How Your Certifications Are Holding You Back

 

Yes, I know the title of this blog is highly counter-intuitive. And, yes, I know it’s in direct contradiction with what the awarders of these certificates have to say about their value. According to Recruiter.com, the PMP® boosts yearly earnings by $6,000 to $10,000 USD, though their research methods are not shown on the page I saw. Still, I have seen first-hand a few ways that having professional certifications can actually have a detrimental impact to a given career trajectory.

At the most elemental level of the grounds for a hiring decision, the presence of a professional certificate touches on one of the most primordial conflicts in the hiring and retention arena of ideas: is your organization a meritocracy? And, before you reflexively answer in the affirmative, consider that a true meritocracy is a virtual impossibility, for a variety of reasons.

First off, a true meritocracy represents a dramatic limitation of the hiring managers’ latitude in decision-making. If the qualifications for a given position could be clearly quantified and articulated, then a simple arithmetic evaluation would indicate the best candidate, every time. The evidence that this is not the case lies in the myriad articles and blogs offering advice to candidates on how to handle their prospective interviews. Yahoo!® is particularly bad about this (or am I bad for reading their stuff?), but their getting-hired advice almost never includes things like “Get a professional certification!”  Instead it goes on and on about what not to say, wear, think, ask … in general, the conventional advice almost always seems to center on presenting as if you can get along with the rest of the team on a social interaction basis, then you’re in. It’s almost as if the technical capabilities are a given – which, in the case of the > 450,000 PMPs® awarded, may very well be the case. In short, if you are the only candidate for the job without a PMP®, but you were also the only one without food stains on his shirt, or who did not ask about time off policy, or who did not bad-mouth their previous managers, then you will also probably be the only candidate with an actual offer.

The front of the meritocracy-versus-managerial latitude conflict is often played out between the organizations’ human resources department and the hiring managers. If the hiring manager puts a premium on professional certifications, then, great! However, if the hiring manager doesn’t think that a certification is that big a deal, but is compelled to require it in the job ad by the HR department, we see an instance where the hiring manager may perceive that his organization’s bureaucracy is infringing on his latitude of decision-making, and may very well bristle against it.

Also consider the plight of the workaday PM who is frustrated at her perceived lack of upward mobility. She goes through the time, effort, and expense to get her CCP®, and then … what? If her owning organization doesn’t give her a promotion or raise, she will then not fail to understand that the organizational fix is in, and instantly becomes a flight risk.

Finally, there are the political considerations to take into account. The person who, again, goes through the time, effort, and expense of attaining a professional certification should be commended. It’s not easy, and it clearly shows that such a one has a serious attitude about becoming more capable in their field of expertise. More serious, perhaps, then their certification-less colleagues, or even … so-called superiors. Once these colleagues and alleged superiors begin to see the certified ones as threats, especially and particularly the Maccoby-archetype Jungle Fighters amongst them, then the certified ones have a virtual target painted on their backsides. And, from my personal experience, add in a couple of books, keynote speeches, and hundreds of articles and blogs, and the interviewing process instantly takes on the look and feel of that iconic scene in the intro to the television program Kung Fu, where the unfortunate martial arts practitioner is being tested by having a series of javelins thrown at his head.

So, yeah, pursue certifications. Just know that your associates are poised to throw javelins at your head in your very next interaction.