Useful Certifications?

My experience for the past 3 years or so. Again it's my own observation and experience...MINE!

I have zero education not even HS diploma (no I didn't marry my cousin!). My resume sucks too! Here's what I did...

When I went to interviews I prefer to talk to the owner or the next person down not (most were small to medium job shops btw). I tell him to test me for the next X hours, that way we got to know each other as much as possible (I usually had the entire day open on interview days). I talk to him straight up and don't BS him with the expectation of not being BS'ed either. If I got BS in return I was glad and felt fortunate I saw that early on and gladly turn them down or got rejected lol... Majority were really good interview experiences though.

I've had more jobs than I could count, don't recommend job hopping to anyone. BUT it made me sharp! I now work for a 'big' company and I almost didn't get it because of all the things I just mentioned that I lacked like stability, education, etc. They offered me low and told me that they were taking a risk, I couldn't call them a liar, the experience is what saved me so I got the job (been here almost 2yrs now). Many more opportunities have came about, right after I took the offer, for other MAJOR aerospace companies and they have all asked for the same thing to get to that next level of 'pool of pay' that I was seeking along with benefits, pension, type of work, opportunity to advance, and all that jazz, yada yada yada....

Everyone I've dealt with on a more serious level have been humble straight up people that wanted to pay me all they possibly could but HR would tie their hands (or so they claimed haha). This is what HR was looking for (in Cali and in TX) concerning those top paying positions.

1. experience (obviously)
   
2. 3-5 years in a salaried position (huh, I've always turned them down and instead asked to be payed hourly instead, what a mistake.)
   
3. Associates degree at a minimum (working on that soon)
   

and boom you'll get top dollar assuming you've got the skill. Most of these positions were involved in CMM programming but with different titles and departments in fact all positions were under Engineering department NOT QC! I found it to be very weird btw! There are people out there with less skill than you making twice as much so yes it's possible for you. If you don't care about money, please disregard this entire post. Again this is just my experience thus far. It's not the same for everyone and when I say 'these are top paying positions' they are to me but maybe not to you.

Use your time wisely.

Yes I Agree, being out on the floor is very valuable. I personally try to get out on the floor for atleast 30mins out of the day to solely go and talk to the operators, see how they are doing how they been and just chat and build relationships and it just makes it much easier to complete projects or just have insight on what is really going on out there.