What's It Worth?

Honor, Ethics, Integrity are words that have deep rooted meaning for some, but not all. For some, do whatever it takes, at all costs, let nothing stand in your way rings louder. I realize not everyone with those ideals are unethical. But after today's incident, it hangs a cloud over them. With humility, I can say it was once said, “He chooses the hard right over the easy wrong.”

Over the past several years I've worked to remain relevant in my field, I even created some stretch goals, going beyond my field to learn new skills. I thought pursuing Security, now cyber security, would open new doors, but it hasn’t, it's been more of a money pit. So, now I'm traveling down the AWS path.

Today was the test of all tests. Jessica Robinson, LinkedIn profile name, said her organization had a great program for studying and obtaining certifications and guarantee pass. The initial pitch all sounded legitimate until the phone call.

The person on the call understood the area of interest, process and requirements for the certification body, identification authentication process and auditing of certifications. They spent several minutes explaining the credentials of the training team, the process for preparation, guarantee of test retakes for certification. But then! Here's where it starts to get interesting.

The caller identified the exam would be verified by an exam center in India and no question would be raised about validity as the process has already been proven to work. He explained the test would be taken remotely and all I’d need to do is to remote into a specific session on a determined date and time into a testing center in India and everything would be taken care of.

I explained to the caller, what he was proposing was unethical, violated the honor code that every individual who has taken a certification said they'd honor and that I'd not cheat to gain a certification. Sadly, this isn't the first time I've heard of this group and this type scam. I heard of it in 2010 during an SAP migration by an SAP HR consultant. I gave her the same answer when she explained the process to me, nope! Not lying about my certifications or on my resume, it's not worth it.