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WFH and Technical Certifications

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Working in the IT industry can be fun and challenging at the same time. Each day can bring a new challenge that you need to conquer. We all know that technology is changing fast, but the ways of working, concepts and the SDP (Software Development Processes) are evolving at a slower speed.

I see certifications as a way how we can increase productivity and ensure that the pillars of a specific topic are well known by the teams. Yes, sometimes the certification process and content might not be perfect for all of us. Nevertheless, most of the time there is a good match between specific roles and the certification curricula. 

Top Certifications
Global Knowledge publishes what are the most trending certifications at this moment in time. As we expect the cloud ones (AWS, Azure, GCP), Security and DevOps are in high demand. Except for technology, we should ensure that are also keep an eye on ITIL, TOGAF or similar certifications and knowledge. 
Biggest challenge
One of the biggest challenges that came with remote working is time. When and how you should make time to learn, to extend your knowledge and prepare for a certification. The high demand for IT professionals combined with WFH reduces drastically the time available to learn and extend our knowledge. In many situations, large organizations become a large archipelago, where each project is an island, almost fully isolated from the others. 

The main challenges for IT decision-makers are:
  1. Workload
  2. Stuff Availability
  3. Talent retention 
  4. Developing stronger teams. 
All of this put high pressure on the people, making it for them harder to find time and the right state of mind to extend their knowledge. Most of the time, it is a challenge to find the time to learn when you are all the at-home and your commute time takes between 2-5s.

Why you should certify?
When you talk with a technical person, it is sometimes hard to identify what are the benefits of supporting the certification journey You should remember that having people certified would:
  1. Close organizational skills gaps
  2. Meets client's requirements
  3. Boosts productivity
  4. Gives you the ended over competitors, 
  5. Reduce implementation time
  6. Improve the issues troubleshooting time
  7. Reduce employee turnover
  8. Deploy quicker the services and products
  9. You make hiring easier
It is interesting what people think, once they get certified. In most of the cases they notify that:
  1. The quality of my work has improved 
  2. I am more engaged with my work 
  3. I am faster at performing my job 
  4. No difference in effectiveness 
  5. I have decreased errors in my work 
How you can prepare for certifications?
Nowadays there are a lot of ways and resources that you can prepare for a certification. Before the 2020 formal training provided by companies, using an in-person trainer was one of the most common ways (workshops, conferences, classrooms).
Things changed in the last 18 months, and formal trainer relies now more and more on online and digital content. Nowadays formal trainer is done in most of the cases online, using:
  1. 3rd party online training using on-demand platforms that provided video content, learning materials and sandboxes for hands-on
  2. Virtual classrooms are provided internally by an instructor or by an external company. In most cases, the virtual classrooms that cover technical content are provided by an external instructor 
  3. Online conferences, where the quality of content is good, but it is harder and harder to ensure that teams are focusing only on the conference and they don't work the on project
Based on the Global Knowledge report, the top 5 informal learning resources used in the last 12 months are:
  1. Webinars
  2. Researched a topic online
  3. Books, textbooks, manuals
  4. Downloaded white papers/technical guides
  5. Seminars, luncheons, or conference
Slf-learning is the most common way to prepare for certification. 

We should ask ourselves what we can do to support self-learning? What is our biggest concern? Time, training materials, right motivation. 
Define a plan, set clear expectations and timeline. I think that timeline is one of the most important things that keep us motivated, giving us the possibility to track each step and know when we will have the FINAL exam.

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