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Enhancements made by Microsoft to its certification program make certifications more meaningful and practical than ever, helping companies recruit the best candidates for their open positions and helping individual professionals chart a strategy for more rewarding employment with lifelong learning.
Two Microsoft Gold Certified Partners and Certified Partners for Learning Solutions (CPLS), Global Knowledge and New Horizons Southern California, offer a wide range of training and certification programs to prepare organizations and individual professionals for the future. As both partners’ research and experience show, Microsoft Certification plays a critical role in helping companies realize the full benefits of the technology that they invest in.
Global Knowledge: Training and Certification at a Global Level
Founded in 1995, Global Knowledge employs more than 1,300 people worldwide. Corporate headquarters are in Cary, North Carolina. Global Knowledge operates training centers across the United States and in 22 other countries. The company serves business customers of any organizational type in all industries. With Global Knowledge’s worldwide presence and advanced training-delivery system—which combines on-site, virtual, and mobile training and certification offerings—the Fortune 100 companies are a target market of great value for the company. Sales executives closely follow these companies’ activities and technological changes so that they can assist with skills management and certification planning. Global Knowledge’s business is growing as companies are once again allocating larger budgets to training and certification.
Global Knowledge offers Microsoft technology training, extending the Microsoft curriculum with additional content designed to help students address the challenges they find in their role and organization. Global Knowledge training labs provide a rich learning environment, incorporating virtual machines to give students wide exposure to the particular capabilities, opportunities, and challenges associated with technologies they learn about. In addition, boot camps take students through two days of highly intensive preparation, followed by a certification exam. Many Global Knowledge customers pair the skills transfer training with a subsequent boot camp and certification. The company delivers these programs in its own facilities and remote channels, or on-site at customer locations. Setting up a training location and then adjusting it to serve as a certification exam facility is a turnkey operation that requires efficient setup of desktops and servers.
Most instructors at Global Knowledge teachMicrosoft technology and other domains, such as Cisco networking tools or project management skills. The majority of instructors are contractors who run their own business and can bring a practical, real-world perspective to the learning environment.
Assessing the markets from time to time in research projects, Global Knowledge can offer clear evidence for the value of training and certification. The company’s “2010 IT Skills and Salary Report” notes that both managers and team members in IT departments overwhelmingly agree that training and certification have a positive impact on job performance. Findings also show professionals who obtained an IT or project management certification during the last five years earned an average of U.S.$5,242 more per year than their peers without certification. Of the 20 most popular certifications in the industry, five are from Microsoft. One of the Microsoft Certifications, Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS), especially helps boost earning power when professionals hold several MCTS qualifications. The professionals with multiple MCTS designations earn $13,000 more per year on average than those with a single MCTS certification.
Craig Brown, Practice Leader – Microsoft at Global Knowledge, is involved in the design of many of the company’s training and certification offerings and provides critical collaboration with the enterprise sales team. Brown is enthusiastic about the company’s certification offerings and Microsoft Certification in particular. “I’m very proud of our large-scale certification offerings, where we often get hundreds of people in Microsoft partner companies to obtain the right certifications to qualify the organization for competency participation and help it make a compelling business case for its expertise,” says Brown. “Microsoft Certification today demonstrates that an IT professional has deep-reaching, practical insight into a particular technology. This is far more valuable for employers and their people than more broad-ranging certifications with less definition.”
As Brown goes on to explain, “Training without certification is never quite complete because the learner’s achievement is not validated. Certification, especially with the specificity Microsoft has introduced in Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) and other certifications, helps an employer verify with great efficiency that a candidate has exactly the skills the company needs.Certification connects directly to productivity, and people who obtain certification tend to be more satisfied employees, commit more to their jobs, and accomplish more. Certification should figure into a company’s strategy and planning, because assisting your people to perform at their best level enables the organization to succeed. As an employer, you may be concerned that you invest in training and certification and people leave for another job. But what if you don’t make the investment, and they stay?”
Global Knowledge includes a certain amount of behavior modification in its learning and certification offerings. Brown states, “Some highly motivated students will learn whatever they like through self-study. But many people need the interaction with an instructor and other students. For them, distance learning is too easily interrupted by distractions on the job. That’s also why our boot camps lead directly to certification. You don’t want life getting in the way. The longer people wait to take the certification exam after completing training and preparation, the lower the success rate.” The company is currently experimenting with ways to provide the most direct, meaningful learning experience for students who join an instructor-led course remotely from their offices or homes. Says Brown, “There are many opportunities to enrich training delivery through the cloud and encourage students to participate intensely. As we integrate live relationships more into this learning scenario, it will become more effective and give us greater flexibility in serving our customers.”
New Horizons Southern California: Preparing Individuals and Organizations to Grow and Thrive
A franchise in the New Horizons Worldwide network, the world’s largest independent IT training provider with more than 300 learning centers in 60 countries, New Horizons Southern California serves individuals and business customers at five locations in its geographical area. The company offers training and certification for products from leading companies, such as Microsoft and Cisco, and in disciplines that are not confined to a specific technology, including information security, project management, and healthcare management.
New Horizons Southern California delivers training in its classrooms, online, at customer locations, and through mentored learning, which lets students move forward at their own pace and provides extensive instructor interaction and guidance. The company also offers boot camp programs for professionals who obtained older Microsoft Certification levels, such as Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) or Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA) certifications, to help them update their skills and transition to the newer, more specialized Microsoft Certifications. New Horizons Southern California offers certification exams facilitated by Prometric and Pearson VUE at its locations. In addition to learners who received training from the company, people who have gained their skills elsewhere can also take these exams.
