The Online Certification That Will Get You a Job in Data Engineering
By: Jonathan Moszuti
Tags: Cloud Computing, Online Courses, Data Science, Certification, Data Engineering

The Online Certification That Will Get You a Job in Data Engineering

Photo by Lewis Keegan on Unsplash

To get a job you need experience. To get experience you need a job.

Whether you’re a recent graduate looking to enter the job market or a working professional looking to switch careers, you may have heard the statement above or seen the memes. It’s a chicken and egg problem many of us have experienced at one stage in our lives.

Source: Reddit

For new graduates, getting the first job is one of the biggest challenges they face during their career. They are eager, energetic and curious but they lack industry experience making them riskier hires to recruiters who are searching for more experienced candidates that can get the job done.

Some students look towards unpaid internships to gain experience in their area of interest, others may take a detour and look for jobs that aren’t related to their dream role just to get their foot in the market (e.g., tutoring the subject you majored in).

Whatever position you’re in, you’ve probably thought about taking online courses and certifications in your free time to study more about the field you’re interested in whether that be a course in digital marketing, learning the basics of python or an intro to machine learning.

You watch all the videos, finish the homework, pass the test, earn the certificate and add it to your LinkedIn profile. Sound familiar? If it only it was that easy to stand out from the rest.

Don’t get me wrong these are excellent starters for gaining the basic knowledge in the area, but they are not enough to land yourself a job in that field. The reason being is that these online courses aren’t difficult to complete and most of the challenges and tasks are guided.

No one is going to hire you for a Data Science role because you completed Andrew Ng’s Machine Learning course on Coursera. Almost 4 million other people have enrolled in this course! (That aside, I do recommend this course for anyone that‘s interested in getting into ML).

To bring this up to the next level, you need to apply the skills from these online courses and start a side project to practise and demonstrate what you have learnt.

However, what if I told you there are certifications that recruiters are actively on the lookout for. Qualifications that will help you gain industry knowledge before you start your job and will make you CV ten times more appealing to the hiring company.

Let’s take a look.

Google Cloud Professional Certificates

The Google Cloud Certifications are a selection of professional certifications that span key technical job functions and asses advanced skills in design, implementation, and management. They are aimed towards individuals that have an interest in acquiring technical skills and expertise on the Google Cloud Platform.

As of writing, Google offers 8 professional certificates: Cloud Architect, Cloud Developer, Data Engineer, Cloud DevOps Engineer, Cloud Security, Cloud Network Engineer, Collaboration Engineer, and Machine Learning Engineer.

Cloud skills are in high demand. Google Cloud skills are especially in high demand with a 66.7% increase over the past year in job listings. According to Gartner, cloud computing is expected to become a $300 billion business by 2021 so it’s no surprise that recruiters are looking for individuals with these cloud skills.

With each of the certificates, Google recommends that individuals have 3+ years of industry experience, including 1+ years on Google Cloud. To get certified you need to pass an online proctored exam which costs $200.

Having prior hands-on experience is no doubt an advantage but it is definitely possible to get certified without prior industry experience as I did straight out of university. I’ve written a detailed guide here on how I prepared and passed the exam.

Overall, the certifications are a great way for you to demonstrate your skills to the larger IT market as well as validate your cloud skills and experience to recruiters.

So What’s the Big Deal?

The reason why companies want their new hires to be Google Cloud Certified is that it makes them eligible for Partner Status.

As part of the Partner Program, Google invests in their partnered companies by showcasing their expertise and giving them the resources to differentiate across solutions, verticals, certifications, specialisations and many more.

For organisations that provide a service (such as consulting), this helps differentiate their business from competitors in a very crowded market and brand themselves as specialists in the field. Companies that have partner status are more likely to attract new clients, as they are recognised by Google as companies that have demonstrated technical proficiency and customer success.

In other words, they are trusted ambassadors of the Google Cloud Platform.

You can view the list of partner companies here.

To be part of this journey, employers seeking partner status require a number of employees to be professionally certified (green circle below) before they can start building expertise and reach specialisation.

My Experience

When I was applying for Data Engineering roles, I came across many job postings that required Google Cloud certifications. A quick look on LinkedIn now and you’ll see many companies and recruiting agencies still looking for certified individuals.

Recruiters often search candidates by keywords, so I received messages for job descriptions that were entirely out of my experience and capabilities just because I ticked the box of being certified. From a company perspective, it’s a numbers game so hiring any certified individual regardless of experience contributes to their eligibility. It doesn’t have to be a specific certification either, just one from the list above.

At the time of taking the exam, there were 2000 certified Data Engineers in the world, now there are over 5000.

Some of the messages and job descriptions I received (Image by Author)

Getting Google Cloud Certified not only helped me build the relevant skills in data engineering on GCP but as a fresh graduate helped my application stand out in a very competitive field.

In the end, I joined a consultancy firm specialising in data and analytics where I later found out that they were also in the process of forming a partnership with Google and I was their first certified employee.

It doesn’t end there though.

A month into my job, I was asked to get certified in Microsoft Azure so that the company would be eligible for Gold Partner status. As a result, I’m also Microsoft Certified Azure Data Engineer and the company is a Gold Partner.

It’s not just Google, but other major cloud competitors such as Microsoft have their own partner program which companies are actively seeking to be part of. Microsoft Partners come with a whole load of other benefits such as discounts on resources and introductions to new clients. Microsoft also offers more certifications than Google which you can check out here.

Many companies are aiming for Gold (Image by Author)

To this day, I continue to receive messages from recruiters looking for Google or Microsoft Certified individuals or whether I know anyone in my network that is.

Hopefully, I’ve convinced you that the demand is still high and that if there is one online certification you should take before you embark on your job search, it’s the ones listed above.

This is your chance to turn the tables and have the recruiters look for you.

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**Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. I have used every resource listed above and only recommend products that have helped me improve my skills**