You Told Us: OpenJS Node Certification helps you stand out

The Node.js industry is mature and there is more demand for Node skills than there are qualified developers. OpenJS Node certifications create new opportunities for developers, and are an excellent way to improve your resume, and more quickly move to projects and jobs that are higher-paying and more fulfilling.

We asked a group of developers who took at least one of the certifications in the past three months about their experiences. Two major themes stand out.

1. Yes, money is important, but effectively testing your own skills is important, too
2. A vendor-neutral certification is better and the OpenJS format really challenges you

Nikita Galkin, Independent Contractor, JSFest Program Committee Member, Software Engineer, System Architect, Node.js Tech Speaker, GraphQL Advocate, talked about standing out:

Remote work in the global world has high competition between developers. With a certificate, you are more likely to receive an invitation to the job interview.

I received an offer for an interesting remote project with a good salary at the start of this year. At the tech-interview end I was asked “what this certification is?” and “how was it complicated?”.

I do not think the certification was critical in deciding in my favour, but that was one of the things that made me different from other applicants.

Patrick Heneise, Software Consultant & CEO, Zentered.co, explained it was about testing his own skills:

I wanted to know, after almost 9 years of Node.js where I stand. Having a Certified Node.js badge on my social profile. It’s an easy sign for potential customers and clients that my knowledge has been tested. 

I wasn’t looking for a new job or more money, so I can’t tell if it helped. But definitely helped me to know my strengths and weaknesses, and I found out where I need to improve my own skills.

João Moura, Lead Technical Architect at Isobar Switzerland, likes how OpenJS certification tests differ from vendor-specific tests:

I think it’s a major benefit to have a certification on NodeJS. In the current days, NodeJS is becoming one of the major development infrastructures and I want to be part of that. The certification is one more step in that direction.

From the experience I have, the vendor-specific exams tend to have questions that are there just to show you how great their product is, for example:

“what can this product do?

A: something

B: another thing

C: awesome things

D: all of the above”

The answer is obviously D, and now you have a certificate on that product, congratulations :).

Since this is vendor-neutral, the exam is a lot more directed to see what the user does to solve a specific problem, there is no selling material, the person taking the exam needs to really understand the problem and solve it in a good and quick way. and that for me is a lot more entertaining :).

Justin Dennison, Edutainer at ITProTV, says that completing tasks, instead of answering questions, was closer to a real development environment:

I enjoyed the test-taking experience as it was the first exam that I had taken that was simulated and practical in nature. Instead of answering multiple-choice questions (or any of the other types), I thought that completing the tasks was more akin to my experience in a development environment. The testing was thorough for Node.js as a whole. I feel that vendor-neutral testing allows for an alternative perspective to testing as well as a means to gather community driven requirements.

I took the certification to validate my own understanding and learning. I had been developing using Node.js and teaching Node.js for several years. However, as always, there are times that you will question yourself, “Do I really know or understand what is going on?” Knowing that I was given tasks to complete and was able to complete those task using Node.js was a nice confirmation of my knowledge. 

Amir Elemam, Independent Contractor, liked the format of the test excellent, it resulted in more interesting relationships and projects at work:

The coding labs exam format was totally new for me. On the one hand it was harder because if I wasn’t pretty sure about something, to a point where I would know what to search for, there was no way to even try the question, but on the other hand, I was able to test the code I was writing, so in the end I had a very good sense about my performance, that’s good because the results don’t come out by end of the exam, as it happens with other certification exams I’ve taken.

The first thing was boosted my self- confidence, I no longer have any shred of doubt about my Node.js capabilities. Also, it improved how confident others were about my Node.js skills, which improved relationships and more challenges were given.

Find out more about the OpenJS certification programs, and sign up now!