SAP certification: not worth much?

SAP certification: not worth much?

In India, many IT newcomers, known there as “freshers,” are more eager than ever to break into the SAP market, and often turn to third-party SAP certification as a way of doing so.

Typical of the expectation that certification leads to SAP work was a post on SAP’s SDN that read, “I have a friend of mine…[who] has a functional expereince [sic] of 10 years in sales with L.I.C and he has done SAP SD Certification in the month of November, from Genovate Mumbai he has still not got placed and he is lookin for his first SAP Break.”

Anyone who follows SAP forums or mail groups will be intimately acquainted with variations on this message: Which certification will get me an SAP job? The question gets asked over and over because the answer is too unpleasant for people to accept: Only actual SAP experience is a valid qualification. For people who can’t get on an SAP team in their current position, or endure the prospect of waiting five years or more to transition to a company implementing SAP, this is a traumatic answer. Psychically, it is easier to believe that an SAP foothold can be bought instead.

This irrational optimism is part of the reason that third-party SAP training and certification companies like Genovate prosper. Genovate, which does most of its business in India, routinely charges $3,142 for single SAP courses lasting about ten days. That’s more money than the average Indian makes in a year, and the ten days of simulations are a far cry from the three years of actual experience that employers are seeking.

It’s important to note that, at least on the surface, Genovate doesn’t market itself as an SAP job placement service. Many Genovate trainees are working professionals who come for job-relevant training, a perfectly legitimate and value-added service. But many Genovate trainees are also “freshers” who think that certification will get them an SAP job. These people clearly haven’t done their research, or else they’d know that, in the SAP job market, Genovate certification (unlike actual project experience) doesn’t count for anything special.

This raises a question I’d like to ask our readers: In the end, does the SAP certification market function as a kind of tax on ignorance? Is there something shady about it, or does the fault lie entirely with the gullible freshers?