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Your Guide to IT Certification and Salary www.certmag.com JANUARY 2018 WINTER EDITION ANNUAL SALARY SURVEY DOLLAR$ ANDCERTS TAKING STOCK OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEARNING AND EARNING Mastering Microsoft Office Use these helpful tips to train and certify your students. PAGE 28 Have Tech, Will Travel Six top countries where you can put your IT skills to work. PAGE 36 Certification Trepidation Is the long-term forecast for IT credentials cloudy or clear? PAGE 44 CERTIFICATION JANUARY 2018 VOLUME 15 ISSUE 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS FEATURES 4 FROM THE EDITOR 14 IT’s all about the numbers. Cody Clark 6 OPINION Certification is a journey, not a destination. Mike Chapple 12 PEOPLE IN CERTIFICATION A man for all certifications. Calvin Harper 16 PEOPLE IN CERTIFICATION Giving students job-ready tech skills in Puyallup. JOBS AND SALARY Calvin Harper 20 2017 SALARY SURVEY 28 CERTIFICATION How to do Microsoft Office certification right. Jeff Randall NUMBERS DON’T LIE. CERTIFICATION IS GOOD 28 CERTIFICATION Make your certification program attractive to all. FOR YOUR TECH CAREER. Peter Manijak 36 TECH KNOW Six more countries where IT pros should look for work. Reena Ghosh 40 TECH KNOW Six tech trends to monitor in 2018. Nathan Kimple 36 44 PARTING WORDS Is the heyday of IT certification behind us? Aaron Axline CERTIFICATION 3 WELCOME VOL. 15, ISSUE 1 January 2018 ONCE MORE UNTO PUBLISHER: Noel Vallejo MANAGING EDITOR: Cody Clark THE BREACH [email protected] ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Calvin Harper BY CODY CLARK [email protected] Cody Clark is the managing SENIOR DESIGNER: Jordan Jones editor of Certification Magazine. [email protected] CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Aaron Axline, Mike Chapple, Cody Clark, Reena Ghosh, ere I sit, hours away from new Salary Survey 75, of course. We Calvin Harper, Nathan Kimpel, the first public screenings also have a list of 50 high-interest certs Peter Manijak, Jeff Randall of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, that many of your certified peers will Hand the long-ago words of Han Solo be working toward earning in the DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC from what used to be called simply months ahead. And, in a new devel- PARTNERSHIPS: Todd Kerby Star Wars are on the tip of my tongue: opment, we asked this year whether [email protected] “Didn’t we just leave this party?” It’s survey respondents are satisfied with true that we live in a world that deliv- their current pay grade. ON THE WEB ers a new Star Wars movie every year. We take aim at a number of oth- CertMag.com, Fans won’t even have to wait a full 12 er topics as well. Microsoft Office twitter.com/CertMag, months for the next one: Solo: A Star certification is sweeping through facebook.com/CertMag Wars Story opens May 25. high schools and junior high schools What I’m really thinking about, around the world, so we have some HOW TO CONTACT US To contact our editorial team: however, is the annual Salary Survey. tips about how to help students suc- [email protected] It’s been a whole year since the last ceed at mastering some of the most To contact our ad sales team: time that this rodeo came to town, yet ubiquitous tools in the IT workplace. [email protected] it still feels like the dust has barely set- We also look ahead to 2018, and look For subscription problems: tled. Thanks to the ongoing series of around to identify more of the best [email protected] Deep Focus articles that we launched countries for IT professionals looking on the Certification Magazine website for work. Certification Magazine is last year, the Salary Survey has be- Some of you are almost certainly published quarterly by come a year-round presence. And now reading these words as a result of GoCertify, 65 North 100 East, it’s back. participating in the Salary Survey and Pleasant Grove, UT 84062 The survey is a numbers game. getting a free or discounted subscrip- Salary is an important, and highly im- tion in return. To you and everyone Certification Magazine, CertMag pactful number for all of us. Sussing else who took the time to answer our and CertMag.com are all out how many thousands of dollars call: Thank you. This issue wouldn’t trademarks of GoCertify. are going into the pockets of certified be possible without your input. Keep Copyright 2017, GoCertify. IT professionals, however, is really certifying, and we hope to hear from All rights reserved. just dancing on the tip of a volumi- you again when it’s time for next nous iceberg of data. When you ask year’s survey. Trust us: It will be here Reproduction without several dozen questions of several before you know it. permission of material thousand individuals, well, that leaves published in Certification you with a lot of raw information. P.S. Won’t you be our neighbor? Magazine is forbidden. We’ve processed some of it already, Look for Certification Magazine on and we think you’ll enjoy reading up Facebook and Twitter (@CertMag. A publication. on those findings. There’s a brand com). 