Looking for Jobs of System Support Engineer, Certification Qualification Experience

It has come to a sad situation that our company is unable to get enough revenue to go on and my colleague has tendered her resignation without a job.

While looking for job, she encountered several challenges as the job requirements and qualification and certifications.

In IT industry, technology changes very fast, it is rather seldom for experienced engineers to keep acquiring new certifications unless they have nothing to do on the jobs. Normally new engineers trying to come into the IT industry would go for qualification to gain entry through the Human Resource department who is unable to judge the work attitude, experience, skill sets. Unfortunately, experienced engineers who are really good in all areas would not be able to pass through the first level of screening by the human resource personnel.

Back on certification, I have seen engineer who attended certification course for a week or two and during that time period, learned very well about the content, but forgotten about the course content after several months as there was no hands-on or on the job experience. It is all a memory game. On the other hand, an engineer who is in the field could solve problem in a very short time without certification.

The job requirement clearly states the candidate must have certain experience on certain software or hardware. Unfortunately, the software and hardware used in an organisation is unlikely to match the experience of an engineer who works in another organisation. However, with the fast changing IT technologies, it is not important to have past experience as the key point is the ability to acquire new technologies, to keep learning new technologies.

Another point is that the underlying working principles of the computer systems are basically similar but the Graphical User Interfaces of each software manufacturer or vendor would be different, so if the engineer is familiar with one product and not the other, it doesn't really matter, although it would take a little while to get familiarized with a different brand of product.

I believe in recruiting IT engineers, the approach to problem solving and task assignment, the attitude, and the ability to acquire new technologies and handle new situations should be considered first before the certification, experience with certain products.