Are their vendor certifications that add value to the profile of an executive level? What are they? I am keen on certifications that can be pursued irrespective of location and are custom paced like oracle and microsoft certifications.

Ayanansha Acharya

IT BUSINESS ANALYST

Executive MBAs, formal training in SOX, HIPAA, CobiT, COSO, ITIL, PMP, PgMP, etc. A good foundation in financial controls, governance, compliance and managing across the IT/Business divide will go far with a lot of organizations these days. Even if you won’t be working directly in an IT role, every aspect of business is touched by IT and will benefit from the expertise that you’d bring to the table.

Think in terms of differentiation. If you have the identical qualifications to your peers, you need to step it up with something that they *don’t* have. If they’re all IT people, look at a CPA or financial cert. If you’re all Finance, look at IT Governance or ITIL. If you’re all JDs, consider a CISA or CISSP to complement your role. It needs to be relevant to your targetted position, but you want to avoid wasting your time on a commodity cert that doesn’t stand out from your competition.

ISACA has a new certification that they’re rolling out called the CGEIT (Certified in the Governance of Enterprise Information Technology). I don’t know if it’s going to go anywhere and it will likely be a few years before the HR people take notice. But it’s probably worth looking into. I suspect that it will be a hot cert for a few years after it rolls out.

What you might want to consider is talking with your HR department about what certs are showing up in thier job postings. Talk with your C-levels to see what certifications that they consider valuable (if any). Also, look at job postings for the positions that you’d want to pursue in 2-3 years and see what certs they list. All of these should give you some good direction.

Good luck!