Top 5 IT Training Certifications for Trainers

If there’s one real nonpareil area for IT certification it’s got to be for certification training.

Mind you, this area isn’t for everyone: you’ve not only got to know your stuff cold, and be willing to work long and hard hours to keep up with whatever certification programs you decide to cover, you’ve also got to be outgoing, a good speaker, well-organized, good with people, and fast on your feet. But with over 3,000 independent training centers in North America alone, and jobs for the cream of the crop with certification sponsors themselves, there are lots of opportunities for people who do possess these characteristics all over the world. In fact, certification sponsors usually have their own training departments, and they often also develop their own curriculum and exams for certifications they sponsor, so training jobs can lead to follow-on roles with curriculum and course development, exam development, and certification program work, as well as classroom or on-camera training roles.

Most vendors have very specific requirements for people who want to teach their certification courses. At a minimum, would-be instructors must take the course and pass the exam for the topic they wish to teach, often with a higher score than those who merely wish to earn an associated certification. In many cases, instructors must also present some kind of “train the trainer” or “trainer training” credentials as well. “Train the trainer” often refers to a specific course that’s designed to teach instructors how to deliver specific courses, and to prep students for related exams. “Trainer training” credentials essentially warrant someone’s classroom training skills, to ensure they meet standards for classroom content delivery, time,people management, and so forth.

The certifications covered in this article fall under the heading of “trainer training” or “training certification,” in the sense that these credentials seek to identify individuals who are capable of instructing IT certification candidates in a classroom situation (either in an actual classroom, or in a virtual classroom using Web-based online conferencing or course delivery environments). In the 1980s and 1990s, as IT certification programs really started ramping up, most certification sponsors had their own customized “train the trainer” certifications (some still do, as you’ll see when you read this story).

Ed Tittel is a 30-year-plus veteran of the computing industry, who’s worked as a programmer, a technical manager, a classroom instructor, a network consultant and a technical evangelist for companies that include Burroughs, Schlumberger, Novell, IBM/Tivoli and NetQoS. He has written and blogged for numerous publications, including Tom's Hardware, and is the author of over 140 computing books with a special emphasis oninformationsecurity, Web markup languages and development tools, and Windows operating systems.

Check out Ed's Tom's IT Pro  Making It in IT - Certification & Training blog here.

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Mary Kyle is a full-time freelance writer, editor, and project manager based in Austin, TX. A former IBMer, Mary has over 10 years of project management experience in IT, software development and IT-related legal issues.

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