AWS/cloud certifications — genuinely worth it for a junior, or just resume filler?
Thinking about spending a couple months and some money on a cloud cert to stand out. But I keep hearing mixed things — some say it got their resume past the first filter, others say hiring managers don't care and would rather see projects.
For juniors specifically (not people with five years of experience adding a cert), did it actually move the needle for you? Or would that time be better spent deploying a couple of real projects to the cloud instead of studying for the exam? Trying not to waste the effort.
2 comments
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AnonymousAnon I'd do the middle path: build and deploy a real project ON the cloud, and if studying for the cert happens to reinforce that, great. The project is what you'll actually talk about in interviews. The cert is a nice line, not the main event.
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AnonymousAnon The cert got me a couple of first-round callbacks I probably wouldn't have gotten as a self-taught junior, so as a filter-passer it wasn't useless. But in the actual interviews nobody asked about it. They asked about what I'd built.