After I signed up an ESRI ArcGIS certification exam, I felt regret immediately. It just sounds a bit stupid that whoever wanna be certified that how good and efficient of they could use a software (platform), even though people do that all the time. As some of you might know that I just moved to the states from China and recently have been looking for a job as a geospatial analyst. Every single job that I wanna apply have a sentence directs to ESRI and ArcGIS skillets e.g. “GIS-related applications including…… ESRI ArcGIS Online, and ArcGIS Suite (ArcMap, ArcSDE, ArcCatalog, etc.”. That’s the initial reason I signed up for the certification exam from ESRI, if I could think of one. Of course I am also very curious that why people are so obsessed with ESRI since there are several alternative tools out there could get spatial analysis done. Don’t get me wrong that I’ve been using ESRI products for years, and I think they are super powerful, only thing I really need is showing the proof that I could do the spatial analysis to the future employer.
I am just trying to think one or two things might explain why I need a certification and why it has to be from ESRI. Firstly, why we need a certification on GIS:
- Geospatial technology is a growing industry itself, and a lot of employers need to identify the future employees who claim they got the skill-sets they want;
- There are no a really good certification that could be pursued in the geo-industry standard really, and GISP sounds supper high-ends that only 7000 people have it and 5000 of them are in the states. For whom are in the field and wanna take the exam, Geographic Information System Certification Institute (GISCI) just announced a GIS profession certificate exam several days ago: http://www.directionsmag.com/pressreleases/gisci-announces-exam-application-period/454179.
These two reasons are what I could think about why I need a GIS certification to certify people who have the skill sets. But why it has to be the ESRI certifications. I’ve been asking around that why in GIS professional groups. I posted a question on GIS group to ask people “if having a certification from ESRI would really help me find a job in the states”. There were no direct question for it, if you’re interested in seeing how people responded to that you could go to: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/post/49657-6042661347865489408. To answer that why it has to be ESRI certification:
- ESRI has included the dominated geospatial skill-sets that an industry/company could asks for, from very basic desktop analysis skills to enterprise big data analysis;
- ESRI has a 43% of share in GIS market, and the second-largest supplier share 11%, which tells that ESRI is leading the geospatial Market; They are keeping the core GIS coming from many talented employees, and ESRI’s core GIS is used by more than two-third of Fortune 500 companies;
- ESRI has great educational platform. I mentioned in my last blog post that ESRI is promoting it’s ArcGIS Online, the online campus classes have more than 5000 students participated and the number is growing everyday; Other than that they also have a lot of free online tutorials (some are not) for people from beginner to developer;
- The marketing strategy is selling stories rather than fancy technical functions that ESRI ArcGIS could preforms. I am a huge fan of them since I brought 6 big books last year and went through most of them. they are: ESRI ArcGIS Desktop Associate Certification exam book, GIS Tutorial Basic Workbook, GIS Tutorial Spatial Analysis Workbook, GIS Tutorial Advanced Workbook, Python scripting for ArcGIS and The ESRI Guide to GIS Analysis. The real-world problems/stories that provided behind the data and spatial analysis just keep motivating me to try more and learn more. The overall theory behind the problems/stories are very solid, and I feel the hand-on analysis exercises, solving the real world story, really enhance the knowledge and theory I learn.
- ESRI also provides some cool blogs, e-magzines, and materials that you could extent the knowledge as a GIS fan.
You’re welcomed to share any insights here.
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Geeky Mappy Geoyi 