Is your technician using Google to find out how to do their job?

Google IT Help

It isn’t easy finding good help.

Recruiting new talent to a business is a costly, extensive process, and the more you try to rush through it, the less you tend to get out of it in the end. The more time and money you spend finding and interviewing potential employees, the more likely you’ll end up with a worthwhile addition to your staff.

Especially when it comes to the tech industry, many managers and owners will rely on certifications to help them better judge a potential employee’s value to the company, but not everyone’s a believer.

In his 20+ years of experience in the IT industry, Raj has found that certifications set too low a bar for newcomers to the field, and rarely give them the necessary training.

Whereas vendor certifications were once only given to the best prospects, nowadays these certifications and their training course are heavily relied on as revenue streams for the suppliers, what with the thousands of new people entering the field every year.

Due to this continuing devaluation of certifications, Brainlink has gone so far as to blacklist some IT training school and programs, as they have produced some graduates that don’t have the understanding they should after finishing programs for CCNS, Security+, and Network+ certifications.

“They can’t tell you what a simple netmask is or how you get a default gateway on a network. They can’t do the basics, much less the complicated stuff,” said Goel to Channelnomics. “At one point, training used to be for professional development. Now it’s pretty much becoming a job training program; the quality of technical education is terrible.”

This issue has gone so far that it’s become common to see industry members asking for advice and support over social media. In particular, this problem was exemplified when The Hill reported that the House Oversight Committee, dealing with the Hillary Clinton email scandal, discovered a post on Reddit asking how to alter the containings of “VERY VIP” emails. The assumption is that the post likely had connections to Platte River Networks, the MSP involved with the scandal.

“You can’t cut hair without going to training school and getting a license,” said Raj to Channelnomics. “You don’t see hairdressers going online and [asking] ‘how do I bleach hair?’. You don’t see cardiologists Googling ‘how do I do a heart transplant?’.”

Furthermore, Raj has found that certificate holders like these are entering the field with a highly inflated view of their compensation, with applicants entering the field expecting a $56,000 salary to start and $100,000 in two years.

“It should no longer be acceptable for professionals – or even interns – in the field of ‘Google’ basic knowledge about their industry. If cardiologists can’t Google ‘how do I do a heart transplant?’, technologists shouldn’t be allowed to Google or go to a forum and [ask] ‘how do I wipe out a hard drive?’,” said Goel to Channelnomics.

To get extensively trained and experienced support for your IT needs, get in touch with Brainlink right away at {phone} or {email}.