Dru Lavigne says, while the BSD family of operating systems is well-known and respected for its maturity, security, and stability, there currently isn’t a mechanism to quantify the skills of those who use and administer BSD systems. The BSDCG wishes to address this need by first determining and then assessing the skillsets required to successfully administer BSD systems. Here is a practical example. Let’s say you’re screening employment candidates for a position that requires configuration of Cisco routers. It is quite likely that your job advertisement will indicate that a CCNA certification is preferred (or required), because the CCNA represents a defined body of knowledge and a minimum required skillset. You can go to the Cisco Web site and see for yourself which objectives one needs to master in order to achieve a CCNA certification. Armed with that knowledge, you can sort the resumes into a CCNA pile and then skim through related job experience to make a short list of interview candidates.
Now, let’s say you need to hire a system administrator for your BSD servers. Until the upcoming certification goes live, you don’t have a predefined yardstick that states a prospective employment candidate has met a minimum defined knowledge base or skillset. While you can still use related job experience to make a short list of candidates, you will have to ask more probing questions at the interview to determine how the candidate learned his skills and whether the candidate has any obvious knowledge gaps. Read more.
Michael Barnes
