222: Why Getting Data Certifications Is An AWFUL Idea

All right, let's start with number one reason why certificates aren't really worth it, and that is they do not matter in industry.

And now that they're too common, it really doesn't matter in industry.

And let me prove the first part.

So I've actually looked at, like, 11,000 of the most recent data analyst job descriptions on my job board website, and I searched every single one of them for any sort of certificate.

The Google search, the PL-300 from Power BI, the IBM one, the Meta one, the data camp, any of them, and you know how many of them actually mentioned a requirement of a data analyst certificate? Zero.

Not even one.

And it's not just my research.

DataQuest interviewed real hiring managers and decision-makers and published 200 pages of transcripts of how data hiring actually works.

The number of times that the word certificate comes up in those 200 pages, absolutely zero.

So let's just go ahead and s- kill this myth.

Let's bust it right now.

Hiring managers are not sitting there, like, looking at your resume, and they're like, "Is this person certified or not? Oh, they are? Hired.

Oh, they're not? Toss it into the black hole of oblivion." If certificates actually mattered, it would be inside of the job description, and it's clearly not.

But here's the part that actually gets worse recently.

Even if a cert did give you a tiny edge in the past, it doesn't anymore because literally everyone and their dog has them.

Like, literally two and a half million people have started the Google Data Analytics certificate alone.

Two and a half million.

So when you're putting it on the resume, you're not really separating yourself from the pile.

You're becoming part of the pile.

A certificate basically says, "Hey, I watched some videos, and I clicked some multiple-choice answers, and I'm ready to be a data analyst," and no one's really buying that.

That's not really standing out, and you're actually really standing in.