Top Benefits of Certification - Elevate Your Career with Us

Given the oversupply of eligible but unemployable manpower the importance skill based IT certification has grown phenomenally in last decade. The average salary of the IT professionals       with IT certification is 50% or more than the Non-certified workforce. IT Certification has become  biggest entry level differentiator for job seekers.

12  IT Certifications That Aid Career Advancement

In today's competitive IT job market having the right certification can help push your resume to the top of the stack or push you ahead of your colleagues when the opportunity for a promotion arises. Once you have decided on your career goals and objectives you can identify the IT Certification which is right for you.

Certifications are a great way to break into a new technology, cover gaps in your resume or advance your current position.

Certifications play an important part of any IT professional's career, although there will always be some debate on how important. Certifications are, like most things in life: The more you put into them, the more you will get out. While the actual knowledge you gain on the journey is the true reward, certifications also indicate to employers that you take your job seriously and that you are knowledgeable on the respective technology.

With more than 1,700 professional IT certifications running the gamut of IT technologies, knowing which certifications are the most important for your specialty can seem an insurmountable task. To help you meet the challenge, we've sifted through data from to narrow your search and bring you a manageable list of the most relevant IT certifications for near future.

Dice.com, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, reports that Q2 2012 jobless rate for IT techs is at 3.6 percent, much lower than our national average. In a competitive market, you've got to do everything you can to distinguish yourself from your peers. Certification is an important part of that process. A recent poll asked users why they chose certification. The number one answer--at 51 percent--was that certification was a way to position themselves for a promotion or potential job.

Knowing Which IT Certification Is Right

Before you jump into a specific certification, there are some important questions that you need to ask yourself about your career goals and objectives:
- What demographic of IT do you fall into? (Security, Web Development, Programmer and so on)
- What are your career objectives?
- What IT career are you most interested in?
- What type of resources are needed (i.e. money and time)?
- Will this certification have a significant impact on my career?

Certifications indicate to employers that you take your job seriously and that you are knowledgeable on the respective technology.

Taking the time to think about and document your response to these questions can help solidify your future goals and narrow your list of potential certifications further. Tip: Once you've identified a role you'd like to advance to, look through naukri, Monster, Dice, CareerBuilder and other sites for those positions and see what IT certifications employers are looking for. You may find that on-the-job experience is what employers are searching for in one area of your expertise, so it would be logical to invest your time and money into certification in a different area to further your career goals.

Bonus Tip: You'll find a must-have utility for your IT certification toolbox at Go Certify. The Certification Advisor allows you to plug in your area of expertise, skill level, career goals and more to generate a list of recommended certifications.