 Hello, I'm your host Alex Freeberg and this is the Alex the Analyst Show. Thank you so much for joining me. Today we are discussing certifications, something that I get asked about literally every single day. They're asking, you know, do I need a certification? You know, will it help me land a job faster? Will it make me stand out in the market? If so, you know, what certifications should I be getting? These are all things that we'll talk about within this show. I also have a little bit of insider information on the Google data analyst program that they're going to be hosting on Coursera. I have a contact over at Coursera that I've been talking with and they gave me some very valuable information that may be valuable to you as well. It is going to be a good show, I assume. I have a lot of things prepared. I have a lot of things, a lot of thoughts in my head about certifications that I've kind of been shooting out here and there in the comments, you know, people ask, I give them an answer. And every answer I give is fairly consistent. But you know, everybody asks in a different way. And so I just want to get this out there, get it to the people who need to know about certifications. So let's start at the very beginning, right? What is a certification? A certification is basically you take a course, you take an exam potentially. And it is something to validate that you know what you're doing in a specific area, right? You go, you take a certification for, let's say, Azure. It is certifying that you know what you're talking about, and you get the certificate and you can put it on your resume, you can put on your LinkedIn and show people that you know about that topic. And so in theory is a very good thing. In theory, I'm saying in theory because you know, that's kind of, it's open-ended at this moment. We haven't thoroughly talked it through. So that's the theory. At the beginning, we have our theory that it's supposed to be helpful. It's supposed to be beneficial. We'll discuss this more, of course. So, you know, that is what a certification is. And so why are people concerned about getting certifications? Why are people wanting to get certifications? Why are people asking me about it all the time? Here's why. It's because anybody can put SQL, Python, Tableau, Power BI on their resume. And if you don't have any experience, one of the other really good things that you could do is potentially get a certification to prove that you have at least the knowledge. You can prove in some way that you have the knowledge to be a data analyst that someone should hire you. Excuse me. And so that is kind of the thought process behind people getting certifications. It's to validate that somebody should hire them over someone else or somebody should hire them because they have a certification. There are a lot, and I want to repeat this, there are a lot of certifications out there. And not all of them are great. And not all of them are even worth getting or investing your time and your money into. I cannot possibly name all of those certifications, but I'll give some examples. I'm also going to talk about some examples of ones that I do like. But before I do that real quick, I know I'm all over the place right now because I got a lot on my mind. My first thing is certifications. You know, are they necessary? Do you need them? No. I hold this many certifications. Zero. Well, that's not true. I do not advertise that I have any certifications. I don't have any that I would personally put on my resume. I have done so many courses through Coursera, through Udemy. And, you know, I've taken a lot of these things and I've thought about putting them on my resume. And in the end, I just decided not to. I did not think that I was going to give me a leg up. You know, one that we'll talk about later is IBM's data science certification. I took that. I have that. I don't put it on my resume. It's not something that I've ever found value in in the market for me personally. And I'm in a different position than a lot of you guys. A lot of you are at the very beginning of your career. You have no experience, you know, potentially you're changing careers. And so, you know, you have experience in a different field and you want to show them that you're invested in this and you have the skills that you need. And so, you know, that certification may be useful to you. It is not for me anymore. And even when I was, I guess, at my very first job, it just did not seem like something that I needed to put on my resume to validate that I knew what I was talking about. I had a portfolio. I used my portfolio. I was able to talk very well in interviews to showcase my abilities. That to me was what made me stand out the most. Things have changed, right? COVID has changed things. The job market has changed. And so, it's definitely worth looking into right now what certifications are good. I'm going to start with the certification that I think is worth getting. That is one that I'm like, yes, if anyone asks me what certification I should get, here's the one that you should get. And I may or may not pull this up on your screen. I'll, anything I talk about, I have a bunch of things pulled up. Links will be in the description so you can go and check them out yourselves. The very first one is Microsoft Certified Data Analyst Associate. This one is, you can become Microsoft Certified, which holds a lot of weight for a lot of tech jobs, just because Microsoft is so name-brand. And so, in this course, you know, you learn a lot of Power BI, how to use it, how to structure your data, all these things. On the link that I'll post below, you can go through a free learning path. And I have gone through every single one of these. I've taken every single one, because I really just want to learn Power BI even better. And I'm thinking about taking this certification as well, just tech, just to have it. I may not even put it on my resume. I just want to say I have it if somebody