I liked what I read somewhere one time... "IT Certs are for getting past the HR droids." If someone has MCSE on their resume, you KNOW that they don't understand the software... they just know the GUIs. The worse ones are the folks who put it on their business card; you can guarantee that they will be the ones stumped by the most basic problems. MCSE's are generally negative points when I look at people's resumes. Other product specific ones are ok if the person will be doing a job with that software, but you know that the person probably isn't that flexible when the firm drops that software.