Serving the business, consumer, and public-sector markets, New Horizons Southern California supports a broad range of customers—small and large companies across all industries; early-career, midcareer, and transitioning individual professionals; and any type of public-sector entity. After people have been through a New Horizons Southern California program, the company makes placement services available to them.
Part of New Horizons Southern California’s portfolio is an infrastructural learning assessment, which includes a review of an organization’s training, certification, and skills management needs. Tina Travierso, Director of Partner Relations and Marketing at New Horizons Southern California, explains, “Companies often invest in new technologies, but may lack the skills to deploy them effectively. They only use a small part of the capabilities they purchase or, as long as 18 months after they acquired a new solution, they may not have implemented it at all. In consequence, they often spend large amounts on customized capabilities or workarounds. When deployment delays are related to skills gaps, we can show business executives how Microsoft Certification for their IT team members can help them gain the full value of their technology investments and realize huge cost savings.”
Although not all employers understand the relevance of Microsoft Certification, individual professionals have presented New Horizons Southern California with increased demand for certification-directed training and exams. Almost 100 percent of the individuals who engage with the company on their own, rather than through an employer, pursue certification. Rebecca Bergstrom, Special Projects and Marketing Manager at New Horizons Southern California, has received requests from students who want to show their employers that certification can have benefits for a company. “Many times, individuals make the business case for certification to their managers,” Bergstrom comments. “It’s often different in the public sector, where many organizations follow directives or initiatives that require technical certification from vendors or job candidates.” When New Horizons Southern California approaches potential business customers, the conversation most often starts with the IT managers, who are usually more aware of skills gaps and the value of certification than human resources managers are.
New Horizons Southern California uses independent research, including reports from Robert Half Technology, to help set the proper context for certification. A Robert Half Technology report, “IT Hiring and Compensation Trends 2010,” states that CIOs and IT managers can’t easily find properly qualified IT professionals for their organizations. The right technical qualifications help boost an IT professional’s chances of finding rewarding employment, and certification is seen by hiring managers as evidence of a person’s skill and expertise. As the report mentions, Microsoft Certifications are among the most highly valued. Certifications also demonstrate a job candidate’s initiative and readiness to engage in lifelong learning.
Business managers and instructors at New Horizons Southern California like the changes Microsoft has made to the certifications in recent years, for example, by introducing specialized certification in MCTS and MCITP categories. Megan Nolan, Director of Sales at New Horizons Southern California, says, “In the past, Microsoft Certification was of a more general nature, and professionals would take significant time away from work to be certified. With the highly practical specializations in the MCTS and MCITP certifications, people don’t have to take as many classes to become certified, certification is clearly connected to defined technical expertise with Microsoft products, and companies can gain a much faster return on a much smaller investment in training and certification. As a result, it has become much easier to have productive conversations with business decision makers who are responsible for skills management in their companies.” Instructor David Metzgar adds, “MCSE and MCSA professionals usually received their certifications in 2003 or earlier, for the technologies available at the time. The professionalscan be confused by the newer certifications, but they always see the value when we explain the differences and how they can incorporate updated certification into their career path. They also appreciate that the exams assess their expertise by reflecting real-life work scenarios.”
For the New Horizons Southern California team, there is no doubt that Microsoft Certification is important to employers and individuals. As Cindy Sutherland, Career Development Director at New Horizons Southern California, explains, “Especially in a bad economy, employers can be more selective in reviewing candidates. Certifications help a person stand out from the crowd. The stamp of approval from Microsoft speaks volumes about a candidate’s professional qualification, willingness to learn, and readiness to make a strong contribution in a new role.” Instructor Bill Berger, who is also responsible for the Mentored Learning offering, comments, “Companies receive as many as 400 resumes for a single opening in the IT department. Microsoft Certification is a strong testament to professional expertise. Companies and hiring managers also understand that certification requires commitment and courage, and the people who gained certification may operate from a mindset of feeling confident and looking for the best way to make an impact.”
Travierso, Sutherland, and their colleagues help individuals access government resources for training and certification that have become available through the federal Workforce Investment Act, more recent stimulus funding, and other measures. These resources are particularly important for people who are underemployed or unemployed. New Horizons Southern California also works hard to show companies that investing in their current employees may make better business sense than restructuring the workforce. Says Sutherland, “It is generally much less expensive and disruptive to provide training and certification to people who are already with the company than to hire people with the certifications a business looks for. These certified employees also are more loyal and stay longer in their jobs.”
As instructors and business managers at New Horizons Southern California experience, generational and technological changes boost interest in certification as more professionals with their own certifications move into executive roles and vendors like Microsoft continue to make certification programs more relevant and practical. And, although the company will continue to offer a variety of learning channels, instructor-led training leading to certification is here to stay. Instructor Bill Sullivan says, “People go to a class to prepare for certification because they want the interaction with their peers and with the instructor. MCITP training, for one, involves a lot of practical reasoning where learners can really enrich each other’s experience.” Sybil Earl, Director of Operations and Instructor Manager at New Horizons Southern California, explains, “We know that Microsoft Certification of IT professionals has an immediate impact on successful and complete technology implementations. In many of the instructor-led training courses, we meet people who have to resolve an implementation that didn’t go entirely well. They look to Microsoft Certification to help them gain and validate the skills their organization needs, and often are very enthusiastic about learning from the experience of other students.”
For more information about Microsoft Certification, go to contact Amber Reed at .