In today’s world, where employers prioritize productivity and efficiency in the workplace, having a qualified workforce is essential. Certifications provide a standardized measure of knowledge and skills, ensuring employers can hire a qualified workforce. This leads to high-quality work by the industry, which yields high customer satisfaction.
CompTIA spends thousands of hours each year developing and maintaining a broad portfolio of certification products focused on core job functions across the IT industry.
When considering the most effective and efficient methods to measure the requisite knowledge and skills for a defined target audience (job role), we consider the objectives produced during the Job Task Analysis phase of our development process. Certification exam objectives often require professionals to perform specific tasks or troubleshoot complex problems using critical thinking skills. In these cases, simulations and labs may be developed and used to focus on exactly what we’re attempting to measure. Simulations and labs require candidates to perform tasks and demonstrate their ability to think critically, analyze data or different factors, and use the process of elimination to determine root causes and implement solutions to problems.
During the Job Task Analysis, industry subject matter experts often indicate the expectations for certain job roles involve candidates performing tasks but also having knowledge of certain best practices, regulatory requirements, procedures, technologies, etc. For example, a professional in an entry-level technical position may be required to know about or be aware of how a corporate firewall works and the importance of its function. However, this professional would never be granted access to critical infrastructure, nor be allowed to make changes to it. In this instance, the knowledge of a particular tool or technology is deemed important to the job, and not whether the entry-level professional can use the tool or technology. Knowledge can be quickly, efficiently, and objectively measured without the use of complex, simulations or labs. Therefore, CompTIA will opt to use other methods to measure this knowledge, such as multiple-choice questions, hot spot, and others.
As CompTIA builds its certification exams, we consider the certification development requirements mentioned above, but also all facets of the business, including the cost of content development and delivery, the required bandwidth and technical risks of delivering more complex content via a global distribution channel, time to market, software and integration requirements, and various other factors.
While CompTIA is always pursuing the use of the latest technologies to accurately measure knowledge and skills, we do not embrace a philosophy of an “all knowledge-based” nor “all performance-based” assessment. Instead, we attempt to properly meet the requirements of the certification exam objectives, as defined during the Job Task Analysis, ensuring we meet the needs of the job role and, therefore, the needs of the industry and employers throughout the world.