Of course, according to executive director of (ISC)2 W. Hord Tipton, as reported by SC Magazine, reports their accreditations are not suffering. Just in December of last year (2011) 3,700 exams where taken and those successful (about half) can expect to make an average of $98k annually as opposed to $78k without.

So, until the study is completed with the comprehensive certification values, which certifications should you attempt to fill your staff with? According to a report by WebWire you should aim for CompTIA Security+, CISSP and CEH. All three of these certifications show a comprehensive knowledge of cyber security. CISSP requires 5 years of security experience and covers 10 areas, while the CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) covers “19 modules focusing on subjects like viruses and session hijacking.”

Say hello to the Preferred Marketing Developer Program. It’s designed to “bring developers to the right clients and making it possible for any brand or company to find consultants who can work with them to build comprehensive Facebook campaigns and presences.” This essentially means that brands can easily find the right company for the job while the company finds themselves decent work. It’s a win-win scenario for everyone.

The consolidation seems to have worked too since Facebook has seen 141 companies from 20 countries apply for the PMD program. This means that there are now 232 PMDs operating out of 35 countries. That’s a massive collective of developers that any client would love to have access to.

The new program doesn’t just stop there though. Facebook has made it faster and easier for developers to submit and find brands to work with. The first change is the way clients can find developers. The new search tool lets you find a developer by qualification, business model and customers served.

Developers can now show “specific expertise with Pages, Ads, apps and Insights” on their Web sites or the look up tool page. Here’s an example of how it will look on the look up tool:

To ease marketers and developers into the world of Facebook ad development, the company has created a new help page that features all the information you need to get started.

Finally, Facebook has revamped the submission form so that developers can apply whenever they’re ready. This is a massive change from before where developers could only apply during periodic rounds.

If you’re still not sold on the PMD program, Facebook has some stats to share on how the program has helped other developer groups grow and become more profitable. Vitrue, a Facebook marketing developer, grew from 66 to 180 employees in a year after joining the program. This allowed them to expand internationally by opening up five offices.

There are other success stories as well, but the main point is that this is an easy way for a developer to get noticed by large brands looking to get the word out on social media. Facebook is still a great place for businesses to push their brand and they need the talent of developers to make it happen. The PMD program seems to be the right fit for both parties.

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Preparing

I work in the Analytics interface every day, but I knew that in order to pass this exam, I had a lot more to learn and practice. To start, Google has helpful preparation lessons they call “Conversion University.” They are a set of videos broken into four categories:

• First Steps
• Interpreting Reports
• Fundamentals and
• In-Depth Analysis

The narrators do a good job of walking you through the interface and various reports, as well as the technical side of Analytics. However, it is a lot of information to take at once. If you’re like me and not a note taker, I’d recommend reading along using the “Notes” tab on the videos. This will help you absorb all the technical lingo, especially if you’re not very familiar with Analytics. There are 21 videos total, each anywhere from 3 to 10 minutes long. This makes it easy to take breaks in between studying.

Take note of areas you are still unclear of after watching the videos. Because in addition, you can use Google Analytics Help Center articles to supplement your areas of weakness. Note: if you use the new version of Analytics (released last November), make sure you are looking at the correct Help Center articles. The Conversion University videos are updated for the new version.

And finally, you can study and read all you want, but nothing beats experience. Go into Analytics after each video and practice what they demonstrate. Make sure you understand:

• various reporting tools
• goal setup and interpretation
• Analytics Intelligence
• difference between metrics & dimensions
• Analytics tracking, etc.

Taking the Exam

The Analytics certification exam was more challenging than the AdWords certification exams, but the process of taking the Analytics is a bit less stressful. It gives you 90 minutes to answer 70 questions, but you can pause the test at any point and have 5 days to take it from the time you start it.

There are several of the dreaded “multiple answer” questions that you will want to be careful with. So I suggest taking your time and answering ten to fifteen questions at a time, taking small breaks to give your mind a rest. I took the test in one night, but I still felt confident about all of my answers when it came time to submit.

In conclusion, this is another great certification from Google that ensures the qualified individual is well-versed in Analytics. But there is no reason you can’t pass if you are well prepared and are smart about how you take the exam. Good luck!

Look for the second part of my Google Analytics Certification Exam post later this week. I will talk about the importance of Analytics and the benefits of having the certification.

Comments

CompTIA, EC Council, GIAC, ISACA, and ISC2 have recently founded the Cybersecurity Credentials Collaborative.

The Collaborative’s home page contains a mission and purpose statement, which I’ve quoted below.

Mission:

To provide awareness of and advocacy for vendor-neutral credentials in information security, privacy, and related IT disciplines. To advance the craft and practice of certification program development and to provide a forum to collaborate on matters of shared concern.

Purpose:

The purpose of the C3 is to provide a forum for collaboration among vendor-neutral information security and privacy and related IT disciplines certification bodies. That collaboration will result in the advancement of IT careers, a more prepared workforce, greater insight into how these certifications are developed, and how they meet the IT needs for organizations including governments, private enterprises, educational institutions, and the public at large.

