Pardon me, but I must grumble. I’m stressing out a bit and while rationally I know things will be fine there’s that part of me that’s building up to a nice anxiety attack.
I’ve been working in the PC industry in one capacity or another for twenty years. I’ve done a bit of everything. In fact the reason that I have my current job which carries with it quite a bit of responsibility is the fact that I’ve done everything and it’s a job that a flexible skill set is is pretty much a requirement.
The catch is that my employer has as one of its rules that anyone who works on a PC has to have A+ certification. For non-techies that’s the absolute most basic certification one can have. It’s so basic that it’s a joke.
I started at this long before A+ existed and haven’t had to look at it because my resume had references longer than my arm indicating that I did everything. And yet now I have to go take the test in roughly two hours.
The problem for me is that while I know significantly more than what will be on the test, the information that will be on the test I’ve filtered out to what’s really important. So it’s been hard for me to wrap my head around the exam study material. The concepts are beyond basic to me, the nitty details on the other hand can’t stick because my understanding of them was formed decades ago by other methods. The real answer to a question “How many pins does a this connector have?” is “Enough to fit the plug.”
So I’m poking through a study guide hoping to retain enough of those details that I can pass this exam and go on with my life. Crap like how to tell apart styles of memory that haven’t been used in five years.
Okay, enough griping. Back to this…
I hear ya. Certs are usually a poor indication of performance (IMO.)
Not quite a year ago I was in an interview for software development and the man was clearly reading his questions out of a certification book. He didn’t even know most of what he was asking. I decided not to pursue that position.
Good luck!
I totally understand.
I’ve had to take tests that show knowledge for using certain kind of software. Instead of giving an assignment showing I can use the software to a given end, the test will ask particulars about the software, i.e., the name of the function to use. Being a very visual person, I could tell you the location of the place to click–third menu from left, 4th item down, for instance–but maybe not it’s actual wording and certainly not its F-key number, which as fast as F-keys may be for most people, they aren’t for me because numbers don’t compute as well as the visual location…
I recently got my A+ certification. I’m happy to have it. I’m sure it’ll mean something to someone.
But I’ve worked in the IT field for 10+ years and I have to admit that, though I studied my ass off memorizing stuff, I didn’t really learn all that much. It hasn’t helped me do my job better. It just allowed me to say to my boss, see, I did it.
Good luck to you. There are some good web sites with study guides and practice questions and I think those helped me a lot.
That sucks, JSG. I relate that to a position I had in the past where several of us had to interview to keep our jobs because of a change in technology required different staffing needs.
On a related tangent (and I hate to take the opposite side of the fence here), there really is a benefit and reason to using certifications as a tool FOR HIRING PEOPLE. I don’t agree it should be used as a requirement to keep your current job.
Regardless of how easy or difficult an exam cert may be, it at least says you’re willing to complete the material required to pass the certification. I’m going to tie this in to my own personal experience of being required a college degree to be considered for a job.
If you’re the hiring manager, and you have a new position available. You’re given a stack of 100+ resumes and applications to sift through. You HAVE to cut that down to a manageable stack. Using arbitrary elimination techniques like this make the most sense. Sure you’re going to be passing on some really great people. On the other hand you’re still left with people that can at least learn enough to get a degree or pass a certification.
What I’m amazed at is that unless the A+ cert has been updated, you’re being tested on a bunch of old crap that no one sees anymore, anyway. Not THAT doesn’t make any sense anywhere.
Well, I’m done and I passed with flying colors despite the fact that there were several points in the exam where I knew what I would do but couldn’t figure out what they wanted me to do. My up to the last second cramming did help since there were several esoteric technical questions that I had just seen details on a few hours before.
Khadaji, in my experience people who bring up their certifications to give themselves authority are the most clueless, useless people in the tech industry. I’ve dealt with more than my share of MCSE’s that I wouldn’t trust to tie their shoes let alone configure a server.
Enright3, no one was holding a gun to my head and saying do it now or you’re out the door. It’s just in my department where we’re a small team that is responsible for some very big things we’re not very compliant with that policy. So my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss got frigidity and started putting on some pressure which I agreed to help alleviate.
The exam hadn’t been updated, though the questions on obsolete tech which is what I was most worried about weren’t there at all. I joked with my coworkers yesterday that I was concerned about the questions on stuff that nobody actually uses like Vista. But nope, a lot of bass-ackward WinXP usage questions that made me scratch my head since the way I access all of those functions is the command line.
Of course now that they’ve put me through this stress I plan on abusing my company’s “Compensation for certifications” plan as much as possible. 
Thanks everyone for wishing me well.
Congrats on passing a test filled with the most useless information (and some useful as well, I admit) ever to grace a certification exam. I was going to have to be certified, until my job changed and the PC part of it went away (hallelujah.)