One Good Certification Deserves Another

Every IT certification has value. The learning process alone typically adds a whole new skill set while helping a student or working professional stay mentally sharp and gain increased ability to process new information. Certification often helps exam candidates form new personal and professional connections. Hiring and job promotion decisions are often swayed by the presence (or absence) of a given certification in your curriculum vitae. And, of course, salary and bonuses can be positively impacted by the enhanced job skills and knowledge acquired through certification.

A sometimes unheralded benefit of certification, is how one certification often leads to another. The value of many established and respected certs is in their ability to provide a boost on the way to other, more significant or impactful credentials. Cisco’s CCNA Routing and Switching credential is a common “gateway” cert that helps people enter the world of IT networking. Another “stepping stone” credential is CompTIA’s A+. With an A+ extending your reach, you can often take a significant step up the IT career ladder, whether in terms of salary or responsibility, by moving on to more advanced credentials.

We recently got a sneak peek at some data from the Certification Magazine Salary Survey for 2015 that provides an interesting illustration of this point. If you look at U.S. IT professionals who are A+ certified and group them by the total number of active IT certifications that they hold, then an interesting salary trend emerges:

• A+ certified with no other active IT credentials = $47,500 average annual salary
• A+ certified with 1 or 2 other active IT credentials = $84,250 average annual salary
• A+ certified with 3 or 4 other active IT credentials = $92,080 average annual salary
• A+ certified with 5 or 6 other active IT credentials = $97,310 average annual salary
• A+ certified with 7 or 8 other active IT credentials = $105,150 average annual salary
• A+ certified with 9 or 10 other active IT credentials = $106,310 average annual salary
• A+ certified with 11 or more other active IT credentials = $108,280 average annual salary

If you stop at A+, then your earning potential is likely to be at least somewhat limited. Grabbing even just 1 or 2 additional certifications on the other hand, opens up a whole new world of salary potential. And it goes up from there. Intrigued? TestOut Continuing Education’s PC Pro courseware provides the best A+ training on the market. Start your certification journey today, and watch your career earning potential take off!