Report: Certification Boosts IT PayReport: Certification Boosts IT Pay

Pay for certified IT workers has increased this year, according to a new report. But some in the IT community continue to question the importance of certification.

Foote Partners' third-quarter Hot Technical Skills and Certifications Pay Index assessed the skills and pay of more than 29,000 IT professionals in about 1,800 North American and European businesses from July to September. The results indicate that overall pay for 53 certifications has risen 8% since the end of last year, to 8.6% of base salary. Certifications relating to security, database, application development and programming languages, and Webmaster/internetworking have driven that increase in the past three months, according to the survey. Other findings: Bonus pay for application development tools and language skills is typically about 9% of base pay, and rapid application development skills such as Java bring more than double that, with a median 20% of base pay.

But many IT certifications are overrated, Meta Group analyst Maria Schafer says. It doesn't mean much unless workers are able to apply what they've learned in the real world. Employees should be rewarded for what they've done with the knowledge, not for passing a test--especially when the quality of the tests and training varies greatly, Schafer says. While she generally steers companies away from the "certification trap," she does see value in certain certifications, especially those related to newer technologies. But companies should stick to certifications that include hands-on training and more rigorous testing, such as Cisco certification, she says.

Mostafa Mehrabani, CIO at TRW Inc., a $17.2 billion manufacturer of automotive systems in Cleveland, says certification can be a plus, but it's superseded by other employee qualities: namely, a strong work ethic and success as a team player. "If someone has those qualities, I can send them to be certified," Mehrabani says. "If they're certified but don't know how to work as team, that's much harder to teach than the other way around."