 Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Good morning. My name is Thorsten Frommen. I'm a WordPress engineer at ImSight working with WordPress since 2006 or so. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I try to speak a bit louder, but maybe come nearer. Maybe just turn it. I don't know which mic was for you. Is it better? Test, test for you in the back. Is it okay? Just come. Yeah. Okay. The topic today is IT certifications. Who here is a certified IT professional in some way? Okay. Nobody. Then let's make sure what... Okay. What? Let's make sure what is a certification. We're talking about professional certifications. This is what Wikipedia tells you about professional certifications. There are three important things here. A certification or what you get from a certification is a non-degree award. So you don't have to go to a university. Sometimes you can go there, but not the university actually is the authority certifying you. It's either some other authority at the university or they do this in the name of some other authority. The second thing is you have to show something that you achieved some knowledge even practical-wise sometimes. And yeah, the certificate itself, it's just a paper or sometimes just a PDF file. Yeah, it's issued by some authority. Authority, yeah. That can be some company. That can be some companies in a conglomerate. That can be some working group or whatever. If you decide you want to certify people, yeah, then you can do so. In the IT industry, there are mostly two certification types or two categories of certifications. The first is education-based certifications, which means there is some course. You have to go there. You have to actually attend the course, which may be online or actually in the real world somewhere you go there and take the course. And you have to pass the course, which may include passing several individual stages. You could have to do some exams or exercises and an exam. And yeah, all that is what all that together leads to actually getting the certification if you pass. The second category is only exam-based certifications, which means you get the knowledge or you have the knowledge already. It doesn't matter how, where, when. You just register for an exam, go there. It can be online. It can be actually somewhere at the university or so at some company. And you have to pass the exam, which usually means you have to score a specific amount of points in a given time. The nature of exams, yeah, the exams come in different flavors, different types, different things that you have to do to get the exam. They differ in what you have to work with during the exam or during the course. Maybe you just have texts. Maybe you have example codes, depending on what type of IT fields you're certifying in. Maybe you have image material. The questions in the exam might be multiple choice, might be multiple selects. If multiple selects, then mostly you have maybe four answers. And the question includes there are two rights to choose. So you have some indication what to do here. Maybe it's free text. So you have a question and a free text input field and you have to type in the answer. Sometimes you have 20, 40, 200, 400 questions and you know every question gives me one point and that leads to 200, 400, whatever points and you have to score so many points. Or there are questions that are different in their level and yeah, thus have different points to score. So yeah, if time is running out and you're specialized in one topic, maybe just do these questions then if you see them to get the points you need. When doing some computer based exams, then the Pearson View Test Centers are actually the place to go. There are other testing centers but Pearson View is what I think in our field here is the most famous. Pearson View is a company which only does certification examination computer based. Worldwide, there are more than four and a half thousand test centers which means there are seven here in Nuremberg. And Pearson View delivers exams for other authorities. They don't issue actually the exam. They do the examination with the questions and the scoring report and whatever has to be included, what the authority gives them. They're doing, yeah, exams for pretty well-known companies. Computer based testing at Pearson View. Let's switch to a demo. Okay, I have to stay in the area here. If you were to take an exam at Pearson View at a testing center, this is what the screen looks like. So you have navigation down here, go forward and backward. You have the questions and some text material up there and adjusts run through quickly here what this demo shows you. So the main thing is you have instructional boxes which gives you some hints about maybe there are some module or modular parts of your exam and if you reach the next stage of your exam, you get additional information. You definitely see one of these boxes before starting the exam, giving you some information about how that works. Yeah, you can navigate. We did that already. There are, depending on the computers used and the screens, sometimes scroll bars, if you miss some information on the page, you're being informed about that. So we go here, there are tabs now and if you just read that, answer and go on, you're informed about, hey, maybe you missed something, would you like to see that? So, okay, there's the tab. There's the tab. Now we're good to go. Now let's see about the different question types. No matter what exam you're doing at a Pearson View Center, these are the types of questions you're confronted with. So the first one is a multiple choice. You have multiple answers and you only have to choose one of them. Multiple select. Okay. There are multiple answers and the question tells me, okay, choose two of them. Now we have something where we have to type in something. Yeah. Then I did not see that before in some IT based examination. Pearson View is not doing only IT examinations. They're doing for any industry computer based certification examinations. So just choose something