ACP-100 certified professional

Anil Kumar October 13, 2018

As recruiter how much you valued certification ? Let say I have around 4 years of JIRA implementation/admin experience but not had written certification yet. How recruitment team consider such profiles ?

2 comments

Comment

Log in or Sign up to comment
Ollie Guan
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
October 14, 2018

This is an interesting topic.

I think certification can urge me to learn more about JIRA. I am currently preparing for the ACP exam.

At the same time, I think the community has a better understanding of the use of JIRA, and I can see all kinds of problems and solutions here.

Anil Kumar October 14, 2018

Thanks @Ollie Guan for reply.

I asked this here to check community thought on such demand, certified verses experienced.

Can understand, certification is stamp to show user knows things well but is this the only truth. Last month, one client, rejected my consulting work just because I had no certification. Although as per client, all queries & implementation plan given by me was satisfactory and had approved by client tech team. 

Daniel Eads
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
October 14, 2018

I try to look at certifications as recommendations from people who wrote the exam questions.

As an analogy, you could buy an Amazon product with 0 reviews. But you'd be more likely to buy something that has at least one or two reviews just to make sure someone else verified the product matches the item description.

Is it possible to be a Jira expert without having a certification? Sure. But it's also possible to find a project plan online, copy it, and tweak the plan to "fit" it to the company without really knowing what work needs to be done. That's the situation recruiters are trying to avoid - they're not Jira experts themselves. That's why they're hiring work out! Having that "review" provides them some level of assurance that things will be done in an Atlassian-accepted fashion.

Atlassian now has a requirement from Partner companies that they have a certain number of certified employees (depending on their size). This gives people who need help (again, they're usually not Jira experts themselves - that's why they're hiring a consultant) confidence that they are "as advertised".

In your specific case, 4 years experience should give you a high chance of passing the certification exam. The cost of the exam will pay itself back the first gig you can secure as a "certified" administrator, and the process of studying for the exam will help you increase your skills in any particular areas of Jira you might not have been exposed to in the work you've done so far. I'd say go for it! You won't regret having a certification behind you.

Like Eren Kalelioğlu likes this
Anil Kumar October 14, 2018

Cool, happy to see reply coming from someone who had a word with the team/professional wrote the exam question and himself has certification of ACP-JA/SA. Thanks Daniel.I'm agreed with reply (paragraph 2) -- "Is it possible to be a Jira expert without having a certification? Sure. But ......."


My worry is on trend, look into DevOps tool chain & certification cost -


Atlassian Certified Professional - $350 USD
Elasticsearch certification - $ 400.00 USD
Certified Kubernetes Administrator $300 USD
Docker Professional Certification $195 USD ...........

Although, I saw LinkedIn user names like below also, rest we all can understand.

Mr ABC
"Enterprise Agile Transformation Coach, PSM I, II, CSM, CSPO, TKP, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, LeSS CLP, SAFe SPC, PMP, PMI-ACP, TKP"

Daniel Eads
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
October 15, 2018

Yes, certifications can get out of hand after a while! I think folks with signatures like that often have to work with healthcare or automotive clients who require certain certifications to meet industry regulations. When this happens, the clients also expect to have to pay more to get someone with those certifications. You can charge more for your time to cover the cost of the certification exams (and the time spent to study for them).

Sometimes an employer will also cover the cost of getting certified. I have worked at two organizations that had a "payback policy" where they would cover an exam cost if you got certified for something related to your job. The catch was that they only paid the exam cost once. Failing the exam meant that you paid for that try yourself. Many people got certifications through that employer and were able to take those credentials to their next job.

Anil Kumar October 16, 2018

@Daniel Eads - just for clarification - this post is for : "as a recruiter how much you valued certification." I'm totally agreed that the recruiter may or may not be Jira experts by themselves so, preferring certified professional, assure them with fact.

As a professional, how we think is something we need to talk - DevOps tool change is too long, even most required tech stack also need number of technology/utility. So for professional, what will be your suggestion, be hands on or write an exam and get certified.

Daniel Eads
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
October 16, 2018

be hands on or write an exam and get certified.

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. I was hands-on long before Atlassian's certification program started. Once it was available, I used my experience to pass the exams. In fact, it's recommended to have 2 years experience already before trying to take some of the exams.

Having done other work to study for CompTIA exams like Security+ or Network+, it seems like there might be an expectation for exams to take a long time. Or to need several weeks worth of classes to study. I don't think this is the case for the Atlassian certifications. Having several years of hands-on experience allowed me to write a study guide for myself (before the course prep material was available) and only spend ~2 hours brushing up before taking the exam.

Anil Kumar October 16, 2018

👍

Anil Kumar October 16, 2018

@Daniel Eads - Going to book ACP-100 exam.

Jonathan Smith
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
October 22, 2018

Good luck!

Anil Kumar October 23, 2018

Thanks @Jonathan Smith

Aaron Williams
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
October 30, 2018

This was an interesting conversation to read, and I loved the analogy used by @Eaniel Deads here: As an analogy, you could buy an Amazon product with 0 reviews. But you'd be more likely to buy something that has at least one or two reviews just to make sure someone else verified the product matches the item description.

This is absolutely true, and as someone who has - on multiple occasions - been landed with an uncertified 'jira expert' before I knew enough to call them out on it, it can be really problematic to allow a cowboy loose on your ranch. It can take a long time and a lot of work to recover from a poorly executed project, and that's cost us a lot more money in the long run than if we had paid the premium in the first place.

It was egg on our face, and it taught us what we needed to know for other aspects of the business going forward.

TAGS
AUG Leaders

Atlassian Community Events