certification exam (09/09/2024)

The certification exam preparation I am currently working on is the Applied Information Technology Engineer Exam, which has an exam date of October 13th.

Some positions within a company are in the IT field and some are in the non-IT field.

As part of the personnel rotation in Japanese-style employment, I am now in a non-IT field department.

When the HR incentive system was changed, I took the opportunity to obtain the lower level certifications, even though I am not in the IT field department now. I found out that the higher level certifications are not too different in difficulty, so I am continuing to work on them.

I am studying with a textbook and a video course.

It is a national certification recognized by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and is well known in Japan.
Its predecessor, the qualification examination, has a long history, having existed since 1970.

It is also easier for a company's personnel to evaluate qualified employees in comparison with past personnel records.

It is a certification that is local to Japan and can be completed in one's native language. It is a certification that matches the characteristics of an industry where IT work is completed in one's native language.

I was surprised to see the English page of the examination categories for the first time, but it only describes the categories.

ENG: https://www.ipa.go.jp/en/it-examinations/examcategories.html

JPN: https://www.ipa.go.jp/shiken/kubun/ap.html

They are probably less practical than the various certifications such as the XaaS field certification (eg. AWS, GCP, Azure), Linux field certification, statistics and AI field certification, and others that ask about proper nouns in specific fields. The goal of these certification exams is to guarantee that you know the proper nouns and know how to use them, which is different from IPA's exams, which ask about abstract concepts that are not dependent on a specific vendor.

Or, it may not be as practical as the method where a keyboard and display are provided and you type in commands.

By the way, some IT field examinations that deal with abstract concepts require practical experience as a prerequisite for passing the exam.

For example, the PMBOK requires eight years of professional management experience and 35 hours of training.

The only way for the certification exam to guarantee that there will be no practical problems is to tell the certifier that they has practical experience.

However, it is meaningful that the exam system does not require work experience in order to open the door for those without work experience to open their careers.