Why Cert Examinations are Biased (Non-Wow Topic)
Exams!
One of my friends is really upset about a cert examination (MCSE, CCNA, LCC etc), which he took recently. Then I told him it’s okay, as these exams are inherently biased.
From the perspective of an exam authority, to setup a “Professional Certification Exam“, what makes a (new) exam successful?
1. The certified people perform better.
2. The exam is accepted by the existing personnel in the industry – otherwise they’ll reject the exam due to their vested interests. This is where exemption of certain criteria for existing personnel comes in when a new exam is created.
3. Getting certified will grant a candidate a better chance of being hired. The incentive for applicants to take the exam is to stand out from the group.
4. The exam provides a way for management to justify their hiring decisions, as they believe a certified employee is a safe choice.
Due to the self-reinforced loop of 1-3, a reputation will be built for the certification.
As we can tell, only reason 1 is essential for the benefits of the employer and employee, and the others are purely for marketing purposes.
1. The result will always be biased toward false negative (consider a qualified candidate who fails), rather than false positive, (granting a non-qualified candidate a pass). This is because false positives harm the exams reputation, while false negatives do not, (and also grant another exam fee -> $$) (For reason 1).
2. Biased questions which favour the inner circle will be asked in the exam, so that the existing personnel have an advantage over the new comer, to protect their privileged position. (For reason 2)
3. The exam has to have a high fail rate for new comers. Think of guilds in RL 16th-17th century, the age of Adam Smith. Limiting the number of apprentices for a master craftsman, thus restricting workers from entering the industry, to enforce the scarcity of workmen and protect the wage of “the professionals”. (For reason 3)
Ironically, the more people fail the exam; the more valuable it becomes to pass.
So my advice for my friend was, don’t be too upset by the “exam game”. It’s meant to be hard, and that is exactly the reason why you take it.
If the Odds are good, and there are things you can do to get a pass, take it. Otherwise, don’t bother.
P.s I am honored to have Zupa edited this article, I want to show my gratitude for his generous.
Until Next Time,
Zekta
Tags: Wow Econ Research Project
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July 15th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
I’m getting ready to take the CCNA myself. I’ve been told it’s now significantly harder than it was, and there is a good amount of material. Yet, its not a board certification exam level, its on the level of a high-school graduate. There is a world of difference there. If a HS grad can pass the exam, it isn’t worth much. If it takes a PhD to pass the exam, and even then the fail rate is high, then the exam is worth more (my wife just passed her boards, got an immediate 10k raise, with more to come). A IT industry hiring manager told me once that the certs are not worth the paper they are printed on, and he doesn’t even look at them. He looks at experience, plain and simple. If you have no experience, then I think the exam is worth something, but the kicker is that since its HS level, the equiv exp. is high school level. Thus its actually quite tough for someone to retool and become a network engineer for example, since by definition you either need your cert exam, or years of menial jobs which grant you some but not enough xp).
It is a game, granted, and some of the certs seem to be truely worthless. I would never go to one of those boot camps, pay $5000, 7 days, pass the exam; I dont think having a ton of certs under your belt with no xp is any better than 1 or 0 certs with no xp.
July 16th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Thanks for leaving me comments
As you said, it’s the world of different there.
It’s a problem of the lemon market, the employ don’t know someone works great or sucks before their hire you. All the could do is guess, a cert examination is one of the place they look for clue. The more clueless the employee is, the more the look for cert.
What the IT manager told you is true, it happens on the software engineer hiring process. Always had a senior programmer to screen out the canadate, Cert is nothing in the industry. I had tons of classmate who sucks in programming, yet manage to get their degree completed. So unless you test out their strength with real question, you’ll never know how good (bad) they are. But given a employee had 200+ application a day, it’s just not possible for them to check every canidate like this, sadly…