Re: Certifications

[Sanjeev Gupta <ghane@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 26 Oct 2000, Sandip Bhattacharya wrote:

> As one person said here ... the brainbench exams are worth only for the
> experience ... since there is no guarantee of the exam conditions (i know
> folks who have given such exam in groups), recruiters don't give much
> merit to them unles you give one more in front of them. 

I am recruiter, to some extent, in that I interview and qualify people for
others to recruit.  To the extent that all tools are useful, I find
brainbench good.  2 reasons:

There are no braindumps, yet
The "syllabus" seems more wider than other vendor-oriented tests I have
seen.

I have administered the NT test to over 2 dozen MCSEs, some with 5years or
so experience.  Not one has reached "Master" status, and half have failed. 
Most of them gave the exam under uncontrolled conditions, and they were
explicitly allowed to refer to books, etc.  Asked not to take assistance
from humans.  I offer an increment to staff who can achieve a Master in
_any_ paper, be it Written English or TCP/IP.  The idea is that if you can
show you are good in Pascal, I can teach you C.

I am associated with brainbench in a limited way, as I beta-test and
assist question evaluation for their Linux tests.  No, I do not see the
questions I evaluate coming round, yet.

-- Sanjeev Gupta
Linux MVP brainbench.com