Keeping up to date with the Microsoft Certifications and the rapid pace of technology releases

Question

How can you remain competetive in the market place and also keep your credentials up-to-date?

I am considering going for the MCPD, but im afraid that it will soon be out of date! The current exams revlove around .net 2.0, asp.net, c# 2.0 etc.

But in the past few years or so we've had (to list a few):
Linq
Entity Framework
ASP.NET Dynamic Data
ADO.NET Data Services
WCF
WPF
Silverlight
.net4.0/C#4.0
.....

How does one keep up with such frantics releases! And more importantly will the exams be updated to reflect all these new releases?

My core skills would be asp.net/C# so iam waiting for to see how asp.net mvc pans out with the certs. If you were i, would you wait???

Answer 1

I have found that for the most part, software development certifications are not necessary. As you said, things change quickly.

Job experience tends to be the main deciding factor in interviews. Possibly a cert might open a few more doors for actual interviews, however a current certification and no ability to back that up by speaking intelligently on the subject and showing real experience on the subject doesn't help a lot in an interview.

Answer 2

Certifications mean absolutely nothing if you do not know your stuff, I interviewed people with seven certification who didn't know basic things. The higher up the certs are to the top of the resume the more suspicious I am.

Thats said, it is still good to study for them and learn the material because it will cover some stuff you might run into later

Answer 3

Dont chase the certifications! Chase the new PL features and you will get all the satisfaction you need. Certification when you know the stuff would then just be one of those things you can decide to do or not to do without any headaches.

Answer 4

The exams have been updated to reflect the new features.

For example: MS Exam 70-562 TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, ASP.NET Application Development

This exam requires the .NET 2.0 Foundation exam (as .NET 3.0 and 3.5 build on top of the .NET 2.0 framework), and counts towards Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD): ASP.NET Developer 3.5 & Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD): Enterprise Applications Developer 3.5

That said, the main reason I took the exam was to help my employer maintain the Partner status that requires that we have a certain number of MCP's in the company.

Edit to add my response to the comment:

It's a tricky one - I only really moved off .NET 1.1 professionally about a year, 14 months ago (personally I'd been playing with it for some time). There are still people here who've not looked at LINQ or EF, let alone ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ADO Data Services, etc. Personally, I'm glad I did learn about them, as they've made my job easier, but I could have done it without - or with other tools.

As to exams, the 3.5 ones only started coming out in August last year, nearly a year after the release of the framework itself, so the 4.0 ones won't be out for a while I shouldn't imagine.

Basically, I've had "taking an exam" as an objective for some time, but I've never really had much inclination to study for them - so I wanted to take an exam that I could pass with my current experience and skill set - I was originally going to take the 2.0 ones, because I didn't know there were 3.5 ones - thankfully as I was booking it, I saw the 3.5 one was out, and I thought it would last the longest - as it's most recent, it's (hopefully) going to be one of the last of the current crop to be retired.

As to whether I'm going to take the 4.0 exams, I guess it depends on how long it takes me to get around to upgrading to an MCPD (if I do - I guess that will be in my next objectives) - if the 4.0 ones are out by then, and there's an easy upgrade path from what I've got, then I might take them, yes, but I'm certainly not "chasing certs".

Finally,

Having been involved in recruitment of developers for some time, I totally agree with the other answers - the certifications don't always guarentee as much quality as they should - I've interviewed MCP's that didn't really know what they were talking about once you got into their understanding of the depths of the frameworks.