VCDX – Advice to Employers

This is my recommendation for employers who have staff that recently achieved VCDX or Multi-VCDX certification.  This is the culmination of my experiences and thoughts, including the outcome of conversations I have had with like-minded individuals within the industry.

List of articles in my VCDX Deep-Dive series (more than 70 posts)

The road to VCDX and Multi-VCDX is a very long and arduous process.  Countless hours of personal time is spent working towards this goal and employers do need to consider the following for newly certified VCDXs.

One thing is for sure, as soon as someone achieves VCDX certification, they will be approached by a plethora of companies about new job opportunities.  Employers will obviously want to retain talent and need to be proactive in keeping them happy.

Without this conversation and recognition, you will likely lose that employee to a competitor who does within a year.  The percentage of job moves for VCDX certified individuals is quite high.

Even if nothing comes of this conversation, it does indicate that you as the employer have recognised the achievement and are at least trying to reward the effort.  It will be appreciated.

Employers should at the very least have a conversation about:

• Celebration – Announce the achievement on your company’s blog, in “all-hands” emails and internal kickoff meetings.
• Advancement – Promotion to lead architect or chief architect in recognition of validated enterprise architecture design skills.
• Evangelism – You should also discuss the possibility of becoming an “evangelist” for the company.  Leading the way on “vCommunity” channels and events such as VMUGs, podcasting, blogging and Twitter.
• Mentoring – Consider establishing a program to mentor other employees who are on the same career path.  Your newly minted VCDX employee would lead this.
• Industry Events – There is normally a lot of competition for employees to attend VMworld and other industry events.  You could give your VCDX employee a guaranteed spot to attend VMworld each year.
• Reimbursement – Covering the cost of the training, travel and expenses for the VCDX defence attempt.  Some companies will already have done this at the start of the VCDX journey, others will not.
• Pay Increase – Pay increases are not normally the end goal with VCDX, but everyone has bills to pay and additional responsibility and skill development should be rewarded fiscally.