AWS certifications can either build or destroy your career.
In this video, we're going to discuss how to use AWS certifications to maximize your
when used correctly.
Unfortunately, most people do not understand how to use AWS certifications and end up actually
damaging the career versus boosting their career.
And in this video, we're going to teach you how to maximize your career because it go
cloud careers, everything we do, is about maximizing your career.
To begin,
let's discuss what certifications can actually do for you.
First, they can help you build your brand.
And secondly, they can help you get an interview.
These are wonderful things and certifications can help a lot with the packaging of you know,
before you get a lot of AWS certifications in an attempt to build your brand or get more
interviews, there's some key things that you need to actually know.
The first thing is that certifications will not prepare you for an AWS Solutions Architect
job, a cloud architect job, a cloud engineer job or any other tech job for that matter,
I'm gonna say it again, AWS certifications will not prepare you for any job.
But that doesn't mean they don't value.
AWS certifications, when used correctly will help you build your brand.
And they're going to help you get an interview.
So we like AWS certifications, it's just about using them correctly.
Before we get into how to leverage certifications and how to build your brand.
I want you to understand this.
Certifications are really like the icing on the cake.
And this applies to AWS certifications, or other tech certifications, and icing can make
a cake so much better.
But you got to remember this without the cake icing is useless.
Without you having the right skills, which are not covered in AWS certifications, or
any other certification from that matter.
You don't have a tech career.
So what I want you to understand is first, you've got to go bake the cake and the cake
is your proper career skills, and then get the icing and then you've got some serious
magic.
So what is the cake?
What are the right skills?
Well, that's different for every career.
And we're going to talk about the cloud architect and the cloud engineer.
When you know what that actual cake is, then you're going to know how to apply the right
icing on that cake.
To make you more desirable, the more desirable you are, the better interviews you get.
And the more likely you are to get the right interview for the right job.
So you can think of the right certifications as something like putting chocolate icing
on a vanilla cake.
It's fantastic.
And you can think of the wrong certifications, which we'll talk about soon.
It's like putting pickles as a topping on a chocolate cake.
Nobody's gonna want to eat that.
So same thing is true for cloud architects.
So what is the cake are the actual skills for the con architect, job and career?
Well, it's networking skills, its data center skills, and its cloud design skills.
Why cloud architects design person and sell a solution we don't touch the technology and
design unfortunately has nothing to deal with configuration, which is taught in certifications.
I want you to think about it this way.
You think a building architect who designs a beautiful shopping mall.
And then you take a construction crew which builds it, the construction crews have hammers
and screwdrivers and saws and drills.
Now nobody asks the construction crew to design the shopping mall because it's a different
skill.
architects design the blueprint, engineers bring the blueprint to life with a construction
skill.
So the architect needs those network datacenter and cloud design skills.
The architect because their job is designed presented cell needs extremely good sales
skills.
The cloud architect needs very good leadership skills, because they're gonna be building
a team and leading the team for every single design architecture is a team sport.
Now the architect is going to have to go to the company's executives and find out about
their business so they can figure out what kind of solution is going to work.
But at the same time, the Cloud Architect is gonna have to upsell that solution back
to the customer.
And that means executive presence to be taken seriously.
Now, architecture is going to be leading large teams and that means emotional intelligence
comes into play, and it's a critical skill.
Now, when we deal with the CEO, or a CFO or a CIO or a CTO, guess what What what matters
to them is completely different than what matters to the engineers.
So we need something called CXO relevancy as cloud architects are going to be doing
a lot of stakeholder management, providing lots of customer service, delivering a tremendous
amount of presentations, communicating and what I like to call translation skills.
When a CXO leader like the CEO says, These are my goals, and we have to translate those
goals into the technology for our engineers to know what to build.
Now let's discuss cloud engineers call it the Cloud Architect job versus the cloud engineer
job are completely different.
And each one has a different set of skills.
And when you know what these two jobs are, next, when we talk about certifications, wow,
you're gonna have to put the perfect icing on the wrong rate cake.
So it's that chocolate icing on the vanilla cake versus the pickles on the chocolate cake.
Now let's discuss cloud engineer skills, cloud architect designed to cut engineer build.
So the cloud engineer is going to need to understand how the network and data center
work, how things work, because the engineers do a lot of performance tuning.
Now, the cloud engineer has a construction crew that goes builds things, so they need
implementation skills.
And that means lots of time on the management console, the command line interface and infrastructure
as code.
Now the cloud engineer is going to be building things.
So that means they're going to be building systems and most systems are on Linux.
So the cloud engineer needs deep hands on Linux skills.
Truth be told, a cloud engineer really needs to have some pretty deep hands on Kubernetes
skills.
And a cloud engineer needs to have some good scripting skills, Python bash, Windows PowerShell.
And when it comes to infrastructure, as code these days, cloud formation goes out the window,
because everybody is multi cloud, at least 81% of customers are and TerraForm is going
to come into play.
So that cloud engineer is going to need some good TerraForm skills.
As you can see, the car could take for us to cloud engineer two completely different
jobs, two different set of skills.
And guess what, when it comes to certifications, to help build that portfolio and put the icing
on the cake, they're going to need different ones.
One of the
reasons certifications will never get anybody a job as they teach two things, the name of
the service and how to configure that service.
And you really can't use these marketing base names.
And your customers, especially for cloud architects, the certification skills are more the admin
the hands on configuration versus the deep configuration, that would be done in a production
environment like TerraForm, for example, the command line interface.
