A+ Certification

MadPoet has one of these. Basicly this certifies that you have the skills of a technician with 6 months experience. Anyone that has one will tell you how useless they are to gauge technical skill, but since HR types are usually clueless lusers, they can help get your foot in the door. Some companies will take a new A+ tech over a non certified tech with years of experience. Idiots.

I am A+ Certified. I just got it last week. Why anyone thinks that an A+ Certification verifies any computer skills is beyond me. There are two tests, hardware and DOS/Windows. The questions on these tests are for the most part obsolete and the knowledge required to answer them is impractical. The hardware test asks questions like "What is the voltage on a Pentium CPU" and "What is the standard IRQ for LPT2". The DOS/Windows test requires you to know "What information does the DETLOG.TXT file contain" and "What information is not available in the MSD.EXE program". I know people who think they are techie gurus for passing this test. What they don't seem to realize is that memorizing these fairly useless facts from an A+ study guide will not be of any use to them on the job.

I have been looking for a new job for two months. I have over three years experience as a lowly computer technician, and one year experience as an NT administrator, but since I lacked certification no one would hire me. I decided to go pay $264 to take two tests so I would be A+, the most dain bread simple certification out there, just so I will have at least one certificate to wave in employers faces.

The A+ certification is issued by CompTIA upon completion of two exams. As of the time of this writing, there is one required exam and three elective exams.

Required:
     220-601 A+ Essentials Exam
Electives:
     220-602 A+ Information Technology Technician
     220-603 A+ Remote Support Technician
     220-604 A+ Depot Technician

The idea behind this test structure is that those who wish to specialize in certain types of work, ie. working in a call center or working in a computer shop, have specialized examinations (and thus employers can require the different electives, forcing A+ techs with the wrong test to spend more money to get the right one). Instead, now very few companies are even willing to hire A+ techs unless they have work experience or more advanced certifications.

My recommendation? Spend less and get your CCNA, much more likely to get you a job.

BQ2009