Success Stories
Clearing the first-job hurdle: The University of Missouri and the SAS Certified Professional Program team up to prepare students for life after college
Ray Bacon isn't a professor at the University of Missouri, but for eight days each semester you wouldn't know it. During these days, Bacon, a user support analyst for the Social Science Statistics Center at the University of Missouri, leads students through a grueling crash course in SAS programming. Eight sessions and sixty four hours of instruction later, many of his students are ready to take the certification exam to become SAS Certified Programmers.As anyone who has made the transition from college student to working world professional can attest, landing that first job is never easy. Even if you bring outstanding grades, interesting internships and an impeccable résumé to the table, standing out from hundreds of other applicants is tough. Luckily, University of Missouri students have Ray Bacon.
Twice a year, every year for the last several, Bacon, a SAS Certified Advanced Programmer, has made it his personal mission to arm a handful of students with a tool that helps them distinguish themselves from all the other graduates whose résumés lay in the same stack: professional certification from SAS. Fortunately for Bacon, the University of Missouri has been supportive of his goal to train the next generation of SAS programmers.
"Unlike some universities who can be out of touch with the demands of the business world their students will encounter post-graduation, the University of Missouri seeks out opportunities to educate their students beyond the traditional curriculum," Bacon explained. Given the supportive environment, Bacon put together a crash course in SAS which teaches students the basics of SAS programming. Bacon has offered the course six times in three years and estimates that he prepares about 30 students a semester.
Most of the students, Bacon explains, are graduate students or exceptionally bright upperclassmen who realize certification in SAS will prove a great résumé builder. They come from all different disciplines as well, with students from engineering, business, biochemistry, economics, statistics and other fields participating in the latest offering this past fall. The program consists of eight sessions totaling 64 hours of preparation. Bacon mostly uses material from SAS Education's course material and SAS Publication's preparation guide for certification.
"It's not a program for the faint-hearted," Bacon insisted. "We usually start with 30 or so students ? about 75% graduates, 25% undergraduates. We lose some along the way, but we usually have 20 or so complete the preparation. More than half of the remaining students then decide to take the certification exam and about 75% pass."
That's a pretty amazing success rate says SAS Certification Specialist Dawn Hopper. "To successfully sit for the exam we usually recommend at least a year of experience using SAS. For even a fraction of Ray's class to pass the exam says a lot about his course and maybe even more about the bright students they have at the university."
The University of Missouri has a fairly developed relationship and long history using SAS. SAS is used in many of the university's departments, by administers, professors and students alike. Bacon's program, however, helps the great number of students who use SAS, but have no way of exhibiting their expertise to prospective employers. "I really can't blame hiring mangers here," said Bacon. "Students might be able to list 'SAS proficiency' on their résumé, but without that internationally recognized credential it's really too risky for employers to hire someone who claims to be a SAS expert. With professional certification from SAS, however, there's no doubt."
Bacon says several of his students have landed great jobs using the SAS credentials they obtained as a result of the class. Dozens of students from the program have obtained jobs as SAS programmers in a variety of industries. A good example, Bacon says is former University of Missouri graduate student Prakash Gurumurthy.
"Though I had done a number of SAS programming projects during my undergraduate and master's program, the whole experience of preparing for and then passing the certification examination gave me enough confidence to apply for SAS analyst jobs with some of the top companies in the world." Gurumurthy offered. While many of his peers spent a year or more looking for a job, Gurumurthy noticed a difference in the level of interest he received from prospective employers almost immediately.
"After I secured my certification, the number of interviews I received increased dramatically," Gurumurthy exclaimed. Within a month of passing the Base SAS Programming exam, Gurumurthy landed a job as a Research Analyst for a Los Angeles based media and publishing company.
Success stories like Gurumurthy's keep Bacon interested in continuing the program. "I love the University of Missouri and SAS and this program allows me to serve our students in a way that makes a profound difference in their lives." Asked how long he plans to continue running the program Bacon laughed before sharing the good news: "Until someone makes me stop."
Students find SAS certifications valuable on both sides of the table
SAS certifications are an important tool - both for those seeking employment and for employers making hiring decisions. For two SAS users, the advantages of becoming certified have been and continue to be innumerable.Michael Tomb was first introduced to SAS in 1980. He was subcontracting for a company using proprietary FORTRAN routines to read a federal government tape containing more than 7 million records. The company had already put in two months of staff hours writing a FORTRAN program that ran into errors 3 million records into the tape. Debugging the problem was proving costly, and Tomb was asked to look into using SAS as an alternative. After an initial learning curve, he was able to write a 150-line program solution in a single afternoon. The company was so impressed that they hired Tomb as a regular employee.
"I guess you could say that SAS was responsible for my first professional job," he says now.
Although he wasn't certified at the time, Tomb went on to continue his SAS education. He took his first certification exam in 2000, when he found himself in the ironic position of hiring other SAS users for his consulting firm, Informatica ECS. "I was hoping to find that the SAS certification was a good screening tool to verify expertise. I was immediately impressed that this was true."
Paul Winters has been in a similar situation. While studying for his master's degree in applied statistics at Rochester Institute of Technology, Winters was advised by his department chair to learn SAS as a way to broaden his career opportunities. Winters purchased a student license and used SAS to complete coursework, eventually becoming certified in Base SAS.
"At the time, I had been working as a letter carrier for the United States Postal Service for 18 years," said Winters. "I knew that making a career change would be difficult without any professional experience."
Today, Winters is lead programmer/analyst for the University of Rochester Medical Center and teaches an advanced, graduate-level SAS course at the university - a degree requirement for a doctorate in epidemiology. Once a student, now the teacher, Winters said he finds value not only in learning and teaching SAS but also in gaining certification.
"It clearly gave me an advantage in obtaining my current position by giving me a professional credential without much experience," he said.
Tomb, a business owner with 20 years of experience and a SAS Certified Advanced Programmer himself, agrees. "I now believe that Base SAS certification should be a requirement for any job description that assumes SAS knowledge. I am also convinced that if an individual is one of 150 or so SAS Certified Advanced Programmers in the United States, that distinction should really interest potential employers."
Both Tomb and Winters plan to continue their training. Tomb is currently considering whether to seek server-side certification as a SAS webAF developer. Meanwhile, Winters hopes to sit for the SAS Certified Advanced Programmer certification in the near future.
"Base SAS was an important and incredibly useful tool in 1980, and this has continued until today," Tomb said. "Many other fashions, languages and platforms have come and gone, but SAS remains."