Is it time to recertify your MCSE SharePoint 2013? Learn how!

For some of you SharePoint Experts who took your exams in early 2013, the time to re-certify your MCSE SharePoint 2013 might be approaching. As you probably know, Microsoft requires you to re-certify every three years, to make sure your skills are still up to date.

But how do you renew your MCSE SharePoint certification? At the time of writing this blog post, the SharePoint 2016 certifications, are not out yet, and there is no exam to renew the MCSE. However, Microsoft made it possible for everyone to renew their MCSE SharePoint trough Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA). Let me first start with what you need to do, and then I will give you my opinion. The first thing you need to do, is create an account at https://mva.microsoft.com/ , listen to the following modules, and then pass the associated assessments.

After you finish and pass all of them, you need to email your MVA Username and your Microsoft Certification ID to certquest@microsoft.com to get your transcript updated.

Pros

Making re-certification available through MVA does have its advantages:

1. It’s FREEJ.
2. It’s easy to do on your own time.
3. You get to pass the assessment after every “module” allowing you to be able to restart a specific test only.

Cons

I don’t know what Microsoft’s plan is for SharePoint 2016 certifications, but if their goal of having the MCSE SharePoint certification without version numbers, everyone could be SharePoint certified and up to date until 2019, even if they didn’t do a SharePoint 2016 exam. But before talking about that in detail, let’s see what Microsoft will do for SharePoint 2016. Here are some cons according to me, on re-certifying professionals through MVA.

1. Dumps will be even easier to access, as MVA probably has an a lot smaller question pool, and anyone can take unlimited tries, so you can probably find questions in a few minutes on the net.
2. Certification value will go even lower. Everyone knows the value of certifications went down in the last few years, and being able to do your re-certification assessments, unlimited number of times until you get it right, brings down the value of the cert.
3. Some courses have no link to the MCSE SharePoint, or its intended audience. For example, let me talk to you about the Deep Dive: Building Blocks and Services of SharePoint . That 7h course, talks about CSOM, Rest, Event receivers, and stuff for the MCSD… it has nothing to do with IT Pros, which should be the intended audience for a MCSE. Another one, Developing Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 Core Solutions Jump Start . Wait so I need to do a 6h jumpstart for the 70-488 exam, which as an MCSD exam, and be able to PASS it, in order to be a SharePoint admin? It makes no sense.

The total time of videos, not including lab and assessments to re-certify your MCSE SharePoint 2013 is 36 hours. I think it’s quite a lot of videos to watch, especially that 12 of those hours are strictly dev, and SharePoint Administrators will have to learn to create both SharePoint Apps and SharePoint Farm solution, and be familiar with CSOM, REST and another technologies that they don’t touch in their day to day jobs.

Don’t get me wrong, I do think that it’s good to learn new skills, and it’s not a bad thing for SharePoint Administrators to learn how to develop for SharePoint. But I don’t think they should have made it mandatory, for a SharePoint Admin to know how to dev, in order for him to retain his IT PRO MCSE Certification.

Here is the official Microsoft details + FAQ about the re-certification process:   What’s your opinion for this new way to renew your MCSE SharePoint Cert? Do you have any other Pros or Cons? Let me know in the comments!

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