asks, because it's kind of cool. This one to me is a new one that they're putting out, because they're discontinuing all their old certifications. If you know anything about that, they're discontinuing a lot of their old certifications, and they're revamping them and kind of changing them into these, which are job-specific certifications. So you can get certified as a data analyst by Microsoft, which to me, knowing Microsoft's background in certifications is a very legitimate and very recognizable certification to get. It is to me, probably one of the best ones you can get. So I'll put that link in the description. The second one that I would consider getting is a Tableau certification from Tableau.com. They have certifications ranging from a few different options, but in general, it just proves that you know how to use Tableau. And Tableau is such a good skill to learn. If you didn't notice, the first two that I chose were certifications in Azure Power BI, Microsoft Power BI, and Tableau, Data Visualization. You know, where's the SQL ones? Alex, where are them? They aren't anywhere. And I don't really trust any, I haven't seen any certification that I'm like, wow, this guy's certified in SQL. They used to have that through Microsoft. They do not have that anymore. So I do not really have any recommendation for SQL, but that's because SQL's a little bit different than Power BI or a Data Visualization tool. Just a little bit different in how you can, who I would trust to certify that. Tableau has Tableau itself that they certify trustworthy. A lot of people get it. A lot of people ask me if this is one that they should get. I say it's up to you. Again, I am much more of a portfolio project kind of guy. Make a great portfolio. Show that you have the skills instead of getting a certification. Some people are the opposite. They're like, if I get all these certifications, I don't need a portfolio. You know, just a different mindset. So the Tableau certification again, link in the description, is a good one to get. Not super cheap. Let me see real quick how much these cost. I will say for the Microsoft one, I believe, and I'm looking at it real quick. I want to say that's $165. So $165 isn't a, you know, it's not a drop in the bucket, but it's not super expensive. Let me see. The Tableau one is $100. So that one is cheaper. The third one that I would recommend getting, and I have two more that I'm going to recommend, and then I'm going to get into the ones that I do not recommend. The next one that I recommend getting is AWS Certified Data Analytics Specialty. AWS, Azure are very good things to be certified in because they are not, they're not upcoming anymore. They are here, and people kind of are starting to expect you to know these cloud platforms. And if you know them, you're going to make more money. So getting certified in it to me is, it makes sense because a lot of these jobs that use these tools, you're going to make more money at. So a small investment of $100 or $165 is going to be a huge payoff if you're able to land a job with those skills. So this one is AWS Certified Data Analytics Specialty. Link in the description. None of these, none of this is sponsored. They're just links. So rest assured, I'm giving you my very honest opinion on these. I have looked into this. I've taken a course on, you know, passing this exam because I wanted to learn all the skills. I never took the exam, but I feel like I could take this exam and probably pass it if I just maybe brushed up on it. And so let me see if I can find how much this costs. $300. It costs $300 to be certified. A lot of people take these certifications, AWS and Azure certifications hold a lot of weight. Again, it's Microsoft and Amazon. So two extremely huge companies with certifications. They're well-known, documented success in the past. Certifications are validated and used in the field. These are why, these ones specifically, I have chosen as ones that I would recommend that I would get if I were going to get certifications that I'm going to put on a resume. Then real quick, let's go over to this Google Data Analyst certification program. If you have not heard, Google is coming out with, I think three, they have Data Analyst Project Manager, UX Designer, and IT Support Specialist. Data Analysts getting their own program. Super cool. I'm extremely looking forward to it. Google has said, and I'm not reading this off the thing, so this is off the top of my head, Google has said that to them, if you take this course, if you take this program, it is like getting a four-year degree to Google. Maybe not to everyone else, but to Google specifically, they will accept it as a four-year degree. When Google does stuff like this, it changes things. It's going to be on Coursera, I believe it's going to be $39 a month for this program specifically. It takes six months to complete and so about $300 or no, five months to complete. I believe, gosh, I'm doing some terrible math right now. 40 bucks, I think it's $300 total. Maybe it's $50 or $49 per month. I believe it's a six month, five or six months course, $300 total. If you heard nothing else than my complete nonsense just a second ago, it's $300 total. So $300 to get this, but it's over like a six-month span. You can't just take an exam and have it done with. But they take you through the training and to me, this is going to be one that people look for. It's going to be up there with the Amazon. It's going to be up there with the Microsoft certifications. I haven't seen any of the course material at all. That's just my guess, my guesstimation. I have been talking with somebody over at Coursera who I have been trying to get deals for you guys. I'm like, hey, do you guys have any free courses that I could offer my subscribers? Do you have any discounts that you can offer my subscribers? I'm like, what can you give me so that I can give it to them? Well, in that course, I kind of built up a relationship with this lady