The Certification Foo node has some interesting opinions in this regard.

My advice would be to find an application you think needs written and write it. :) Share it with people, solicit their opinions, and keep making it better.

If there's an existing project that you're really interested in, then try getting involved with that, too. (The added benefit there is getting experience working with a project team.)

The general idea is to build a body of work that shows what you can do.

- Matt Riffle

Update:

Just for fun, I poked around with Google a bit looking for more opinions on the worthlessness of certifications.

In reply to Re: Perl Certifications and/or Professional Development by mattriff
in thread Perl Certifications and/or Professional Development by jerrygarciuh

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.