What is ITIL?
ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library. It is a set of best practices for IT service management that are organized by individuals and organizations throughout the world to make business need easier to understand and fulfil those need faster as well.
Currently millions of people throughout the world are using ITIL and many businesses have flourished and benefited greatly from ITIL. ITIL helps people and organizations to develop an optimal strategy for providing digital services according to client requirements while keeping the balance of organizational capabilities and budget.
The best practices that are combined in ITIL are the ones that are subconsciously adopted by any business which follows in the footsteps of leading organizations of the same domain and tries to mimic their winning strategies. This may be fruitful in most scenarios but in the end, it all depends on your particular organizational structure, whether or not your organization has the capabilities and resources to adapt that strategy which is beneficial for competitors.
After having hands-on experience with ITIL and ITIL foundation certification, you become capable enough to draw the line between presently adaptable best practices, the best practices and guidelines that might be adaptable in the future, and the best practices which just don’t work in your situation. Hence, every best practice is not adaptable by every organization of the same domain/area.
ISO 20000 actually calls ITIL by name, hence proving its worth in the society. Since ISO provides industry standards for organizations of various stature, having ITIL’s name in one of their lists shows the importance of ITIL for digital services-based organizations.
Importance of ITIL certification
To implement the best practices in your organization you need the best people. And who could be the best people in terms of ITIL than the officially ITIL certified professionals?
Passing ITIL certifications require proper knowledge of organizational structures, their behaviour, and the trends of the market for similar organizations.
Making changes in the organizational structure and internal workings is a big leap even for small businesses. Hence it has to be done in the right way and by the right people. In the case of ITIL, the right people are the ones which are certified right for the job. ITIL offers different levels of certifications such as Foundation, Practitioner, Intermediate, Expert, and Master.
Each level of certification has its own value, smaller organizations are capable to hire professionals with ITIL foundation certification or Practitioner certification. Whereas larger organizations require professionals with Expert and master certifications.
For beginners the ITIL foundation certification is enough, as it showcases that they have achieved the required ITIL certification which might be necessary in any job description and it also leaves room for them to grow their understanding of more with time. Organizations realize the difference between foundation certification and expert certification and deals with professionals accordingly giving juniors or beginners roles that do not impact the organizational integrity very widely. And at the same time assigning those larger and more complicated tasks which involve crucial structural changes to the certified experts.
Careers related to ITIL
Many large organizations that adopt ITIL as their internal IT standard look forward to hiring people with ITIL certification. As mentioned previously these days even smaller to midsize companies are also looking forward to hiring ITIL certified people as the world is slowly and gradually understanding the importance of ITIL implemented with the organizations. Many company positions directly benefit from ITIL in place and the professionals at these positions must have ITIL certification in order to implement ITIL.
These company positions/careers include project manager, system administrator, Chief Information Officer, system architects, and engineers.
All these careers are in reach of ITIL certified professionals, as larger organizations with ITIL in place only focus on hiring the right candidate with the right skillset. For the organizations which have ITIL in place as their internal IT standard, their best bet is hiring more people with ITIL certifications that can teach or lead others in maintaining this standard.
ITIL certified individuals have many opportunities open to them given that they have some other qualifications as well. For instance, a project manager with ITIL certification can implement ITIL in one project and show its importance with the success of the project, and soon based on his successful implementation of ITIL strategy, the organization can ask this particular project manager to implement ITIL in the whole organization as well as increasing his management role and moving him up in the management position. Such cases are real and happen quite often to ITIL certified individuals.
Based on your level of ITIL certification companies offer you roles that fit your expertise. As mentioned in the uppercase if that particular project manager had ITIL expert or ITIL master certification then he might have not been asked to implement ITIL on a smaller project-level scale rather he/she would have been asked ITIL strategy directly on organizational level. And his/her job role would be better than the current, supposedly senior project manager or general manager.
Conclusion
Having ITIL certification does you no harm but gives you an upper edge in larger organizations where the competition is tough. These larger organizations look for the most amount of certifications along with good kind of experience in the resume while hiring new people.
As people with most skills are preferable in any business or at any job, the same goes for ITIL certifications. It is a globally accepted IT standard that most large organizations follow. And smaller organizations mostly follow footprints of larger organizations, so it is only a matter of time until smaller organizations reach up to the standards of larger organizations and ask their employees to get ITIL certification as well.
In this day and age skills speak louder than any action. When given any task to two professionals with similar skill sets, time of completion and quality of work is viewed to decide which individual has performed better. Quality of work is what one has more control over, and it can be enhanced by learning and testing your skills repeatedly.
Certifications allow you to do just that. Many professionals take ITIL certifications repeatedly to keep enhancing their skills and getting a better result (something close to an ITIL expert or ITIL master) over time. This lets individuals know where they stand regarding their own skills.
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