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I am considering investing time to learn Hadoop and it's related technologies. The problem is that my current day job will not be using Hadoop any time soon and even if I learn from books, blogs personal projects I will not have much to backup when I actually need to show that I have Hadoop experience.

So while continuing my job I would like to invest into my own training and I am thinking about Hadoop certification from cloudera. What do you think about it?

Please answer from your perspective (if you took the certification and training course or are in the market for hiring new hadoop developers and what do you look for)

I am sure that there is no shortcut to becoming an expert in Hadoop, but certification and training seems like a jump start.

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marked as duplicate by MichaelT, gnat, GlenH7, Yusubov, Robert Harvey Jul 22 '13 at 15:38


If I were a responsible of hiring in my company (I'm not), I wouldn't contract someone who has a certification on X technology but no experience with it. But non-technical HR drones would probably select your résumé only based on the fact that you have a certification on X technology that they employ (even if it was a w3schools "certification"). So probably you might get an interview, but going to it will be a waste of time both for you and the employer. –  Carlos Campderrós Jun 21 '13 at 16:39

3 Answers 3

up vote 2 down vote accepted

As with many complex technologies, Hadoop can be a challenge to learn on one's own. That is one reason that Cloudera's training courses are so popular. The courses for Developers, Administrators and Analysts are all hands-on courses taught by expert instructors.

The certification provides the ability to prove that one fully grasped the concepts. It is the only certification for Hadoop and there are thousands of people who have earned the CCDH or CCAH distinction, so it has considerable weight in the industry. I've seen job postings and recruiters actively looking for folks with the Cloudera certification. Disclaimer: I work for Cloudera. Please contact us if you have questions.

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Hi, I want to have cloudera certification, my email id is prem30488@gmail.com, can we have some discussion or chat? –  Parth Trivedi Aug 31 at 11:43

When someone is asking about the certification question my response is always the following:

What will this certification give you besides personal satisfaction?

In my knowledge there are 2 certifications that had real money associating with having them in IT world: CCIE and old Citrix Administrator certification. Both of which had both theoretical and practical components and from people who did take it they were brutal to take.

So you should start by looking at the following:

  1. Are there jobs requiring Hadoop where you live or where you want to work?
  2. Do they pay more then what you are making now?
  3. Are there jobs that require Hadoop certification?
  4. Do the jobs requiring Hadoop certification pay more then the ones that don't?

Once you answer all these questions you will have your answer on whether to pursue certification for Hadoop.

If on the other hand you can do it because someone else is paying for it and it won't take away any time from other more pleasurable activities then I suggest you do it just to get personal satisfaction that you've done it.

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thanks, for 1- yes there are some jobs but not that much. I am betting that there will be more. 2. I think they would pay more because its a bit of speciality (but have no facts to back it up) 3. I don't see any jobs which require certification, but then only hiring manager would know why is that the case (perhaps because its all so new). 4. See 3. –  geoaxis Dec 23 '11 at 22:33
For #2 don't think they are find out there is no harm in asking. For #3 HR and hiring managers are just as lazy as the rest of the human population so instead of sifting through the resumes of all the candidates that say they know hadoop they would put right up front "certification required" or "certification preferred" and put the rest of the resumes(CVs) into a waste pile. –  Karlson Dec 23 '11 at 22:45

My understanding is that, for a company investing in hadoop, training the workforce at their expenses is a must. They won't even be looking for already-certified workers. There just ain't enough around. "People who overheard the word hadoop at a conference" will be their typical interview subject.

A certified professional with some experience instead would be a blessing in a pressing situation with deadlines and excrements hitting fans all over the codebase.

The point then becomes: where are those mindless companies investing in hadoop without enough workforce to the point of suddenly needing a urgent fix from from a trained professional?

I suppose most of them are in California, and urgent fixes usually work better if you get to their building, they don't usually open their codebases to telecommuting strangers in a snap.

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it is not hard to imagine that companies would rather make one of their people work on the basics while get a consultant to work on the hard problems. –  geoaxis Dec 29 '11 at 8:16
