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I have many objections to certification, and doubly so when the motive
driving it is "to get some respect". Unfortunately, respect has to be earned
on the job, with your colleagues, not by obtaining a few more letters after
one's name. If we can't demonstrate our value and that of our profession to
our employer, a certification process won't do that for us.
Editors and translators have been certified for years, and I've yet to see
any major payoff from the certification process: employers generally aren't
aware of the certificates and don't use them for screening purposes, and
people who have earned the certificates don't enjoy better job security or
higher earnings. Moreover, I've personally known a distressing number of
certified incompetents--not to mention highly competent professionals with
great credentials who have the ethics of vampires. ("Enron" anyone?) A
certification is no guarantee of competence, nor is the lack of
certification any indication of incompetence.
While I certainly agree with the value of screening out the incompetents,
that's only going to work if employers are aware of the certification
process, respect it, and use it to help them find qualified workers. If most
employers only care about the bottom line and don't understand how we
contribute to it (cf the "outsourcing to India" furor), and there's no
statutory requirement to hire certified writers (as there is for engineers
and doctors), certification becomes an academic exercise in
self-congratulation that accomplishes nothing.
Let's spend our efforts where they have a chance for some payback:
demonstrating that we have a profession, that our efforts add value, and
that it pays to hire a professional. Once we've accomplished that, _then_ it
makes sense to develop a certification program.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h@ mtl.feric.ca
(try ghart@ videotron.ca if you get no response)
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"Wisdom is one of the few things that look bigger the further away it
is."--Terry Pratchett
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