4 CERTIFICATION THE VALUE OF RED HAT TRAINING According to IDC research, Red Hat® Training helps make IT more effective and efficient. • 30% higher project success rate from allocating just 1.5% of project budget to training • Three-year annual benefits worth an average of US $53,422 per trained employee • 71% less unplanned downtime • 389% three-year ROI LEARN MORE redhat.com/value CERTIFICATION 5 OPINION STILL CERTIFYING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS The CertMike of CertMag reflects on his journey fromBY MIKE one CHAPPLE IT certification to the next Mike Chapple is Senior Director for IT Service Delivery at the University of Notre Dame. Mike is CISSP certified and holds bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in computer science and engineering from Notre Dame, with a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Idaho and an MBA from Auburn University. recently hit a major career 1) MCP, 2) MCSE (NT 4.0), 3) milestone: 20 years of working MCDBA, 4) MCSE (2000), 5) CCNA, in and around the IT field. As 6) TICSA, 7) CCSP, 8) CISSP, 9) CISA, I reflect on that time, it occurs to me 10) GCFW, 11) PMP, 12) Security+, 13) that I’ve held a wide variety of IT cer- CSA+ tifications during those two decades Can you pick out the path through and they’ve played important roles as all of those acronyms? Allow me to I’ve moved through different stages of express it in terms of four general my career. phases in my career: Allow me a moment to rattle off Technology Foundation > Security the list of certifications that I’ve held Specialization > IT Leadership > Au- at one time or another, if only to offer thor and Educator you some perspective on my career Allow me to walk you through path. I’ll explain more about the twists each of these phases in the hopes that and turns that my career has taken in you can learn from my experiences, a moment, but those of you who have wherever you are in your career. been around the industry a while can probably get a sense of it just from analyzing this alphabet soup of certifi- cations, in the order in which I earned them: 6 CERTIFICATION Building the Foundation When I first embarked upon my IT journey, I was like many young professionals. I thought I knew everything but, in reality, knew very little. This hit me hard when I start- ed working with a team of talented professionals at the National Security Agency. I found myself surrounded by some of the world’s best minds in computer science, cybersecurity, net- working, and mathematics. The most important thing I learned from them is how much there is to learn! Fortunately, I was in an environ- ment with a culture of learning. The NSA has one of the nation’s largest technical workforces, and they com- mitted significant resources to many different types of technical training skills off the bat. Sure, I was working and analytics, offering a hands-on programs. I quickly latched on to a in security, but 20 years later, I still programming environment. I use it library of IT training courses they find myself drawing upon that reserve with my own students to help them offered to all employees and simply of foundational IT skills to inform my gain the foundational skills they need started taking courses in everything work. before moving on to more advanced that people around me discussed that The IT training library that I used material. I didn’t understand. during this phase in my career is long I used that library to build a base of gone, but there are others out there Focusing and Specializing practical IT skills, ranging from Win- that offer even greater opportunities dows administration to databases and to today’s developing technology After spending four years work- networking. Those courses helped professional. Two that I would partic- ing with the fantastic team at NSA, me round out the very Linux-focused ularly recommend are Lynda.com and I moved to a private consulting firm skills that I had picked up in my un- DataCamp. based out of Miami, where I had the dergraduate degree program. Lynda.com offers a tremendous opportunity to work with quite a few As I look back at that time in my breadth of content, releasing dozens fascinating clients. I spent five years career, I am thankful that the team of new courses every day.