Professional Exams & Certificates: Should You?

This post is more to convince myself that it is worth it doing professional exams.

I am currently now pursuing IRSE examination for module B and also thinking of taking INCOSE examination. As you can imagine, this requires a lot (or at least quite a significant) effort in preparing for the exams. And this still doesn’t mean that I will pass the exams, it only means that I am making a decent effort before taking the exams.

All these efforts required sometimes wear me down. I wonder then, why do I even bother to take these exam(s). There are people who have been, and will most probably will continue to do so, working without even needing to take any of these exams. And they might be arguably working at better capacity, due to their intelligence, natural aptitude and/exposure. Regardless, I believe taking these exams, or any form of qualifications bring multitude of benefits. Among them:

1. A short cut in evaluating a person – Although to judge a person from appearance or simply for their title is generally frowned upon, I believe we still do it. It is a convenient way to create a mental image and our mind simply loves short cut. So when you have a qualification or certificates and uses it as part of addressing your name, it creates an impression to others; whether it is a good one or not depends on the individual.
   One would sometime argues that good work speaks for itself, but it needs time for others to recognize that you are doing a great job. A certification is simply having a certified body putting the good word that you are capable of doing a good work.
   
2. It solidifies and rearranges your understanding – if you’ve worked for a while, you would realize that not all that you learned (if any) from university is applicable and not all that you learned at work, can be taught in formal study. However, most of the technical knowledge is learned through both formal and informal (on-the-job) education. The manner or the sequence are difference where in university, the knowledge is approached in a structured manner, while at work, you adsorb whatever input you can. This is where professional exams come in, where it tries to marshal all the haphazard understandings and test it in a structured manner. Some people who have been working for years might say they do not need this, but sometimes it is in fact most beneficial for them because they can have a more top-down understanding of their fields.
   
3. Life is a continuous learning journey – and what exciting way there is to learn things, than to bash your heads against exams?

I guess the best way is to approach it in a positive view, taking the process as a learning process and not a compulsory or even disciplinary act that you have to do to progress your career, because it is not promised that any of this certification will bring financial gains, at least in the short term. It is more in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. May we all strive towards that, insyaAllah.

Thank you for reading.