Last month I wrote about System i pros and certifications. Today I want to share another perspective on certifications, this one coming out of the broader IT landscape. IT workforce benchmarking firm Foote Partners LLC tracks technical skills and certifications and the resulting compensation they bring to employees. Foote Partners is reporting the largest quarterly decline in certification pay since 2004 — an average 2-percent loss in pay related to certifications. At the same time, non-certified skills in enterprise business applications rose 13.1 percent. During the last two years, the average pay for those skills has risen 24.8 percent.

"Certifications are becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of the IT world," says David Foote, CEO and chief research officer for Foote Partners. "It's not that employers aren’t willing to pay a premium for them, but it's nowhere near the amount they were worth just a year or two ago. That kind of respect is now reserved for noncertified skills in enterprise business software, applications development, Web/e-commerce development, among others, which have grown an average 9 percent to 13 percent in value in the past year. That's more than five times the growth rate of certification pay right now, and there’s no sign that this will change any time soon."

This is actually good news for System i pros, many of whom work with enterprise business applications that come with no corresponding certifications in the first place. Non-certified skills in Web/e-Commerce Development posted the next largest gain at an 11 percent increase over the last year.

Are you seeing any intersections with your own skills?

It's something to keep in mind, certainly, and while I don't recommend ditching your System i-related certs, Foote Partners's findings and perspective underscore my recommendations from last month's article.

"Employers are desperate for IT professionals who can get things done, who can deliver results again and again," says Foote, whose firm regularly monitors IT workforce-management trends in the offices of more than 1,800 North American employers. "Technical skills are without a doubt critical for many IT jobs, but there’s much more. Being a desirable 'impact' worker means getting along with people, keeping an eye on IT’s role in business execution, and quickly delivering what customers want, which is a moving target. It is about understanding the industry you're working in and focusing on solutions. You’ve got to be able to operate under deadlines and pressure and withstand a certain amount of organizational discomfort because, fair or unfair, IT/business disconnects are part of the profession. If you're that kind of person, not being certified in your technical skills is not going to matter in many cases as long as you demonstrate that you present a full complement of business, interpersonal, and technical skills in the right proportions for the job."

Foote is also seeing a shift in compensation. Rather than paying by titles, which often don't reflect the actual work an employee accomplishes, more employers are identifying and paying for skills and on-the-job responsibilities. Of course, this practice makes your standard web-based annual salary surveys increasingly inaccurate, but it's more likely to compensate employees for business-needed skills.

"The beauty of this approach [pay for skills rather than titles] is its flexibility," Foote says. "Each time you make a new hire or promote someone, it's a lot easier to use this method to recognize the unique combination of skills, aptitudes, and experience employees bring to their job and match their pay to their true market value. That's a huge advantage to employers who need to get the right people in place for critical projects and keep them there."