Setting a career path via Windows 7 certification

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When IT training firm Global Knowledge hosts its first Windows 7 certification boot camp this month, it'll do so to capacity booking."This is windows 7 certification almost unheard of for a first boot camp rollout," said Craig Brown, chief technical architect for Microsoft products at Global Knowledge. In the case of this particular boot camp, a dozen or so professionals in the Washington, D.C., area will be preparing themselves for the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): Windows 7, Configuration certification. While Global Knowledge generally caters to corporate clients and their IT staff training needs, this D.C. center tends to draw individuals signing up for the boot camp under their own auspices, Brown said. This session will comprise students from both groups, he added. Brown and other IT training experts attribute the interest in Windows 7 certification to two factors. First, the market is more than ready to move beyond Windows XP but wants an alternative to the ill-received Vista."We're eight years beyond the XP release used in most corporate MCTS windows 7 environments today and about three years beyond useful life of any kind of hardware running it. Windows 7 has to pick up the slack," said Terry Smith, senior technical trainer at New Horizons Worldwide Inc., an IT training firm. And, second, perhaps contrary to conventional wisdom, the dismal economy is spurring the willingness to spend on training at the individual level. "The general state of the economy being down has actually pumped up the interest in certifications across the board," Brown said. Whether you love or hate certification, "it does provide a foot in the door at many organizations, and so for someone who is job seeking, it's a good checkmark on the resume to have." Smith agreed. "Just like anybody else, we thought we'd see a pretty significant drop off as the corporate training budget often is one of the first things to go when cuts are needed," he said. "But it appears corporate America has found the way to prove skills through certification. There are too many creative resume writers." At Global Knowledge, not only is that initial Windows 7 certification boot camp filled but so too are the first round of classes teaching basic Windows 7 skills, Brown said. Part of this uptick is attributable to cyclical spending at the corporate level, with companies looking to maximize their IT training spend before the fiscal year closes, he said. It's also partly because companies are looking to cash out on Microsoft software assurance training vouchers they've received as part of their enterprise licensing agreements. In the past, most of these vouchers have gone unused, but Microsoft recently has made a big push to make sure people are aware of this program and are opting to take advantage before the vouchers expire, Brown explained. In the Dallas area, President Obama's stimulus dollars are helping to fuel the training 70-680 business, Smith said. With funding available to them under the Workforce Investment Act, "we've gotten a lot of displaced people coming to us to update their skills so they can fill IT jobs," he said.