and I was like, hey, you know, I would love to do a video on this Google certification program. Are you guys able to give discounts? Can you give me any information on it? I'd like to give something to my subscribers so they can start learning about it. I just posted about it on my channel. Here's what I know so far is that they are actually still, they announced it in July of 2020. They are still designing and building out the courses as we speak. So it is not completed. And a lot of people are thinking it's going to be done soon. They announced it in July, end of the year. This lady says that it should be done by the end of the year. And that's just what she told me. So if we can expect it by the end of this year, that could be very, very exciting. Especially people going into the new year, really focusing on self-studying and upskilling and all those things could be very, very exciting in my mind. And so look out for this one. This is one that I will be keeping my eye on. I think I'm going to be taking it and doing reviews on it for you guys because I think this is a genuinely potential game changer. Could be. I don't know. We're going to find out. Something that a lot of people ask me and right now I just pulled up on my screen. Maybe I should. Maybe I'm showing you on your screen. I don't know. The IBM Data Science Professional Certificate. Should you take it? Is it worth it? Here's my take on it. I remember taking it. I remember going through the entire course. I will say that it did not go in depth enough for me, that if I was hiring someone and they had this on the resume, I would not say, wow, I got to hire this guy. I'd say, oh, wow. He invested time. Like any other certification that I would see. He invested time. He invested maybe some money and he learned some skills. This certification specifically to me does not scream, I know everything to be a data analyst. And none of these certifications do. But it doesn't give a ton of validity in my mind to being a data analyst. I think the course itself was super good. And I do recommend taking it. But they just didn't go, it wasn't crazy in depth. It's not like you're doing hands-on, tons of hands-on things. It's a lot of learning. It's a lot of what is this? How do you use this? What's the methodology behind this? And then the very last thing I think, and I'm looking at at course four, is Python and Data Science and AI. That was really the only hands-on, really hands-on experience learning wise with technical skills. So do I recommend taking it? Yes, absolutely. I think it is a fantastic course. I personally learned a ton from it. But do I recognize this as a credible source for a certification? No, not really. I personally don't. I've seen people put this on the resume. Since I've taken it myself and I know what it means and what's in the course, I wasn't super impressed. I wasn't like, man, this IBM certification. I was just like, oh, it's just a course a lot of people take to learn a lot more about this. Very cool. Maybe that's the pessimist or whatever in me. I don't know if it's the realist. It's for you guys to decide. Those are really the ones that those first four are the ones that I would look out for. I would consider doing and I'll put those in the description if you want to check them out, check out their courses, check out their exams, all that stuff. One's that I'm going to be wary of. One's that you hear it should you put it on your resume. First off, if you were taking one off you to me, anything off you to me, I would not put that certificate or certification on your resume. You to me is an amazing, amazing, amazing platform I have learned. I probably owe a lot of my career to you to me, probably, honestly, just be the teachers at least on you because honestly, I've learned so much, so many skills. I would never put that on my resume. That is a learning platform. It's not a certification platform or you can show you completed a course, but I can complete a course by clicking next 100 times. It doesn't mean I know the material. It just shows that I took a course. It's sort of the same thing on some level with the Coursera courses. Some of them do have quizzes, tests that you need to take. I have not personally found one on Coursera that I'm like, yes, I would put that on my resume, including the IBM data science. That is just my opinion for those specifically because so many people take courses on there. I did myself. I still do myself. No, I personally would not be adding those to my resume. I wouldn't put the words you to me or Coursera on my resume. They're learning platforms. They're not certification platforms. That's how I view it at least. That's my opinion on those. Other ones to look out for. I'm going to give you an example before I actually get into it. Let's say Alex the Analyst decides to put out a course, a six-week course to learn everything you need to know about data analytics. I title it Alex the Analyst Certification Program or I make it probably something more fancy to where it sounds more credible. I can't even think of anything. Let's say what sounds IBM? No, I can't use that. That's copyright. Let's keep it simple. Alex the Analyst Certification, you're certified by me, by my program. Go put that on your resume. To me, if I saw that, some random guy on YouTube making a program, you took his course. Let's say I marked it up. I was like, 800 bucks. Take my course. You'll be able to be a data analyst. No problem. You put that on your resume. Nobody's going to know what it is. Nobody knows. It's not industry standard. It's not recognizable. Nobody knows who Alex the Analyst is. This rink-a-dink show. It's not going to give you any boost in your job hunt. In that same vein, if you find things like Springboard, or not Springboard, it's not an example because that's a boot camp, although they do have courses, I believe. Data Camp Certification. What's the other one? Something Academy. Data Academy, something like that. Then