Another Reason Why a Technical Certification Will Get You The Interview

My exciting, not-quite Pulitzer Prize winning post about why getting a technical certification will get you interviews was just the first part. 

The second part is simple. When Becki the Employer is looking to fill a spot, maybe she doesn't post an opening. Maybe she has a recruiter or headhunter go head hunting. Maybe she doesn't want to be inundated with an excess of resumes, like she was in the first post. 

So Becki is going to spend a lot of money (and I do mean a lot... how's something in the mid four-figures sound to you?) to find a few qualified candidates to interview and choose from. Why would Becki do this? Because most hiring managers know that time is always more valuable than money and look to spend money to save time where ever they can.

So the recruiter isn't going to place an want ad. The recruiter is going to go shopping on job boards. Again, there are a million people with their resume on the Monster/CareerBuilder/Dice job boards, so what does the recruiter do? How can a recruiter find the right match as fast as possible?

You got it: search for a technical certification. Here's an example.  How many resumes will you find if you search LinkedIn with the word "project?" In this instance, searching only in the greater Chicagoland area, you'll find 130,000 people. 

If you search "project manager" using the same criteria, you'll get 87,000 people, so that cuts the list down by about a third.

If you search "project manager" as a phrase, you'll boil the list down to 47,600 people. That cuts the list down by another third, which is nice.

If you search "professional project manager," you'll knock that list down to 27,000 people, which is almost half.

And what about "PMP?" What's your guess? Maybe the search cut the list by another third? Or maybe half?

Nope. That list is only 5,600 people long. That's 4.3% of the original list pf people who said they worked on projects.

If you're a recruiter, that's the first search you do.

Starting to see how a certification gets you an interview? Do you see how a certification puts you on an elite list of candidates? See how a certification cuts a pool of hundreds of applicants down to a dozen?

That's what I thought.

Ask me questions in the comments!!

-James