Professionalism? - Certificate or Skill?

The word ‘professional’ refers to anybody who has skill or some specific knowledge with the help of what he or she can perform an activity and make a living out of that. I strongly believe, that to be a truly professional in any aspects of IT does not require you to have diploma or any other certificate that proves your knowledge. I live in Estonia more than 9 years already and to be honest I know more about Estonia than my country of birth, so my examples in the following parts of this article will be related to Estonia.

Certificate or Skill?

This question has been crucial for centuries and everybody still has their own point of view when it comes to this exact question. Some companies require to have a set of certificates before they even take you to consideration. So which is more important, certificate of knowledge and diploma or set of skills. I have a good friend, his name is Martin and he is from Estonia. He finished high school and did not continue his studies. He was very passionate about bulbs and everything that was related to electricity. He started learning more about electric works and systems from internet and he was experimenting all these learned methods at home. After some time Martin got job in a company as an electrician, because he had skills that was more than enough for that specific job offer. On the other hand I know a lot of people that have finished their master's degree and could not get job at any cost. So every company is different and their requirements may differ from each other. To me having a set of skills is more valuable and important than a certificate of knowledge or diploma. The following example works well in IT field and maybe some other as well. Let's see an example of a possible job interview:

Interview number 1:

You applied for a job and you got an interview.

The HR asks for certificates.

The HR is looking for a specific or a set of skills that was on your certificate.

The HR gives you some task to test your skills.

You struggle and do half of them.

You may get or not get a job.

Interview number 2:

You applied for a job and got an interview.

The HR asks you for a set of skills.

You say you have them

The HR gives you some task to test your skills.

You finish all of them.

You most probably going to get a job.

As we have seen in the previous examples. It all depends on your skills when you dive in to professional career and your certificate makes it a bit easier to get a job. It is important to keep in mind that having certificate is crucial it some fields such as: Medical, security, aviation and etc. Especially last decade the certificate requirements have significantly decreased and employers value skills more. Of course having both of them is a huge advantage and is always recommended, because education gives us knowledge, gives us brand-new perspective of looking at life, it develops our critical thinking abilities which are really important in our professional career