there's ones that are like Calabra, Bumbleberry. I don't even know. Just some of these random names. You may have learned a ton through that program. That may have been the program that got you into data analytics that is going to make your career. That may be true. It does not mean that you should be putting it on your resume. If it's one of those programs where you learned a ton, but it has no name value, no worth whatsoever, I do not recommend putting it on your resume. The pure fact that nobody's going to recognize it. Most people will not have taken that course. Nobody's taken Alex the Analyst course. They don't know how hard you worked, or how amazing of a course it was, or how much you paid for it. What they do know is that they've never heard of it, and it's not that impressive. That's my take on it. Kind of the knocky-out punch. Nobody's heard of it. It's not worth putting on your resume. That's my two cents. Other people may disagree. Other people may be like, put as many certifications as you can. Any Udemy courses that you're taking, any Coursera courses that you're taking, anything where you got even a certificate, put it on your resume. Well, you have 100 of them. Be my guest. I personally value the skills, portfolio, and experience 100 times more than any certification. You can have a certification, but if you don't have any hands-on experience or cannot prove through a portfolio project that you know how to use these skills, to me it's not that valuable. In the end, I think that certifications can be useful. There are a specific population where it is useful. For me, it is no longer useful. I'm in my career. I know all the things that I need to know. Well, that's not true. Let me even phrase that. I know all the things that I need to know to get a job. I can go and I can get another job, I am sure, somewhere else. I'm marketable. I have skills. I have a name brand, company that I work for. I can go and get another job because I do that. A certification is not going to boost my chances of getting a job anymore. At the very beginning of my career, before I even had my first job, or maybe after my very first entry-level job, it may have been useful. It is not anymore. Look at yourself. Where are you in this path? Are you currently learning the skills? Are you already a data analyst? Are you in college? I think the people who should be getting certifications, who should actually be investing their time and their money into getting a certification, is somebody who one has no experience, has never had a job. Once you get a job and you have hands-on experience for anything over a year, data analyst-specific certifications are not going to be super useful. But if you are entry-level or below, you have not had a job. You don't have any experience. You're kind of building a portfolio right now. You want to try to prove in some way, validate that you know what you're talking about. A certification may be the way to go. I think I would recommend that. The ones that I recommend today are the only ones that I currently recommend. I've had people send me tons of other ones, and I'm like, I've never heard of that. I've looked at the course. I've looked at the certification. It looks like you're learning a lot of good material. Never heard of it. When I google it, one thing comes up. It does not seem to be anything that anyone would recognize, so I don't recommend it. On that kind of line of which ones to get, which not to get, something that is, I think, important is getting somewhat specific or name brand certifications. Tablo certification, SQL certification, if there was a good one. AWS certification, Azure certification, instead of just data analyst certification, which is what a lot of these ones I was talking about, like Colabera and all these things, it's just a data analyst certification. It's not specific to a skill. I personally like, and Microsoft is the only exception to this rule, I personally like certifications that are skill specific, that show that you know a specific skill. Because if you just do a data analyst certification, it doesn't prove that you know specific skills. So again, just my thoughts. I know I'm doing a lot of rambling, a lot of these things, but that's just my thoughts on certifications in general. And if you should get them, if you shouldn't get them, it definitely is up to you. There are people who should get them. There are people who should not get them. So look at yourself, wherever you're at, think about it. If you want to invest your time and money into it, go for it. All right. I am not against certifications, as some people have said. All right. I'm saying it on the record. I'm not against certifications just because I don't have any. I'm not going to be that guy who's like, I don't have any and I made it. Therefore, you don't need it. You know, I'm not, people have called me stupid. I'm not that stupid, though. I won't deny that in some areas of my life, I have been stupid. But not in this one. I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong and when I'm not wrong. One second, I'll be right back when my kids is crying. See you in a second. I am back all as well. Okay. We are getting into the time of the show. Two things, three things, maybe four things. The first thing is this show is sponsored by all of you beautiful people, gorgeous people, the most attractive people in my entire subscriber base. You guys are supporting the channel. Thank you. If you want to support the channel, if you watching this said, wow, Alex, you were talking to me. This certification thing is genius. You're a genius. Support my channel. Go over to Patreon. I have a link in the description. It would mean a ton. Thank you so much. Second thing is we have our comments of the week or question of the week, however you want to say it. Let's go over to our question of the week. It is from Carlos. Carlos says, Alex, how much coding do you use on a daily basis? Is it just Python? Really good