Let’s know about Professional Certification or Practical Knowledge
If given a choice, what would be your preference? Professional Certification or Practical Knowledge?
Some of us think that certification is just a mere piece of paper. We can learn with or without the certification. On the contrary, some think that what is the benefit of practical knowledge when they don’t have any acknowledgment of that?
Well, let us clarify this to you with two short stories.
There was a football enthusiast girl, who had vast knowledge about football. Be it any EPL updates or UEFA Cup results, she knew all of it! Not only that, She was well versed with every player’s playing style. Still, when she went to play football once, she couldn’t perform well.
On the other hand, there was a boy who used to work as a mechanic. Everyone who went in his garage ever, walked out satisfied. One day, he tried to build an entire car by himself but couldn’t be successful.
Can you guess the reasons behind the above scenarios?
In the first one, it is a lack of practical knowledge. The second one would be the lack of theoretical knowledge.
It is the same thing once you step into the professional world. Theoretical knowledge and practical skills, both are important there in the same ratio. If you are missing either of them, you are compromising on your success itself.
Let’s look into the facts about what both of them can do to you:
Advantages Of Professional Certification:
Once you are going for professional certification, you are basically trying to upskill yourself. Certification knowledge helps you to achieve the following things:
Gain A Competitive Advantage:
Once you hold a professional certification, that helps you to stand out of crowd from the other professionals of your field. It gives you an endorsement of excellence, which is particularly important for today’s competitive world. Along with the course knowledge gain, you can rule the trending technologies and stay upskilled!
Increase Your Efficiency:
The knowledge about modern-day technologies, management systems, a collaboration between departments to bring more customer success- your coursework provides you all of it. Your specialized training knowledge can provide you with the top-notch tools and software along with which you can execute your projects in a whole new different way. Hence, it increases your level of efficiency inside the team and in the eyes of your employers as well.
Increasing Earning Potential:
Once you complete a professional certification course, you can be definite about one fact, that you will start earning more than you were earning till now in no time. The time, effort and money you invest in professional certification is always an ROI process. According to one statistic, online certification increases anybody’s salary by 20-40%. Isn’t it amazing?
Expanded Knowledge and Skills:
With certification knowledge, you can acquire new and updated industry techniques and information. By doing that, you will be finally able to analyze your own strategies. The certification knowledge will help you to find out the inefficiencies of your own process. In that way, you can set a groundwork to implement and build up a more sophisticated work environment.
By the above points, you can understand that all the perks of your theoretical education are going to be achieved with the help of professional certification.
Now, what are the benefits of practical knowledge? Let’s check it out!
Advantages Of Practical Knowledge:
Have you ever seen a bicycle without tires? Certification without practical knowledge is exactly the same thing.
The advantages of theoretical knowledge are endless. But, without the help of their practical application, the actual benefits of it will remain untouched.
If it has been quite some time for you after entering the professional world, you don’t really need much explanation on this point. If you don’t have any practical knowledge about whatever you are doing, you won’t be able to achieve that level of performance which you are expecting from yourself. The benefits of practical knowledge are far beyond than you can imagine. Few of them are mentioned below:
Acquisition of knowledge:
One who doesn’t have practical knowledge about one particular technology they have a certification on, that tones down the gravity of his certification a little bit. You won’t be able to understand the broad area of your professional world you’ll be able to conquer until or unless you have gained some practical knowledge as well as professional ones.
It will be like you are the owner of Thor’s hammer when you don’t have the ability to pick it up. Don’t you think?
Experience through industrial exposure:
With the help of practical applications of your theoretical knowledge and their implementation, you will be able to understand how your industry actually works. Deep involvement in both technical and non-technical fields will help you to bring more business to your organization. All you need to do after that is to wait for your next hike and see your salary touching the skyline immediately!
It develops interpersonal skills:
Once you have deep practical knowledge in the field of your certification, you will feel more confident inside. Also, once you excel at what you are doing your involvement in various projects will increase. This will help reflecting other soft skills and characteristics in you, such as communication skills, leadership, etc. Wanting to get promoted for a long time now? Or have a few interviews lined up for a better opportunity? Get ready to rock them either way with your newly developed skillset!
Helps in exploring your area of experience:
Suppose you have been obsessed with cryptocurrencies for quite a long time now, and you have completed your certification as a certified blockchain professional. Once you start working on the concepts you have learned, it will help you to understand the area of your interest and dig deeper into it. Once you have explored everything and found out which excites you the most, you will be able to set your specifications and keep working on that field itself!
Conclusion:
Practical knowledge and Certification knowledge- both become equally important when you step into the professional world. If you don’t know the concepts and basics about your practical implementation, you won’t even be able to do the practical applications. Similarly, if you don’t apply your course knowledge practically at your workplace, what is the point of gaining it?
When you are on a battlefield, you need a sword as well as armour. Isn’t it?
So let’s use these two co-depended pieces of knowledge as your sword and armour to play in a win-win situation in your professional field from now on!