It always seems to be such a hotly contested question of whether or not the CompTIA A+ certification is worth anyone’s time or energy in 2019. Spend any amount of time on IT forums/subreddits and you find every possible opinion, usually with a ton of cynicism thrown in for good measure.

This post is only my opinion amongst the rest, but instead of it coming from someone who is on the candidate side of the equation, I have experienced both hiring and being hired for technical roles. So, with that out of the way, is taking the time and spending the money on the CompTIA A+ certification worth it anymore?

Is the CompTIA A+ certification worth it in 2019?

The short answer is: Yes, the CompTIA A+ is worth it. A more complete answer is: It depends.

The largest factor in determining if the A+ is the right certification for you to invest your finite time and hard-earned money in is your current experience level. It is undoubtedly an entry-level certification, and there will be a point where taking the time to obtain it stops being worth it. Unlike some other certifications, the A+ does have diminishing returns as you move farther up the IT Department ladder, but it is certainly not a detriment to anyone with it on their resume.

Let’s take a look at the A+ through the lens of three different hypothetical IT job seekers or professionals to see how things shake out.

You are just starting out…

The largest target audience of the CompTIA A+ is people who are looking to get hired for their first IT job or those that are in their first position and are looking to move up. Are there other types of people interested in achieving the A+? Certainly, but those are often the edge cases.

If you have not yet been hired for your first job in Information Technology, either because you are still in school, are working in another field, or have simply struggled to get hired, then you absolutely should get the A+. If you are in school or are working an unrelated job, the A+ will not be an enormous time commitment and is definitely doable while managing your other responsibilities. That is not to say that it will take zero time investment, it is two tests after all, but it will be much less daunting than more challenges certifications.

IT is a huge field with many specialties, and as a result of this variety, it can be difficult to just pick up a book and start learning, or acquire old gear and build a home lab on your own. One benefit of the A+ is that it provides a framework for learning a very broad segment of this field, while not going extremely deep into any single facet.

From a hiring perspective, companies are always looking to reduce their risks as much as possible. For job seekers, this means that your prospective employer is always going to be looking for candidates who are as much of a sure thing as possible. Whether a candidate is selected when up against another candidate may very well come down to something as trivial as having a single certification on her resume rather than none.

Job hunting is a competition, and your competitors are a hugely diverse community of people with all sorts of backgrounds and qualifications. If you are looking for work, even if just to break into the Information Technology industry, then it is your job to differentiate yourself from the crowd and demonstrate how it is that you will outperform them every day.

You are a couple of years into your career…

Now we tread into some murkier water…

Within a couple of years of working on a help desk or as a junior admin, you will likely have learned most any of the useful material contained in the CompTIA A+ certification. Sure, you may not know how many pins are on a stick of DDR2 memory, but that’s what Google is for.

So what is the benefit of the A+ to this crowd?

As a manager, I always find myself most impressed with the staff who are willing to take time out of their busy lives to advance their own careers. It is always great to land at a company that values continued education, and even better if they will bankroll those efforts. At the end of the day, however, your career development is your own responsibility and you are not entitled to anything from anyone else.

With that in mind, let’s consider a hypothetical Help Desk Technician that has been with their current company for two years. They are happy with this company and would like to stay for a long time, but are not satisfied with life on the Help Desk and instead would like to move into a different role.

Even within a single organization, you are still competing for job openings- both with candidates from outside the company and the colleagues you work with every day. People who make a priority of their continued education and growth, and demonstrate that they are not only goal-setters but goal-achievers will always percolate up to the higher ranks. Those that think that working really really hard during the nine-to-five each day will be enough will likely find themselves frustrated at the pace of their advancement- or the lack thereof.

Our hypothetical technician spends her lunches working her way through the A+ study guide and taking a few practice tests. Before long she has passed the tests and can now use this achievement as leverage to advance her position within the same company, or bolster her resume during a search for a position elsewhere.

Of course the same can be said for most any other certification out there, but the A+ has benefits in that it is widely known to everyone in this business, the time commitment to achieve it is not extreme, and it is a great starting point for understanding technical certifications and the process by which you achieve them.

You are a more experienced SysAdmin or Engineer…

After helping our hypothetical Help Desk Technician make her way to a new role, the returns received from the A+ diminish rapidly. Many people make their way into other more senior positions without the A+ and from there the focus will more and more turn to specialization- something the A+ does not provide.

My earlier comments about certifications being a reliable method of demonstrating one’s commitment to their own career advancement and ability to learn new things still apply at this point- and forever afterward. That said, you will likely not learn much useful information from the A+ that you haven’t already acquired through experience, and your energy would be better spent on more focused certifications such as the CCNA, or MCSA to name a couple of common options that are often required for more senior positions.

Cut out the noise…

Everyone has an opinion on this topic and this is just my own. I prefer to take a conservative approach to career building, and I think that your resume is an opportunity to craft a narrative about who you are, how you spend your time, and why it is that you are the best investment option for your future employer.

Too many people working as SysAdmins or pseudo-SysAdmins today view the world through a lens that is highly-technical, highly-cynical, and not reflective of the realities of a business leader looking for quality talent out in the world or from within their own ranks. This is why you might see grumpy forum responses such as “Why bother getting the A+? Didn’t you graduate from school?” This mindset completely neglects the opportunity to craft a narrative about how you take initiative and finish things that you start- two highly valued qualities in any organization.

I go even further to say, is the A+ worth it to those starting out? Yes, but don’t stop there. Get the A+ and keep the momentum up by moving immediately onto another certification, such as the Network+ or CCENT. Demonstrate to your hiring manager that you are an IT badass and that you are going to learn as much as possible for as long as possible. This means the pressure is on them not only to get you onboard their team but to keep you there for as long as possible. In today’s job market employees can absolutely dominate the negotiations, but they must bring something to the table themselves. That something is both the skill they have today and the potential for skills to be learned in the future. Prove that you not only have the skills to do the job you are applying for, but also the capacity to learn and grow, and you will find success in the IT field.