to be far more picky, said David Foote, president and chief research officer of the New Canaan, Conn., IT salary consultancy.

"Companies are being much more demanding about what a 'skill' is," Foote said. "[When applicants say,] 'I have a skill,' what does that mean? It's so open to interpretation. People [in the dot-com era] were saying, 'Oh, you have five years of SAP [AG experience], that's great,' and they'd hire you at some ridiculous price."

Hiring managers, said Foote, see applicants who've spent the time and money it takes to get certified as more credible. "It doesn't mean a person is any smarter, but it means something about their character," Foote said. "There's been a perception that certifications are a more solid or more meaningful, normative measure to compare two people ... [and that] the person is more committed to using that skill to further their career. Whether it's true or not, it's up to the employer, but clearly it's a better comparison than taking somebody's word for it."

That means, for IT professionals who want or need to switch jobs, up-to-date certifications will be more important than ever. For those who fear layoffs, they serve as a visible demonstration of commitment to the profession and the job—a commitment that could make the difference between being a layoff survivor or a victim.

Of course, some certifications provide more protection than others. eWeek readers, for example, rate the Microsoft MCSE and the CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) as the most likely to provide job security and get ahead (check out eWeek IT Careers Center at www.eweek.com/itcareerscenter).

Microsoft's MCSD and MCSE also rate at the top for generating pay increases.

If only I had that PMP ...

Maryann Prinz is somebody who should have been a layoff survivor. Instead, she was handed the proverbial pink slip last June after three and a half years as a project manager for the IT consultancy CGI Group Inc., in Andover, Mass.

Make no mistake about it: Project managers are a hot commodity. In Foote Partners' research, project management has, for the past five quarters, consistently ranked as the No. 1 certification type for generating salary increases. And the value employers place on this certification is growing, climbing from a 12 percent boost in salary on average in the fourth quarter of 2000 to 14 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. That means employers value project management certifications more than they do database, networking and even security certifications.

Unfortunately, although she had taken various project management classes, Prinz had never completed a project management certification. Would it have helped her keep her job? Perhaps. "They laid off quite a number [of consultants]," said Prinz, in Manchester, N.H. "Prospective clients do ask to see the résumés of potential consultants. If [I] had certifications, [I would have been] more credible with potential clients. Frankly, I think certifications did protect people. It's a recognizable standard and would put our consultancy in a better position to propose consultants with the certifications."

Maybe a PMP—the Project Management Professional certification—would have made CGI spare the ax, maybe not. But her lack of any certifications definitely made her squirm when it came time to sit in the job-applicant chairs. "[In job interviews], I felt I didn't have the edge without the certifications," Prinz said. "They didn't say that was required, but it was obvious when you had a pool of applicants that those with certifications would be favored. They can be choosy now, and they're choosing people with all the certifications and credentials."

Prinz is now eliminating that vulnerability. She's attending training classes offered by New Horizons Computer Learning Centers Inc., of Anaheim, Calif., and she's gearing up to take exams within the next two months to become an MCSD and an MCDBA. The program cost about $7,000, $4,000 of which is being funded by the Massachusetts Department of Education because of her unemployed status.

The program, unfortunately, does not provide tuition assistance applicable to PMP certification, but that's OK—Prinz is taking advantage of the certification training it does cover.

While Prinz and Harrill were among the unfortunate IT professionals who have to foot at least part of the bill for certifications themselves, the majority of IT professionals get their certifications funded by their employers. Certification Magazine's (www.certmag.com) recent survey of subscribers found that of 3,939 respondents, 49 percent were getting their certification, training and tests funded by their employers. Thirty-four percent were paying for it themselves, while the remaining 17 percent were sharing the cost with their employers.

Fortunately for employers and employees alike, there are ways to reduce what can be significant training and certification testing costs (see story, Would You Believe Free Tests, Training?).

Providence Health System is one of the employers that's footing the bill entirely. Why? Training and certification produce more productive IT employees, and that leads to reduced costs, said officials at the $3 billion nonprofit organization, in Portland, Ore.

Providence includes health plans, clinics, seven hospitals, and a slew of other health and education services and facilities in California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska.

Chief Technology Officer Ben Berry said project management certification is No. 1 on his list of training and certification priorities for his employees. Providence implemented a project management office about two years ago to improve project methodology.

An important part of that, naturally, was the formalization of project manager training. Hence, Berry sends his 11 project managers to Portland State University to undergo the Project Management Institute's PMP certification training (www.pmi.org/certification).

This despite the fact that Providence, like just about all enterprises, is hurting. Providence's regional data center, which Berry heads, lost $2.4 million (about 5 percent) of its budget this year—a loss that generated expense reductions that included losing the equivalent of 12.6 full-time IT staff members.

Despite those cuts, the project office and project management certifications still rate as being a top spending priority as far as Berry is concerned. That's because properly trained project managers are fundamental to reducing the risk that projects could squander any of the $50 million IT budget that remained after the cuts.

"It was important to have a standard methodology and approach so we could complete projects on time and on budget," said Berry, in Tigard, Ore. "Before, without that structure, you had to wait until the end of the year to see how you did."

Do Providence project managers who achieve their PMP get the kind of bonuses that Foote Partners research says they do? They'll get a raise, Berry said—as long as they mix the certification with added responsibility and leadership, along with beefing up technical, interpersonal and communication skills, and business knowledge.

Of course, when the market was good, it seemed like all IT certifications automatically boosted salaries, no questions asked. John LeBrun remembers a time when getting his CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert), CCNA, CCDA (Cisco Certified Design Associate) and CCDP (Cisco Certified Design Professional) certifications would have boosted his paycheck by 5 percent to 10 percent each.

A lot of people, including LeBrun, have kissed those days goodbye. "Most people aren't pounding on doors to get raises," said LeBrun, a sales engineer for Verizon Communications Inc.'s Enterprise Solutions Group, in Research Triangle Park, N.C. "Certifications nowadays justify your existence rather than get you raises."

Is that stopping him from hitting the books? No. Already a CCNA, LeBrun was testing to become a CCDA when this story was going to press and is in training classes offered by Global Knowledge Network Inc., of Cary, N.C., to become a CCDP.

Mind you, he doesn't do it because he likes to read the 300-plus-page Cisco Systems Inc. manuals. He does it because the company pays for it, and he knows that when the good times are with us again, he'll have credentials to bring to the salary bargaining table. "While the company's still paying for them, get them," LeBrun said.

Harrill is getting them despite the fact he's paying the bill himself. Even before he finished training and testing, he got a call from Massey Electric Co., a privately owned electrical contractor in Knoxville.

Why did Massey hire him even before he'd completed his full-time training work? "The reason why we hired him while he was still in school ... is that our company encourages our employees to seek out any education they can get," said Paige Brooke, Massey's computer department hiring manager. "We wanted someone who knew COBOL, but we have Lotus Notes and the .Net server. We wanted one person who could be a software technician as well. Mike knew Visual Basic and SQL and was in school to get Microsoft-certified. That was a real plus to us."

And, these days, even experienced IT professionals need all the pluses they can get.

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