here. I did not see that either. So maybe that's for some measurements that you did before or some calculations and this could be done with a select input either. I cannot read everything from here, but yeah, it's not scored anyway. That's also nothing I have seen before in IT examinations. Yeah. And some interactive right here. Yeah. Then maybe you have text information, you have a question, you have some additional background information and there is some exhibit which might be an image, a table, a graph, some piece of code. Yeah. You can have a look at that and then go on. The things you see in the demo application itself. On the top right, you see the time left or the time you have because there's a time limit. Usually it's depending on the examination. It's 30 minutes up to 200 minutes. If you're a native German speaker doing some examination which is not available in German, maybe depending on the authority, you get extra time. So you see the time. You see how many questions left or how many, actually you see at which question from the total number of questions you are at now. It's not telling you if you answered all questions before. Yeah. You can choose your font and color here. And yeah, you can flag questions. So either you did not yet answer them or you answered them but you were unsure about that so you can flag them and if you're done with all the questions, you see the review screen and you see all the questions and you see which one is flagged and you can go back and check what you answered before or if you did not answer, do it then. And yeah, I guess that's about what's interesting here. Okay. So we now know what certification is and how and where you can do them but why certify? Since there's only one person in the room, why did you certify and in which field or what certification did you do? Okay. So you did it because it was required to get the job or to stay in the job. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. There are, of course, several individual reasons for certification. One is to gain knowledge about something new. Of course, you don't have to certify just to get new knowledge. For some people having some pressure makes them learn faster, makes them actually learn better, understand better and actually inhale the knowledge and just not do it because you have to do it. You have to do it if your employer says, okay, if you want to work in that field, I expect that certification but then it should be something that you're interested in because if not, then this is maybe not the best job for you anyway. Of course, you can specialize in some fields. So if you're doing JavaScript, yeah, then there are definitely things that you did not do in JavaScript because there's so many things in JavaScript, just an example as JavaScript is one of the hyped languages throughout the last 10, 15 years. Another thing is that doing some examination and being certified, it's just a piece of paper but it's from some authority and you choose or your employer if they tell you to do some examination, they choose which examination certifications, which authorities they choose and yeah, you actually validate. You show at least while doing the examination, you have some amount of knowledge and of course, the right certifications from time to time brush up your CV but there are of course benefits for the employee and the employer side. So actually certifying makes you prove to whoever that you have learned something and at least you were able to practically show what you learned because the exams are up to the authority and they are sometimes very practical, sometimes brought background information or just knowledge that you have to show but definitely you have to apply what you learned. It's just not always, okay, that was in that chapter, just write it down. I didn't understand it but this is right, it doesn't work. There may be exams where you actually can read a book, totally not understand it but you read that, you remember that, you answered but most of the good exams, you won't get through it without actually understanding what you learned. Another benefit is if you're certified and maybe you're one of the few people certified by a huge team, maybe you get a promotion or a raise. Depending on where you certify, there may be some closed information groups where you can exchange and maybe you get a job or you refer to some client of them. From the employer side, taking or choosing the right certification exams, the right authorities makes you adhere to best practices which hopefully makes you do better products. You improve your teams and then your companies in general performance and the productivity because you learn something then you apply during examination and then it's easier to apply during actual days work. Yeah, of course your image is being brushed up because it's just the same when you buy some program. There's a program that costs 20 Euro and there's a program that costs 25 Euro but it tells you it's tested. Which one do you buy? Hopefully you buy the tested one because you think it's tested, you trust them and if it's done right, it's actually is tested. It's claiming something that's true but that's other things other people also have is just more attractive. The Full HD TV, every TV with a resolution for Full HD is Full HD ready but Full HD ready was the TVs to go for. That's the same thing. And of course you make your company more attractive compared to other competitors. Pearson Vue did last year some survey. They asked, I think it was, I'm not sure, I think it was 200,000 or 400,000 people that did some exam with them in the IT section during the last year. So from August 2014 to August 2015 they were asked to attend the survey. 26,600 and three individuals responded and completed the survey. 86% of them were male. I included 11% of female because 2% didn't answer that. So it's very imbalanced. 10% of them were aged 18 to 24. 41, 25 to 34%. 42% are 35 to age 54 and the missing percent are 55 and older. 