--- John Nichel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Know what helps me get php jobs? A resume that details almost 6 > years of php programming.
Disclaimer: I assisted in the creation of the Zend PHP Certification. This is a very good point. However, and I'm speaking from experience, how do you verify these types of statements when you're looking at more than a hundred resumes? Zend gives me a place online to verify whether someone is certified. With a pretty simple PHP script, I can automate this process. What I've done in the past is have a simple online test that people take when they apply, and this at least gives me some idea whether the applicant is worth bringing in for an interview (or calling for a phone interview). This has worked fairly well, but it's pretty time consuming for me, and it definitely has problems: It has to either be very long (or narrow in scope), I have no assurance that the applicant is the one taking the test, and the applicant can't use these test results anywhere else. Of course, certifications are only useful when the employer places the right amount of value in them. I've seen certifications discussed in several different communities over the past 10 years, and there always seem to be extremists on both sides - certifications are worthless or certifications will get you hired. A PHP certification only tells me that the applicant knows PHP pretty well at a fundamental level. Whether they can apply this knowledge, have the experience I'm looking for, have a personality that works well in my team, and questions like these are things I need to answer for myself in the hiring process. A certification does not replace the need to do any work to find a good employee. Chris ===== Chris Shiflett - http://shiflett.org/ PHP Security - O'Reilly Coming Fall 2004 HTTP Developer's Handbook - Sams http://httphandbook.org/ PHP Community Site http://phpcommunity.org/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