question. And about a year ago, maybe even six months ago, I would say, yes, it's only just Python. So to answer the first question though, how much coding do you use on a daily basis? It used to be very little. I used to not do a ton. I recently have moved over much more heavily onto the technical side. I used to be kind of customer facing and, you know, half customer facing half technical in my current role. We were able to hire on a business analyst and another data analyst who I have trained and offloaded a lot of my client facing work where now I am highly technical focused. And so I'm not only using Python anymore. I was, I was using a ton of Python. Now I'm using Python. I'm using Scala. I'm using Spark. So those are the main three that I'm using coding wise. You know, they're kind of all meshed in there, but I use it all in Azure. So Azure Databricks. I'm using almost all of it there. And I'm doing a lot of it now. A lot of file processing, reading in files, automation. So a lot of automation, you know, web scraping even these days because, you know, I need to pull certain things from certain websites like CMS. You know, I work in health care. So CMS, I don't want to have to go to this every week and download this file. So I'm automating that and scraping that from there. Lots of things. And I'm learning a ton. I've only started using Scala and Spark, like in the past six months, but I already feel like I'm really getting the hang of it. It feels super good to me. I like it. I like it a lot. Glad I can put that on my resume. That's a really good skills to have. So yeah, that's what I'm using. You know, I use SQL a ton. I use Python a ton, even more so now than I ever did before. So that's kind of where I'm at right now. So Carlos, thank you for that question. It's a very good question. And I hope that, you know, if you are out there wondering if you need to learn Python, you don't need to learn Python right away. I highly recommend it if you want to make more money. That's what I've found is the Python is becoming a lot more valuable. A lot more companies are using it. And Python is something that you can do so many things with. I've only scratched the surface. For my job, I don't need a ton. I don't need crazy knowledge for it, but I need enough. So worth investing your time. We've come to the end of the show, sadly. We've come to the end of the show. And if you haven't ever watched the end of my show before, which I recommend you go back to my previous shows and watch the end because it's fun. It's just fun to do. If you have not, if you've not been part of the vegetable crew, if you haven't been part of it, you're missing out. Join me. Join us collectively together as one in commenting down below one of probably, and I say this every time, but this one is very true, one of the most terrible vegetables of all time, the radish. There are radish farmers out there who grow this for a living. And I, and I hope that they're asking themselves why every single day. Radishes are terrible. And I hate them. And I want you to comment, if you have a story about why you hate radishes, comment that down below. I would like to hear it. It would make me happy. I have a few stories, terrifying stories. They ruined a lot of my childhood, to be honest. So for all the radishes out there, for all the people who like radishes out there, no, no. That's all I got. Thank you guys for joining me. Thank you so much for watching to the end. I love, I don't know why, I don't know why I do this. I'm starting to do this subconsciously. I think I'm just genuinely starting to ramble at the end just to see how long you guys are willing to stick with me. And I don't know if it's conscious or subconscious at this point, but honestly, it just cracks me up. Because I know like there's like two guys out there or girls who are just listening right now on in the background have no idea what's going on in the show anymore. It's the end of the show. You don't need to be listening anymore. But I keep going. But I know I'm really going to stop now. It's getting it's too much. Thank you. Goodbye. I'll see you next week. Next week, I will be bringing on my wife. My wife will be joining the show. Hopefully we'll see. That's the goal. The goal is to bring her on a lot of stuff with kids and she needs some more makeup and look pretty and all that stuff. So if that stuff doesn't happen, she's not coming on. The goal is next week to have her on though, to get some more insight into me, who I am as a person, as an analyst, as a husband, and answer some questions that I probably don't know myself. So that is one to look forward to, for sure. Thank you for sticking around. Thank you for listening to me just ramble at the end. I don't know if anybody enjoys that. I enjoy it. That's all I gotta say. All right. I'm actually I'm actually leaving now. I think you should too. Enjoy your day. Enjoy your weekend. I'm filming this on the weekend. May not be a weekend where you are. Right now, when you're listening to this in six months, a year, two years, 10 years. But you know, it's definitely the weekend right now. I can verify that. I'm actually going now. Thank you for joining me. You are the best. You are, if you are still listening to this, you are way more committed than I've been to almost anything in my entire life. And I respect that a lot. And let me, you know what? I'm doing a double, a double one today. If you have listened to now, if you have somehow gotten to write this second, you are my hero. And I would like you to, oh, my kids, my kids actually crying. So I actually do have to go. If you have gotten to this point, comment below your favorite ice cream. I really do have to go your favorite ice cream. And I will, I will give you a story or some type of comment specifically responding to you in some unique way, because I value you. I actually have to go now. My kid is actually crying. Goodbye. I'll see you next week. Thanks for joining me. Goodbye.