59% of them work in the IT industry which means there are 40% which did some IT certification but they're not working in an IT industry. So they're working as an IT consultant or an expert or so in a company in some different industry. The general findings of the survey was that every person asked the last exam they did in the last 12 months, 53% of that was paid for by their employer. 89% of the people used self-study materials. There's no comparison which only used self-study materials but 90% used self-study materials in some way. 85% would actually recommend certification if they were asked by a colleague. And 90% of the people that did the people who did certifications during the last 12 months actually would certify again in the next 12 months. So what are the motivations? One motivation is to improve your professional profile, brush up your CV. 60% answered that. I don't know how many, I think it was six answers and it was multiple selects. So it's not, there are 40% missing for the other answers. You could have chosen every answer. 60% said, yeah, it's to brush up my CV. Increased knowledge in a specific area, 54%, certify to get knowledge. Get a raise or promotion, only 30%. Maybe they get a raise afterwards but that's not their motivation. Only 29% did the examination because it was required by their employer. And there are even people to certify to find a job which might be they are working in some not IT industry company and they want to switch over or they're unemployed right now and they expect if I certify at a good authority some importance, actually knowledge increasing and real authority, I do find a job afterwards. 28%. The benefits from doing or completing and passing a certification. The image is from Pearson Vue, I think it speaks for itself. 65% did that for their reputation. 12%. Okay, this is actually what they got. This is not what the benefit they expected. This is the motivation from before. This is the people that benefited from doing the examination. This is what they answered. It was also multiple choice, multiple select. This graph shows when they benefited after their last exam. So 25, 15, 40, almost 60% actually benefited within 3 months after doing their examination, which is huge. A fourth of them, 25% immediately. And the people who got a raise, every fourth of them got a raise to up to 20%. That's not so descriptive. Okay, so let's come to some recommended certifications, recommended on my personal experience and I definitely don't know everything and what I found on the web during the last month and 2 years, what you can do there. It's recommendation in the broader context of WordPress, but there is no WordPress, specific certification for WordPress. So what comes to mind is certifying in the languages, the techniques, the disciplines, the fields, related or included when working in the WordPress universe. WordPress is PHP, even though we have Calypso now, WordPress is PHP. So the Zen certified PHP engineer is the PHP examination in the IT industry. There are more than 13,000 Zen certified engineers. That does include framework engineers, but 10% of all Zen certified engineers are PHP engineers from Germany. That's quite a number. Then offers several test preparation ways to prepare. The exam itself is just go there, register, do the exam, pass, and you're good to go. You can take a course, a one-day course, you can take a three-day course. You can buy a book, you can buy a study guide. No matter how, when, where, get the knowledge you have for the exam, go there and you're okay. The current exam is still based on PHP 5.5. Of course, they are working on PHP 7, and the current goal is to have the PHP 7 exam ready at fall because there's some Zen conference from the company. So that's the goal. Is here anyone interested in the Zen PHP certification program? Two people? Okay. Three people. After my talk, come down to me because I have one voucher for exam to give away, so we can do a lottery. The next exam, actually, there are two exams, is from CIW. They have individual exams put into series. So the web development series includes three exams. One is JavaScript, one is database design, and the third is Perl. You can do every exam from the three just separately. If you pass all three, you also awarded the CIW web development professional certificate. It's just doing three examinations, gets you four certifications, or if you're just interested in the JavaScript or database design part, yeah, do that. CIW does internet web IT examinations. There are already almost 90,000 certified people. They also offer individual preparation ways. So you have some self-study material and you can go there and attend a course. The JavaScript specialist is a basic examination, basic JavaScript fundamentals. Database design is vendor neutral. It's not my SQL. No SQL file-based, and so it's also a basic examination. And if you want, you can do the Perl specialist. And yeah, as I said, if you pass all three of them, you're the web development professional. If you really work with MySQL, then the Oracle certified professional MySQL developer, there are, I think there's a MySQL administrator, developer, and user or so. This is what you want to have or want to do when you're actually developing. This number is, I think, every Oracle examination, and there are not only database MySQL and so, but that's quite a number. There are training courses from the Oracle University. It's not an actual university, but yeah, it sounds good. Linux server administration. There is the LPIC1 certification, which consists of two exams that you have to pass. And then there are, I think, two more stages. There's the LPIC2 and the LPIC3 certification. Every single one of them consists of two exams you have to do. If you're writing code or someone at your company writes code and you want to test, you have to test, you should test. The ISTQB certified tester is a huge roadmap when you want to test. The certified tester foundation level exam is the base for every other exam, and they then spread, they split up in agile, just the basic part that, yeah. The