do you pay for training?

[Troll]

I did my princs 2 foundation bit a while ago. The instructor said that he had a 100% pass rate - a bit like a levels then

I thought about doing that one, agreed it looks pretty easy but 3 days out to take it= a lot of money

[Paddy]

Training courses seem to designed for permanent staff who are able to take time off and get the fees paid by their employer. I have found a few problems when attending organised training courses. The instructor thinks he is doing the attendees a favour by finishing the course early in the day, which is fine for the permies but not for me; I want my monies worth until 5pm not 3:30 or 4pm. The other problem I have is that the instructors often only have recently have acquired knowledge of the new course do not have practical knowledge that contractors need when we ask questions.

[Lucy]

I thought about doing that one, agreed it looks pretty easy but 3 days out to take it= a lot of money

There is a really good CD, I just did it after going through that a few times.

Practitioner is a bit harder.

[Cowboy Bob]

Formal certificates are a waste of time. I've never had a client ask to see any certifications, they're only interested in experience. Of the people I've met with certifications in my area I can say without a doubt that 100% of them have been next to useless. Formal certifications are a crutch used by incompetents to get their foot in the door in my experience, and more fool the end-client for being impressed by them.

However, certification is different from training, and the best training comes from finding a contract where you have 95% of the requirements with the extra 5% being something that you're looking to get some experience in. You are therefore learning in a real environment rather than from out of a book or from a trainer who, if they were any good at the subject they're supposed to be teaching, would be out in the marketplace using their skills.

[chicane]

Training in the UK is a con. As a contractor you pay the full price for the course yet the likes of EDS etc get massive discounts. Also, since you are not working you are actually spending double once you have shelled out for the course.

Up here in the Impoverished North you can often get discounted training due to Government handouts - not sure if it's the same all over the country.

A colleague of mine paid £400 for 5 days of Prince2 Practitioner training plus the exam - I later had to pay £1000 due to mine not being subsidised. I'd say such training is well worth hunting out for that kind of cost along with the career opportunities/CV kudos it might bring.

[Angela_D]

Up here in the Impoverished North you can often get discounted training due to Government handouts - not sure if it's the same all over the country.

A colleague of mine paid £400 for 5 days of Prince2 Practitioner training plus the exam - I later had to pay £1000 due to mine not being subsidised. I'd say such training is well worth hunting out for that kind of cost along with the career opportunities/CV kudos it might bring.

Your colleague got this whilst in or out of work ? Contractor ?
I'd like to add the Prince badge to my cv but can't justify a week without income and steep costs.

[Francko]

Certification is another issue...In some sectors definitely you must have one...I've renewed my CCNP in September last year, didn't bother to do the same with MCSE 2000 but it's still valid. So again, depends...

Some are excellent. I can't believe why they are so undervalued in the business world. I can mention the IBM ones. All the programs are around 1500-2000 pages and you must know almost each single page to pass the exam. They are stressful and you have to account also that it's not so easy to pass too. Sure, experience is more important but at least it shows that you have all the theory you need (not to mention that if you don't have experience they are even harder). If you don't study for the certification, there are many areas that you believed you fully understand but many times you instead didn't; the exam questions are an excellent way to check your progress. So many "called-experts" claim that they are useless. The reason is because these exams are tough and they show you have a theoretical thorough knowledge which even people with years of experience sometimes do not have.

[Viktor]

The truth lies somewhere in between...You need the theory behind each certification as a base foundation and you will probably use in real world not more than 40% from all the pages required by cert exams.
Those who prefer to always claim "experience" instead of certs will find it hard to adapt to a greenfield project. And those who pass exams just for another paper will fail in practice.
Once again, depends...

[Francko]

The truth lies somewhere in between...You need the theory behind each certification as a base foundation and you will probably use in real world not more than 40% from all the pages required by cert exams.
Those who prefer to always claim "experience" instead of certs will find it hard to adapt to a greenfield project. And those who pass exams just for another paper will fail in practice.
Once again, depends...

Experience is always the most important thing (assuming you have a good enough base you can build upon) but it's also true that it's easy to fake experience. You wonder why at any interview everybody is a guru while in their day-to-day duties they couldn't do anything more than a reboot. At least, with a certification you can be sure that the person has done some proper study about it. There are too many cowboys out there (not meaning Bob ) who have no shame at faking experience/knowledge. I disagree with the last line, what can make you think that people who pass an exam must fail in practice? I can't see any possible correlation unless you believe that more knowledge equals more impediment.

[Viktor]

Yes I always favour the knowledge...but the problem is that so many pass exams without proper experience, and this happens because of all the marketing hype surrounding well-known certs like MCSE or CCNA.
Take for example CCNA: you can pass with little experience, a lot of "cram sessions" and some braindumps...after 6 months you forget 90% of all the information if you don't actually apply it at work. I've met CCNA's who don't know how to read a route table, for example...
On the other hand, I would employ someone with let's say 3 years of experience and a solid cert instead of someone with 10 years of experience without any certification...