MCP exam voucher contest

Final MCP Exam Voucher winner: Flavio B from Brazil

Flavio B (who lays claim to an impressive number of middle names as well) does very well with his English, despite being a non-native speaker. I did a little bit of editing on his responses, most to clarify, correct minor spelling and grammatical errors, and to clarify a few points somewhat. I hope he’ll post corrections to this information if I inadvertently introduced any errors or misrepresentations. FYI, my additions to his submission are enclosed in square brackets [ ... ].

Flavio B, Brazil

Flavio B Brazil
1. What do you currently do for a living?
   I work for a Oil & gas company administering infrastructure system (full-time job) and teaching MOC classes (part-time job in MS Official Curriculum courses).

2. Please describe your educational background.
   I have an incomplete [Bachelor's] degree in statistics.

3. What kinds of certifications do you currently hold, if any?
   I have MCSE for NT 4, Windows 2000, 2003 and [MCITP] Server/Enterprise Admin 2008.

4. How has earning a certification helped advance your career?
   Besides the fact that my salary had a big raise since the beginning, now I’m more prepared, have more knowledge, and I have more skills than ever.

5. What exam do you plan to use the MCP voucher for?
   I achieved all certifications I had planned for 2009 and have no immediate plans, but probably will use the voucher for some exam on Windows 7 technologies so I can keep updated on the newer technologies.

6. What kind of advice do you have for your peers and colleagues about earning a certification?
   Certification is good, but it’s not all you have to do. A good college is VERY important. Good relationships with other people are important, too. Among other things I recommend studying ITIL/Cobit and other tecnologies like Linux.
    a) How about finding a job?
    Even with good skills, finding a job in my country is very difficult. As systems became more stable, less Admins are needed to maintain those that companies are running. So, layoffs sometimes occur and the remaining admins have to deal with the same systems with less resources.
    b) What about improving your career prospects or outlook?
    Improving my career now depends on various internal projects at my company. One of the projects is a Novell Netware migration in which directory [services] and files must be migrated to a new Windows 2008 environment. After that, new projects will arise.

This concludes my coverage of our recent free MCP voucher contest. I hope you have learned as much from your peers and colleagues as I have, and gotten an extra erg of inspiration to help you pursue your own career development goals!

MS Exam Voucher Winners for “Cert Success” Contest

Here is a list of winners by first name and last initial, plus city and state (US) or country (outside US). All the winners should have received an e-mail from SearchNetworking.com by now, asking for their mailing addresses so that the physical paper vouchers may be mailed to them (if you haven’t gotten such a message yet, please post a comment here to the blog and I’ll work with you to get this taken care of). For the benefit of all and sundry, here are the names, in order of ranking (highest ranked response comes first):

• Melissa S Spring, TX
• Thomas L Germany
• John C Virginia Beach, VA
• Renne B Philippines
• Flavio B Brazil
• Steven M SE Ontario, CA

Now that they’ve all won, I need each of the winners to fill out the following questionnaire, so that I can write up interviews with each of them, mostly for this blog. As the “big winner” Melissa S. of Spring, TX, will be profiled in a SearchNetworking.com article as soon as I can get her on the phone for an interview, and write up the results. Stay tuned for lots more information about all of these folks right here!

Winner Questionnaire:
1. What do you currently do for a living?
2. Please describe your educational background.
3. What kinds of certifications do you currently hold, if any?
4. How has earning a certification helped to advance your career?
5. What exam do you plan to use the MCP voucher to take?
6. What kind of advice do you have for your peers and colleagues about earning a certification?
    about finding a job?
    about improving your career prospects or outlook?

Please cut and paste the questionnaire into an e-mail message and send it to me ASAP at ed at edtittel dot com. Your speedy replies will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks to one and all who participated. It was an interesting batch of entries to consider, and lots of fun to choose and rank the contestants.

–Ed–