core thing definitely is what you have to know, but to do the specialists or the agile things, you don't have to show individual that you understand what testing in general means, because if you don't understand what testing in general means, then you don't understand what testing at a special area, a special field, a special way of development also means. Depending on where you work, what type of company, what team choose what you want to do here. An interesting thing is that the foundation level exam is not only for developers. It's actually for anyone involved in the development process, which means project managers, managers from other areas of your company, depending on how huge it is. And then of course WordPress projects need project management. The PMP is I think the most well-known project management certification. Actually, you have to have some prerequisites, you have to meet them to take the exam. So you have to show that you're educated as a professional project manager, which is something like you have to 35 hours of some acknowledged education somewhere, and you have to show that you're, I don't know the number, I think it was something about 4000 up to 6000 hours of actually experience in your professional career. Only then you're allowed to take the exam. The exam itself is 200 multiple choice questions to be done in four hours. There's a formal study course and there's self-study material. And so what did we learn? If you want to or you have to do an exam, it should be something that you're interested in, or you should be interested in. IT certifications or certifications in general, they do matter, depending on who you are, where you work, what you expect from doing the certification. Definitely, doing certification is not the thing to do for every person at every stage in your career, but there are several reasons why certifying when and where the right ones matter. The problem is to find the right ones. If you're asked or if you're inquired to do an examination, hopefully you can trust them, so you have to do that and you do it. If it's not a good examination, when your employer wants you to do that, you're okay with that. If you choose for yourself, make sure you read about the authority, how acknowledged the certification is, or maybe how many other people working at a position or in the field you are or you want to be in some day, what certifications do they have? Here are some references. The first one is the PDF file of the survey, which I showed you some things of. The slides are online since eight minutes, so thank you. Do you have any questions? That's right. The question was, I chose PMP as a project management base course, and the question was why I didn't choose some more specific thing, because the base is, I think, doing only the scrum, when you're good at your job, then you have the knowledge that you should show in the PMP, and I think the PMP is more important, or at least the things included in the PMP are more important. Depending on what certification you do, the authority often gives out the contents, sometimes just a list of headlines. In the ISTQB case, you get the whole material, the whole content, the whole questions and information for the foundation level. Maybe you don't want to do the examination, but you go there and get the material and learn that. Scrum or prints or other things. First of all, I'm not a project manager. I don't have that much knowledge in the area, and scrum depends on where you're working. If you're working in a team that doesn't do agile development, that doesn't do scrum, then this isn't the right thing for you. Of course, there are additional examinations relevant at something in the workplace context, of course, but this is what I thought is for the most people, because I'm a developer. What do you think about workplace certification? The second-last link is a good article which links to four or five other articles from the last three years. The problem is there must be really the authority which must be the WordPress foundation, and they don't want to do certification, actually. WordPress VIP does certifications for developers, but that's more training and giving a certification of that you attended and passed the training. I think it would be cool to have WordPress certifications because there are so many people who ruin the name of WordPress developers, because there is no examination, there is no certification, there is no proof that you actually know what you do in the WordPress context. There's nothing that potential clients can rely on, but I think it's hard to get to the point, to do examinations, and to constantly update, because there's a lot happening at WordPress core and in the WordPress community and in the WordPress context, which should be reflected not three years after. Okay, thank you. One question? No. I don't know exactly what things changed from PHP 5.5 to 5.6, which actually matter when developing. There definitely were optimizations in the background, and so I don't know what actually changed from 5.5 to 5.6. They did not do examinations for every major release of PHP. I think the previous one was 5.2, and then it was 5.0 at PHP 5. They decided when the language changed so much that they actually think they should update the examination. The thing is, before the current examination, which is just called, if you're certified, then you're a certified, Zend certified PHP engineer, not PHP 5.5, you're a PHP engineer. Before that, you actually were certified as a PHP 5.2, if it was that, and a PHP 5 engineer. They already changed that. I don't know what will be the title for the PHP 7 certification, because PHP 7 is young and it's hyped, and maybe they will include the number. I don't know. I don't know the exact reason why not 5.6. Sorry? No, there is PHP, just PHP, and there is a Zend Framework 1 and a Zend Framework 2 certification. I think you don't have to do the PHP before the frameworks. I think there are just individual examinations that you can take if you want to. Okay, thank you.