Written By Bhavesh Goswami, Founder & CEO, CloudThat
India’s technology workforce is at a pivotal moment; one that places cloud computing, artificial intelligence, data, and cybersecurity at the heart of the Viksit Bharat vision. With India’s economy currently at approximately US $4 trillion, several industry projections indicate that the technology and AI-led services sector alone will need to generate comparable economic value in the coming decades to sustain long-term growth. Simply put, India’s next growth chapter will be powered by a digitally skilled workforce.
This urgency is global, not local. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023 estimates that 44% of workers’ core skills will change by 2030, driven largely by AI, automation, and cloud adoption.
Certifications have therefore emerged as a structured and trusted pathway, offering learners clarity, globally recognised benchmarks, and employers a common standard to evaluate skills.
Yet as certifications become more widespread, an equally important question has surfaced: how do professionals ensure certifications lead to meaningful career outcomes? The challenge isn’t whether certifications matter but how intentionally they are chosen and applied.
What the Market Is Signalling
In real-world hiring, certifications serve a very practical purpose. Recruiters — often non-technical — rely on them as a first-level filter when hiring for cloud, AI, or DevOps roles. A recognisable certification logo on a resume or LinkedIn profile immediately signals baseline competence, improving a candidate’s visibility and shortlist probability in high-volume hiring environments.
Importantly, certifications are not viewed as job guarantees. Instead, they signal learning intent. Preparing for a certification demonstrates willingness to invest time, follow structured learning, and be formally assessed. In a market where many professionals claim skills without validation, that intent stands out.
There is also an enterprise-driven incentive. Most large service companies must maintain a minimum number of certified professionals to qualify for higher partnership tiers with hyperscalers such as AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud. As a result, hiring certified professionals, particularly in niche areas like AI and ML, can directly strengthen an organisation’s ecosystem standing.
However, this demand has also exposed a recurring issue: certifications are sometimes pursued faster than real capability is built.
Where Learners Go Wrong — and How to Choose With Intent
One of the biggest limitations of many traditional certifications is their lack of hands-on assessment. Theory-heavy exams can sometimes be cleared through memorisation or exam dumps, without developing applied expertise. This explains why interviewers occasionally encounter candidates with numerous certifications but shallow understanding, creating the misconception that certifications themselves lack value.
The issue, however, is not certifications but how they are consumed.
Tech leaders are actively responding to this gap. Microsoft’s “Applied Skills” credentials, introduced in 2023, are fully hands-on and scenario-based, validating practical, job-ready capabilities rather than theoretical recall. When combined with traditional certifications, such credentials offer a far more credible signal of readiness, demonstrating not just what learners know, but what they can execute.
Progression strategy matters just as much. Early in a learner’s journey, broad fundamentals across cloud, AI, and security are essential to understand how modern systems work together. But sustainable career growth requires depth in at least one clearly defined role. For instance, a systems engineer building strong hands-on expertise through certifications such as Microsoft AZ-104 or AWS SysOps Administrator is far more valuable than collecting many loosely connected credentials. Breadth builds awareness; depth builds trust.
Building Careers That Last
From a hiring perspective, certifications act as entry signals, not final decision-makers. Gartner explicitly notes that while certifications help with candidate shortlisting, hiring confidence increases significantly only when credentials are reinforced with hands-on experience and demonstrated skills. This becomes even more critical as skill relevance shortens. McKinsey estimates that the half-life of technical skills is now under five years, making continuous learning and credential refresh essential.
For non-computer science graduates, certifications paired with applied learning can be powerful career enablers. As enterprises increasingly adopt skills-first hiring, validated competencies are becoming more important than traditional degree backgrounds.
Ultimately, certifications still matter, but only when pursued with intent. In India’s rapidly evolving digital economy, sustainable success will belong to professionals who treat certifications as milestones within a broader journey: grounded in fundamentals, strengthened through hands-on practice, aligned with real-world roles, and continuously updated as technology evolves. Purpose — not volume — will define the future of cloud and AI careers.
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Views expressed are author's own. Apart from the headline, the EdexLive Desk has not edited the copy.