Now the other problem certifications, which is why they don't get you hired as they teach
in a natural picture.
81% of customers are multi cloud, which means proprietary AWS services such as ECS, or DynamoDB,
or Aurora, kind of get thrown out the window, because they don't work in a multi cloud environment
now Kubernetes will versus ECS.
And MongoDB is a no SQL database will work across clouds, for example, but we got to
get rid of all that proprietary stuff and half a certification is proprietary.
Now the other side of it is nobody that's got a serious business can use a single cloud
because a single cloud was a single point of failure.
Even AWS guys, AWS certifications, uses multiple content delivery networks, not just CloudFront.
If you do an NS look up of them, you'll see they use fastly, they use aka my n CloudFront.
Because the real world uses multiple content delivery networks.
Now in an enterprise environment, we're not going to be using these security services
by the cloud providers like AWS WAF, we're gonna be using big next generation firewalls
from Palo Alto and Fortinet, and Cisco and checkpoint and others.
Why because they're adaptive in nature.
And they provide much more robust security.
So that's the challenge with certifications is they teach an unnatural, proprietary environment,
which is not real life.
First, Train for your job first, meaning, get the career specific skills as without
them, you can't be hired, I routinely have people that are in a clerical to Career Development
Program that get hired with zero certifications, because they've got the right skills.
So get the job skills first.
Now, when it comes to certifications, get the certifications that align with your brand.
And now that you know what the job is, you know what certifications are going to align
with your brand.
So let's walk through a few certification combinations.
For the cloud architect, we could have the AWS Certified Solution Architect Professional
and the Cisco Certified internet expert.
That's a very robust certification skill set for a cloud network architect or a cloud architect.
Or we could have something that looks like an AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional
with the Azure solutions architect expert, again, to architecture based cloud based certifications.
And it looks great.
We could have a more moderate certification combination, the AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Professional and the Cisco Certified network professional, good thing.
We've got to networking certifications, a cloud certification cloud is nothing more
than a network in a data center.
So it makes sense.
How about someone that's interested in being a cloud security architect, we could have
the AWS Certified Solution Architect Professional and a CISSP.
Or we could have an AWS Certified so loosens Architect Professional and a TOGAF.
I don't recommend TOGAF.
But it works for branding, even though there's no real architecture that's taught in that
certification.
Now, you notice I didn't list any associated certifications.
And there's a reason for it to be taken seriously when he uses many professional certifications
as possible.
And as he'll associate certifications as needed.
In last year, Nit and engineering Well, we're going to get more than two or three, and we'll
talk about what to do for the cloud engineer.
Now note, I didn't mention any specialty certifications, like the AWS advanced networking, and here's
the reason they are so basic, and they are completely meaningless.
So don't waste your time here.
Now, why did I recommend these because everything looks like a cloud architect.
Now here's how you use certifications which will kill your brand.
I've seen people be advised this then as the most dangerous Cloud Architect career advice
in the world, some certification providers is saying hey, get their AWS Certified Solution
Architect Associate, the developer associate the DevOps associate, you noticed this?
Now, I want you to really understand what that says, Junior architect, junior developer,
Junior DevOps engineer, and junior maintenance person or sis up four separate careers and
junior level at all.
I don't want to hire that person.
I didn't want to talk to them.
Why?
Because their time and effort has been sent, but focused on learning everybody else's careers.
So I want to translate that Certified Solution Architect, associate developer, associate
DevOps associate and sysops, associate into another career.
So you truly understand in case you're new to tech careers, that's like saying, I'm a
dog walker, a food server, a truck driver, and a nursing assistant, you're not going
to take me seriously.
And in many cases, we've seen people who've done this, and they couldn't get hired, they
kept getting put on the wrong interviews.
And we've actually had to remove some of their certifications.
And all of a sudden, they're when they're getting the right job offer.
So certifications can build your career or destroy your career.
Now let's talk about the cloud engineered career.
Some certifications we could work perfectly, we can have the AWS Certified Solution Architect
Professional and the Red Hat Certified engineer, a deep learning certification, good cloud
certification, it looks beautiful, where we could have an AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Professional with a Kubernetes and cloud native Associate Certification.
We could also have the AWS Certified Solution Architect Professional, and the Hashi Corp,
certified TerraForm associate, again, we're mixing things work, we could have something
even better we could have for the cloud engineer, we could have the AWS Certified Solutions
Architect Professional, the Red Hat Certified engineer on the Kubernetes and cloud native
associate.
So here's the thing, learn the job, man, get the certifications, and then get hired.
Certifications can be a powerful tool to help you get your first cloud architect job, cloud
engineer job or any tech job.
The key is tools need to be used correctly, I want to let you know about some free gifts
and some exciting things for you.
If you're looking to get your first cloud architect job.
Please join us on how to become the ultimate Cloud Architect webinar that we do.
We do it once per week.
It's completely free and you can ask questions live.
The link for that is in the description below.
If you'd like to know how to get hired on your next interview, please download the completely
free get hired on your next interview II guide and that book and that is in the description
below.
Now, if you'd like to get in writing how to get your first cloud architect job, guess
what?
Download the free ebook, which is called Learn how to get your first cloud architect job.
The link for that is also in the description below.
And if you want to know how to land your first tech job, the link for that free ebook is
in the description below.
So got lots of free ebooks for you.
I can't wait to hear when you tell me you got hired and have a wonderful, wonderful
Cloud Architect career.
Look forward to seeing you in the next video.