A non-exclusive list of collaborative activities is planned to include the following:

• Provide the industry with factual information on how C3 certifications accurately validate knowledge, skills and abilities of the workforce
• Where appropriate, promote a common IT certification message to legislators and government agencies and provide them with accurate information regarding the benefits of these certification programs.
• Identify opportunities for joint projects of the commissioning of 3rd-party research for the advancement of knowledge of vendor-neutral credentials in information security, privacy, and related IT disciplines.

I don’t know enough about the industry (being neither client nor proprietor) as it is now to predict the impact of this development with any authority,but it’s easy to see that the quality of the average certification will necessarily increase if all of the member organizations implement one another’s best practices. That’s not a bad thing in anyone’s book.

What angle will C3 take in promoting “a common IT certification message to legislators and government agencies?” Assuming that the purpose of the effort is ultimately to sell more certifications and training materials, C3 must hope to convince those in government to require more certifications for agency employees, or to subsidize training for young or disadvantaged people who want to pursue IT careers in the private sector. If C3 is successful and I haven’t misread their motives, then getting a government IT job could get a little tougher. Then again, haven’t the member organizations been pursuing similar efforts independently? If so, the impact of the new efforts should be marginal. I don’t have the data.

Of course the question is, which Apple certifications are the best? Well that depends on what you’re going for. If you work for a company that is considering transitioning to a Mac based workforce, then get the Mac Integration Basics Certification. This certification specializes in integrating a Mac machine into a Windows based network and confronting the issues that may present themselves during the process. Or maybe you’re wanting to change jobs and you’re looking to be valuable to a company that has already made the shift. Then go for the Apple Certified Macintosh Technician (ACMT) Certification. A ACMT certification shows prospective employers that you’re not going to get hired and start complaining about how compact and “busy” the inside of a Mac is. You’ve seen it all before!. You could also go with one of the three OS X Lion Certifications offered.

Of course I’m not saying that the you should get an apple tattoo, build a shrine to Steve Jobs and start going to Starbucks. As Ryan Faas points out in his article the Apple certifications are best as only part of your certification collection.

These three new certifications center around the fact that HP has made so many advances in their CloudSystem platform recently. Of the three of them, only one of them is actually available at the time, but the other two will be available in early/mid 2012. Here is a list of the certifications, each with a short description of that they will actually do for you:

HP ASE Cloud Architect – This is the one of the three that you can go ahead and get now, and is probably the most important of the three. According to HP, this certification “verifies that the individual has the ability to specify and architect a spectrum of cloud services.” Individuals will have a vast working knowledge of HP CloudSystem and be able to specify the specific needs of their customers. This knowledge will cover an array of environmental situations including IaaS, PaaS, SaaS. And Private/Public/Hybrid cloud environments.

HP ASE Cloud Integrator – This certification is more about actually being able to set up these services for the customers. It implies to ability to “build, install and integrate a private or hybrid cloud solution based on HP Cloud Service Automation for Matrix and provisioning software.” Basically they will be able to go through the entire installation process themselves without much grief.

HP Master ASE Cloud Integrator – This one is similar to the other certification, but it is for Master ASE’s. It shows that the individual will be able to “build, install and integrate a robust cloud solution built on an HP Converged Infrastructure foundation and the full HP Cloud Service Automation software solution.” If you are gonna make a living off of HP cloud products for a while, this, along with the others, would be a fantastic investment.

All of us in the field have seen that pages and pages of job listings asking for all kinds of certifications with silly acronyms. Sometimes it seems almost impossible to find one that doesn’t require some kind of certification, which could make many people question why they went to college in the first place when these little certificates are all they needed. While this may seem like a pain, things will most likely stay this way for the foreseeable future, so it might be a good idea to jump on the bandwagon now.

According to some, it is not only a good idea to go ahead and get the certification you want for new jobs, but they are also leading to promotions and raises. In fact, a survey featured in a networkworld.com article asked 700 neetworking professionals whether a certification led to a raise, a promotion, a new job, or something else. 60.5% of professionals said their certifications got them a new job, 56.0% said that they got raise, 28.8% said that they got a promotion within their current company, and 10.8% said that they got some other type of reward for their certifications. However, there is a catch to all of these numbers, because they don’t take into account professionals that don’t have any certifications, and also doesn’t make an effort to account for the fact that not all certifications are equal. Some certifications have been clearly shown to be more beneficial than others, such as the Cisco family of certifications and some Microsoft ones.

Although these are very helpful fro some people, they may not be right for everybody, as there are many it professionals out there in the world who are extremely successful without certifications. What that really means is that success in this sector (usually) is equivalent to the effort that you put into it.
Some people put in the effort in the classroom, and others just work harder than everyone else, but either way the are just doing more.

This certification is to be a Cisco Certified Technician (CCT) to perform on site installation on maintenance of the products that they offer. There are three tracks that you can choose from when going for this certification: Routing & Switching, Data Center, and TelePresence, and there is a separate exam (priced at $125) for each track which you must pass to gain the certification. Apparently, you must have the Routing & Switching certification before you can apply for either of the others, which means that if you want either of the other two, you will have to throw down at least $250. This certification lasts for a total of 3 years and to get re-certified, you must pass one exam from the list given here. On Indeed.com, there are a considerable number of jobs available for those with Cisco Certifications, so if you are in this field, it might be a good bet.

Good luck!