Have (IT) certs will travel?

Jeanne-Vida Douglas and Fran Foo, ZDNet Australia

03 July 2006 06:26 PM

Tags: jeanne-vida douglas, .net, job, citrix, hewlett-packard, university, erp, lotus notes

	Sound education A decent starting point for an IT degree -- part-time or full-time -- is your neighbourhood university.
	Another entry point Apart from universities, private institutions and TAFEs offer more practical IT courses.
	Where to next? ERP (enterprise resource planning) development and administration are most in demand. How can you obtain these skills, and more?
	The tale of two CVs Analysts and IT professionals -- past and present -- share their views on whether certification is better than experience.

Which is more valuable? Experience or certification? ZDNet Australia explores the role skills-based paper-qualification plays in kicking off and enhancing one's IT career.

Last quarter, ZDNet Australia profiled the most sought-after IT skills around the nation and established a list to identify the exact expertise in demand, and the corresponding salary range.

Ranked first in the Top 10 tech jobs for 2006 report were SAP, Oracle and Peoplesoft specialists, for vacancies in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and the ACT (see table below).

There are several schools of thought as to whether experience is more valuable than certification but at the end of the day, your prospective employer has the last say.

Like most professional careers, the most common entry point to information technology is a broad-based course either at a technical college or university. However, with multiple IT streams on offer at no less than 36 universities, and basic programming and networking skills taught at TAFEs and private technical colleges in every state, it can be difficult to know where to start.

Broadly speaking, a university degree will give you a good general grounding, especially in programming, and place you in line for managerial or research roles in the longer term. TAFE on the other hand will give you hands-on networking experience, and some insight into programming languages and procedures.

If you're already in the workforce, upgrading your skills is always a good idea, provided you have the time, money and discipline.

In this special report, we first look at which universities, TAFEs and private institutions offer tech courses.

Based on the top 10 skills reported previously, we show you how to obtain certification in those areas. And lastly, you'll hear from industry analysts and IT professionals -- past and present -- on how they rank certification.