How I Saved 1000’s on IT Certifications and Launched My Career
IT Certifications are Expensive But They Don’t Have to Be
Starting a career in IT can be a challenging prospect. It is common to graduate with a technology-related degree and still not have the qualifications necessary to get the job you want. In these situations, you are often not only required to have years of experience but also one or more certifications. The problem is that earning certifications in itself typically requires some amount of experience, in addition to training resources and money that you may not have if you don’t already have a lucrative position.
It is all a bit of a catch 22. You are trying to land a good job so you can make a good living; but, it is difficult to accumulate the experience and training necessary if you aren’t already making a good living. So, what is an enterprising technologist to do?
As it turns out, there are several ways for you to get training and certifications for free, at a low cost, or bundled into other services. If you can find a way to save money on each training or certification, you can potentially save thousands of dollars in just a few years and become a widely sought after IT professional. See how I have accomplished this below.
Getting Certified Through a Two-Year Program at a Community College
Many colleges these days are facing a great deal of backlash about the costs of their programs as students graduate with increasingly high debt and, sometimes, decreasingly positive job prospects. In light of these issues and to combat competition from other colleges, many colleges have sought to add value to their programs by allowing students to earn technical certificates and certifications through the course of their programs. Getting certifications in this way has these advantages for those trying to launch a career in IT:
1. Certification training and test are often free or discounted as part of a program like this.
2. If you can find a program like this at a community college, your college education will typically be thousands of dollars less as well.
3. A two-year degree can provide you the foundational knowledge you need to get other certifications.
4. The credits you earn from most two-year degrees can be used to fast-track you for getting a four-year degree.
In my case, I went to a community college that split from the University I eventually went to. This meant I was easily able to translate my two-year degree into a four-year degree. Just as crucially, when it comes to my career, I earned training toward my CompTIA A+ certification, got a free test voucher (currently $226), and completed the certification before graduating. I also got Technical and Advanced Technical certificates that helped me demonstrate to potential employers that I had the technical acumen to be an asset to their organizations.
As we will see, CompTIA certifications have a few advantages that can benefit budding IT professionals in a plethora of ways.
Earning/Renewing Certifications Through Beta Exams
After I earned my CompTIA A+ certification, I decided that I wanted to earn another certification as quickly as I could to launch quickly in my career. Luckily, my college program provided me most of the network training that I needed to get the CompTIA Network+ certification, even if it didn’t cover the cost of it.
In the case of the Network+ exam, I brushed up on my skills in the library but I did end up paying full price for the exam. When I passed the exam, though, I was ecstatic because I felt that I took the crucial next step in my career. Also, by earning my Network+ certification, I was able to demonstrate my platform-agnostic computer networking skills and renew my A+ certification for 3 more years!
The fact that CompTIA certifications are platform-agnostic and higher-level certifications often renew lower-level ones is one of my favorite things about them. The best was yet to come as far as my experience receiving CompTIA certifications, though, because it turns out that CompTIA has an excellent beta testing program you can also use to your advantage.
After earning my Network+ program, CompTIA was in the process of validating the new version of their Security+ test and offered me an opportunity to take a beta test of that exam. At the time, it was completely free to take these beta tests but, if you got a passing score after CompTIA did a statistical analysis on the test results, you earned the certification.
In the case of the Security+ exam, I purchased a digital copy of a CompTIA-authorized Security+ book and study guide on the iPad to study. By purchasing the digital copy, I ended up paying around $150 and saving a substantial amount of money. In the end, between what I saved on the study materials and the exam, I saved hundreds off of what currently costs $499 through CompTIA’s site.
To recap, at this point in my journey I had earned my two technical certificates, the CompTIA A+, the CompTIA Network+, and the CompTIA Security+. About this time, I was starting my first professional job and due to being time constrained I did slow down on getting more certifications.
However, by the time my Security+ certification was about to expire, I was invited to take the CompTIA CySA+ (Cyber Security Analyst +) exam. By applying my work experience and studying cybersecurity courses on cybrary.it, I was able to earn the CySA+ and renew all of my previous certifications to that point.
I can’t stress enough what a great resource cybrary.it and other learning sites are and this brings me to my next money-saving method for earning certifications.
Training through Free-for-a-Limited-Time or Inexpensive Training Subscriptions
As mentioned, I trained for my CompTIA CySA+ certification by signing up for a trial at cybrary.it. Initially, I got a 30-day trial and I took that time to watch as many training videos in cybersecurity as possible. When my trial ran out, though, I found out my employer offered discounts to a similar training site through their employee benefits site and signed up for that briefly before my testing deadline.
To supplement my learning in the training videos, I purchased a Raspberry Pi computer for about $35 and began doing security-related labs I found on Google. I was learning quickly and soon passed the CySA+ beta exam to earn my CompTIA CySA+ certification.
Training sites, such as Cybrary, Skillwise, and Linkedin Learning have always been an important part of my continuing education in IT but these days offer even more advantages than when I began using them:
1. Subscriptions: Many training sites offer unlimited access to a plethora of training programs that used to cost thousands of dollars for a low monthly price.
2. Exam Discounts: Along with inexpensive training, many training sites offer discounts on training-related exams. One example is how Linkedin offered me a 10% discount on the Certified Advanced Security Practioner exam on completion of the related training.
