"I have seen people with great paper certifications who could not troubleshoot their way out of a paper bag," Rosen said. "Some are great test-takers, but they can't apply it. The certificate shows they have made some effort to learn the technology, but the key to hiring is what they have done with it. Can they address real-world problems?"

Bureaucrats love certificates, Rosen said, because it gives them a box to check off, "but that's not doing due diligence. You have to ask things like, 'Tell me about a really interesting problem you solved and how you solved it.'"

"It would be foolish to hire someone just based on certification, since you also have to make sure they know what they are doing," Cody noted. "It's possible to have a good career without certifications, but certifications make it easier to get in the door."

David Foote, president of Foote Partners LLC, a human resources research firm in New Canaan, Conn., said his latest IT compensation survey, released last month, found that networking certification resulted in an average pay premium of 9.1 percent in the first quarter of 2006. The average premium for all certifications is 8.2 percent.

Certifications can offer benefits to organizations as well as individuals, added Cushing Anderson, an analyst at IDC.