Interesting post from James Shore on hiring and certifications

I've long had reservations about certifications in the tech industry.

As far as I'm concerned the only thing a certification really tells me about someone is that they are trying to make their resume stand out.

James Shore has a post in which he discusses the reasons he hears from other people for using certification in the hiring process: it provides a mechanism for filtering candidates.

Which is true. But do I really want to filter on this, which I view primarily as self-promotion? Probably not.

James describes the process he has used in the past for filtering candidates, the first part of which is a screening questionaire with a bunch of open-ended questions. At F5, we recently interviewed a bunch of college students for this summer's intern slots. The initial screening included an on-line questionaire. Most of the questions were multiple-choice, but there was one open-ended question that we put in front of every single technical intern candidate. It was very telling as to who was knowledgeable and who wasn't.

Which leaves me wondering what would happen if Itried the rest of James' hiring process. I should give it a try the next time I have an opening to fill.