Scott Hanselman at Ignite (session 9/23/2020) said: if you are at the beginning of your career, certification is important, but if you have experience – experience matters, not certs. In other words – certification shows what you learned, experience shows what you know.

Does certification prove what you know?
It does in some ways, but I would not rely heavily on it. The reason is below…

To get certification in IT you’d need to pass one or more exams. To pass exam you need to prepare for the exam. Just knowing the subject – even with experience – is not enough to pass exam. You need to prepare specifically for this exam (there are specific courses, materials, tools etc.). Why? It’s not a subject experts who prepare exams.

People who prepare exams – are specialists in building tests and exams. What they do to create test questions – in simplified way – they read documentation trying to find key points and convert affirmative sentence from manual to a question. Let say the documentation says “The most important aspect of securing data is encryption.” So they put it like

What is the most important aspect of securing data? Options:
– Backup
– Encryption
– Authentication and authorization
– Access Control

or like this:

What is encryption? Options:
– The process of converting information or data into a code
– A way to conceal information by altering it
– A form of data security in which information is converted to ciphertext
– The most important aspect of securing data
– One of the aspects of securing data

So, having 10 years experience in cyber security – do you think you’ll pass such exam?

So to pass exam you need to memorize the right answers. If you know the subject – it helps. Less to memorize. But if you do not – you can just memorize answers and pass exam.

I know, vendors work hard on exams, they do not want to loose reputation. Exams contain not only such questions but some really good questions, and even complex scenarios where you spend first 10 minutes just trying to wrap your head around all the details… but still…

Does certification help if you already know the subject?

Definitely yes. Knowing the subject from practice – allows you to do the job – in most cases in some specific ways. But preparing for the exam – allows you to understand the whole big picture. Combination of your experience “how it works in fact” with the theory knowledge “how it should be done” is what you need to be an expert in your area.

So, the bottom line

Id’ say just certification does prove your competency.
But it definitely adds value to experience.