IT has been a backbone for every type of industry in the world. IT certifications are mapped to the real world needs and expertise. Training programs are of improved quality than the regular yearly followed semester of the Universities. Trainers are able to give you the hands on. In turbulence to economic times, IT certifications will provide more relevance than ever before. These IT certifications are of short duration and cover a lot of specialized subject material. Students really need to be focused in the classroom as well as at the time of hands on. These IT certifications are world recognized certifications.
A person having basic university degree and other certifications can definitely get a good job in the IT industry. Most of the employers in world demand these IT certifications on the resume as they are made as per the current market needs and they meet the industry requirements. These certifications allows the candidate to choose the specialization area of expertise like one may be networking expert by doing CompTIA Network+, CCNA, CCNP and CCIE. One may become windows administrator by doing Windows certifications. One may become security expert by doing CEH, LPT, CISM/CISA and CISSP. One may want to be a forensics expert by doing CHFI, EnCase Certification, FTK Certification by AccessData or other cell phone forensics certifications.

There are 10 reasons why one should avail the IT certifications:

1. Job retention:

Certified IT pros will have advantage over their colleagues. The time spent in earning the University degree and the time spent in getting the certification is one of the points for comparison. Other point is practical demonstration. The more the number of certification you get in one field, more are the chances of securing your job in the eyes of your employer. It is also possible that the employer may sponsor his employees for certifications as it is cheaper than sponsoring a University degree.

2. Salary maintenance:

A Certified Pro may earn more than a person having a full fledge degree. There are certain certifications like PMP, CISSP, CISM, CISA, CCNP, ITIL, Microsoft who are paid more than the normal college degree person. (http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/educationfortechcareers/tp/HighestCerts.htm)

3. Hiring and promotion eligibility:

As said in reason No.1, more the certification, better the position in the organization and better are the chances of future promotions. From employer’s perspective if an employee has more certification, this is going to be helpful for him to exploit his knowledge. Employer may hire less number of people and pay more to such employee for rendering the services.

4. Career Improvement:

If the employee is going for more certifications or upgrading his existingcertification, it beneficial for maintaining the industry standards and stand with the current market trends. Knowledge never goes waste. Apart from the traditional University degrees, the certification help a lot better in career improvement.

5. New generation certs increase relevance:

These days most of the certifying bodies either ask the candidates to maintain their certification like CISSP, CISM, CISA, CEH or they ask you to go for upgrade exam like CCNA, COMPTIA etc. By doing this, the candidate has the relevant current industry knowledge.

6. Organizations get skilled workers:

Apart from traditional study of Universities, these certified students have proven their expertise in many areas. Hence most of the organizations are demanding the certified staff rather than the degree holders. The market trend in real sense is changing.

7. New products will get momentum:

Recently we have seen Window launched new operating system WINDOW 7 and new Microsoft Office 2010 application which has been adopted quickly by most of the company. If the candidate employer is hiring is well versed or certified from Microsoft, then it is always beneficial for an employer to work with a knowledgeable person, rather than waiting for Universities to update their syllabus and certify the candidates. This helps IT to develop more.

8. Organization must minimize downtime:

Now days almost every organization cannot afford any down time as it is Jet age. IT certification programs are one method of ensuring that staff members have the training and instruction required to fulfill specific responsibilities. Employees who are better trained and educated as the result of certification efforts will be less likely to commit errors that lead to failure. And when outages do occur, the corresponding education and training will prove helpful in speeding recovery.

9. Organizations to reduce costs:

A Kotler Marketing Group study published by CompTIA revealed certifications enabled organizations to reduce expenses, identify knowledge gaps, and improve productivity. In addition, certifications proved helpful in improving uptime and reducing turnover. From a calculating perspective, IT certification is one proven method for leveraging an organization’s salary expenses. By ensuring that technicians have specific skills via training and certification programs, whether those skills target desktop support or network design and optimization, organizations know that IT certification efforts help maximize return on investment.

10. Confidence:

These IT certifications automatically generate confidence in the employers to hire the right employees and employees to go to the right employers. Employers can create specific positions in the organization and avoid the unnecessary overheads.

If you look at the Big fours or any operating system developers, like Unix, Linux, Microsoft, Sun or programming language developing companies, like oracle or product developing companies like Apple, Blackberry, these companies have their own certification programs. The big companies hire only those people who are expert and certified by such companies. In most of the countries, it is a practice that employer sponsors his employees for certain certification and make it condition to keep his/her job, that way they keep their organizational pace with the market trend. Similarly, when the economy is down, employees go and get more training, so that when the market opens again, their resume and chances of getting high pay scale and good position are increased.
This doesn’t stop here. Certification plus experience with the relevant field makes the employer and employee to negotiate better terms and achieve the organizational success. Getting Certification is the first step and gaining experience and maintaining your certification is a continuous process. This will help INDIA to contribute development of IT industry and compete with other countries in terms of economic growth.