3. Supplemental Training: With an unlimited training subscription, you can brush up on concepts you may not have fully comprehended in your initial training — sometimes certification training covers a wide variety of disciplines in IT and it helps to hear from additional trainers with different experiences.
As we will see, there are many additional ways you can get free training.
Selling Your Employer on the Value of Additional IT Training
It may seem obvious that getting your employer to pay for IT certifications is a good way to get “free” certifications but, in practice, it is easier said than done. Most employers want to understand how educating you will align with business goals. Furthermore, they typically want to be able to quantify how they will be able to get a return on their investment, paying $3,000 for you to get a certification.
I would never try to tell you this is easy but, in my experience, it is achievable by being very clear about the specific business-related goals the investment will help you achieve. Furthermore, by being specific about how achieving those goals will contribute to the overall strategy of the business, as well as to the bottom line or just saving money, it becomes a little easier as well.
A specific example of this is when I worked for a company that had a strategy which called for scaling for growth. Understanding that information technology is often a choke-point when it comes to scaling a company up and that many companies today view information technology as a cost center (vs a profit center), I sold my manager on the benefits of getting the ITIL Foundation certification.
Using the ITIL framework, I planned to help the company become more systematic in their approach to IT incidents and problems. In turn, the company would provide a higher quality of service, while reducing the number of incidents and problems. Ultimately, the company would provide higher satisfaction to employees while reducing the need for additional IT staffing in the future. This means the company would potentially retain more employees while saving money , directly contributing to our scalability and profitability.
I did end up successfully convincing the company to pay for the certification training and testing. When I earned my certification, I strove to deliver on my promises and eventually got the company to help me get even more training. This can become a virtuous cycle as you are rewarded with more training opportunities and you follow up with direct contributions to the companies strategy or profitability.
Sometimes the only investment you need your employer to make is time and, for those who struggle to get their employer to invest in their training, asking for more time to train might be a good place to start.
Training for Free on the Sites of Major IT or Cloud Vendors
If I was starting over again today, one of the first places I would go for IT training is the websites of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Each of these massive cloud providers not only offers free training but hands-on labs that provide valuable experience towards a rewarding career.
Because each of these cloud services is growing rapidly and require more skilled workers than are currently available in the market today, becoming certified with these companies does offer a very promising opportunity to launch a career in IT.
Getting certified with Amazon, Google and Microsoft doesn’t limit you to working with these companies either, as each one has a multitude of associated partners, consulting companies, and customers in need of talent.
In my case, I have not yet become certified with any of these leading cloud providers. However, yet again, I was offered the opportunity to take a beta test with CompTIA — the Cloud+ test. And, by completing dozens of hours of training on Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, I was able to level my experience and education up enough to pass that exam as well.
My certification journey has mostly culminated at this point but, after earning all these certifications, something interesting happened…
Earning “Stackable” Certifications Based on Your Existing Certifications
It turns out that CompTIA offers “stackable” certifications now. So far, they are the only organization that I am aware of that offer these but it is an interesting proposition.
According to CompTIA’s site, “Stackable certifications demonstrate that you’ve earned multiple CompTIA certifications and have the knowledge and experience needed to grow your IT career.” In my opinion, they also demonstrate a prospective employee is dedicated, persistent, and has a growth mindset.
In my case, I have several stackable certifications but I will mention the CompTIA Security Analytics Expert certification to demonstrate how they work, as well as their value.
The CompTIA Security Analytics Expert certification is a stackable certification that is automatically issued once you have earned all of the applicable CompTIA certifications. Once I earned (and kept renewed) the CompTIA Security+, CySA+, and CASP+ certifications, CompTIA sent me a digital certificate for the Security Analytics Expert certification.
While this certification isn’t something that I had to take a test for, I think it is a great demonstration of the years of study and testing I put in to learn and demonstrate my knowledge. Furthermore, according to Your Acclaim (a third-party certification verifier), “Earners of the CompTIA Security Analytics Expert (CSAE) certification are security analytics experts that have demonstrated the skills and knowledge required to engineer security solutions and generate research results for security based on data analytics.” If that isn’t an endorsement of my efforts, I don’t know what is.
What is the Bottom Line on Earning Cheap and Free IT Certifications?
Getting IT certifications and the requisite training/experience is expensive and time-consuming. Earning certifications to launch and grow your career will never be easy — that is the point. It does not have to be expensive, however.
With a great deal of hard work and patience, I have earned thousands of dollars in training and certifications, investing only an estimated $1,000 throughout my career. You can likely achieve that as well using the steps I have outlined here:
1. Get certified through a two-year program at a community college
2. Earn/renew certifications through beta exams
3. Train through free-for-a-limited-time or inexpensive training subscriptions
4. Sell your employer on the value of additional IT training
5. Train for free on the sites of major IT or cloud vendors
6. Earn “stackable” certifications based on your existing certifications
Should you choose to embark on the journey to a successful IT career using what I have shared here, it won’t be easy but you will have a tangible way of demonstrating your dedication, persistence, and knowledge… You will thank yourself later!
Getting into IT is challenging and the daily job isn’t always easy either. Read What I Wish I Knew About Troubleshooting When I Started My Career to learn a valuable troubleshooting technique that will save you time daily.