I became a Zend Certified Engineer in January 2009. At the time, I was more excited that there were under 50 PHP 5 Zend Certified Engineers in Texas than I was to actually be one of them! But I believe the Zend Certification is an important credential — especially as a PHP developer. Being a ZCE doesn’t mean you’re a good programmer, but because the barrier to entry is so low for PHP, it establishes that you at least know the language well. I’ve met people who’ve claimed to be PHP programmers simply because they installed and customized a PHP script. Being a Zend Certified Engineer doesn’t mean you’re great programmer, but at least it shows that you know PHP.
The biggest problem with the Zend Certification is its limited scope. It really only tests one thing — whether you know PHP. It will definitely test that you understand the difference between all the different sort methods and that you more or less know the order of parameters for all the important PHP functions (and several that you may not have thought were important), but when you think “Zend Certified Engineer”, you think of someone who understands what is required to build an enterprise-level PHP application that’s secure and scales well without any major maintenance issues. The biggest shortcoming with the exam is that it simply fails to test those things.
The good news is most recruiters don’t know that! Or if they do, they don’t care! (Maybe I’ve just had bad luck, but I’m impressed when I meet a recruiter who knows the difference between Java and JavaScript.) Being a ZCE has one major advantage that I’ve seen: if there are a couple dozen resumes sitting in a pile, the handful that say clearly Zend Certified Engineer will likely be moved to the top. Those candidates are simply the most likely to be qualified. Now the key is if it says Zend Certified Engineer, there’d better be some good work experience, or chances are it’s going to be a disappointment!
Here’s my actual listing in Zend Yellowpages: Richard Morgan