Looking for low cost certification

The problem is that my experience is personal (as a hobby) and I have very little industry experience. With the current employment market I'm looking for something to give me an edge.

You will be spotted straightaway. You need to get a few years under you belt where you are and truly learn from the experience you get. I run my own personal consulting business and I am very successful at it. Experience, integrity, hard work and problem-solving skills are key requirements.
... Thinkpads_User

That's the problem though. Right now the employment market in the UK sucks, and the only people that are getting hired for developer jobs are people with work (i.e. industry) experience.

I think the problem is not only that employers want someone that has been in an industry development environment before, but that they have no solid evidence that I do have the skills that I say I do. That's why I want to get some sort of certification to say "yes, this guy actually is really skilled in VB.NET, C# and PHP... so give him a job already!"

Fair enough. So, you're looking at differentiating yourself in the "has no experience" category.

Your best bet is to look at getting the Microsoft certifications. Look at the certification road map, and decide if you're looking to be a Windows dev or a web dev. Start working your way up the certification ladder. I don't know if there's one that's specific to WPF or not, but that would be a good investment if you're going to stay on the Windows app side of things.

I can see that you are between a rock and a hard place. Nonetheless, I think Chaosian gave you a good answer. If you really want to try the certification approach, check around to see what certfications other people have and consider those. ... Thinkpads_User

I've never really looked at WPF, though I keep hearing it mentioned. The MS Cert stuff is pretty expensive (£400+) from what I've seen, and also seems somewhat outdated. Most courses mention Windows 2000 and VB6, which makes me wonder if there's any point in touching them at all. Are there no smaller/cheaper certifications around?

Also, I feel like I can never get the balance right with my CV. I'd love to write a light hearted one one that makes the reader laugh, but then I feel as if I'm coming across as unprofessional. If I create one that's all fact and a big list of "I am good at _____" entries, I feel like they're going to switch off and get bored with it. In my current CV, I wrote a summary paragraph about my strengths, then put a table of academic acheivements straight afterwards. After that I wrote about my hobbies and personal projects. Finally I wrote a list of references for website and software development work I've done in the past. Is this a good way to do it?

http://windowsclient.net/wpf/

Here's the MS cert page for Windows 7 MCTS. That's bleeding edge. http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/cert-windowsclient.aspx#tab2

Here's the dev cert. http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/mcpd.aspx#tab2

None of this is outdated.

@thinkpad,

All good advice. Our HR manager's rule of thumb is "30 seconds or 3 inches (of text), whichever comes first." Spelling and grammatical errors are going to get the resume thrown on the "reject" pile pretty quickly, if not immediately.

I am not sure why you say the Microsoft exams are outdated, the MSCE was replaced with the MCPD recently.

I've seen several job postings lately requiring a MCPD; and if I had to take some exams they would be for the MCPD; but I don't have the time.

They are good to have though, and the arguement of them being worthless compared to experience is questionable.

I've been doing programming for several years and I've been rejected jobs because I don't have a college degree. Well, I've done college finals for computer science, and I've known friends who just graduated from good schools and they don't know anything in real world experience. Some companies would rather you have the piece of paper that says you know what your doing, rather then really know what your doing.

If I were hiring a programmer, certifications or college wouldn't hold the weight of experience, and I think thats how it should be.

@Chaosian - Whilst Microsoft MCPD cert looks new on Microsoft's website, the people in the UK offering the course have exam lists that seem to focus on technology from 2005 and earlier. There's been so much since then (.NET 3.5, VS2008, WPF, WCF, LINQ, lambdas, etc) and the courses don't even mention them.

@thinkpads_user - Regarding the CV, I'd never thought of putting my work experience before my qualifications, but having thought about it it's a better way of doing it. Also, I hadn't even noticed that I'm at Master level... that's brightened my day a little! The only issue with getting more points is that to achieve a Master level in the .NET zone I'd need to get 33k more points. Whilst I like helping people on here, it's incredibly time consuming to get anywhere near that level.

In reading your posts, you are younger without experience. You need to work at getting both experience and recognition, so that is why I suggest you put some quality time in here and yes it will take some work. That is what you need to do to succeed.  ... Thinkpads_User

@burningmace:

34K points is only ~17 questions. You shoul dbe able to do that in a day, if you're really willing to work at it. Otherwise, it might take as much as a couple weeks.

On the subject of trainers in the UK being behind, you might try contacting your local developer evangelist for help there. You should be able to find them through your local .NET user group.

/me chuckles.   I have never been able to do 34,000 points in a day. An average day for me is more like 2,000 points. Still, in two months, that could be 100,000 points and perhaps a certificate or two. My point is that a reasonably steady approach of assisting people here will earn some rewards and at the same time build confidence in problem solving. All of this is good grist for a job interview. @Chaosian, it seems you and I are pretty much on the same page.
  ... Thinkpads_User

@thinkpads, maybe I'm thinking of the good ol' days when I started on EE. Even so, it's not too bad racking up 5-8K. That's only 3-4 questions in a day, and there's still lots of pretty straight-forward questions being asked. Admittedly, there are also some real time sinks that will take several hours to work through.