Format and value of Esri Technical Certification?

Any certification is meant to provide solid evidence that a person is familiar with a product. A person could put "ESRI Expert" on their resume whether or not it is true, but the certification would at least allow them to back up that claim.

As far as how much weight the certifications will hold, that will depend entirely on the company and what their feeling is on ESRI. If they are an ESRI partner company, then they would probably be looking for the kind of skills that the certification tests are examining. Based on ESRI’s position in the industry, they definitely should carry a lot of weight.

Either way, it looks like most of the certifications are testing a wide variety of GIS skills and not just the person’s ability to work with ESRI products. Even if you can't predict which companies will concern themselves with hiring ESRI certified employees, the knowledge you would develop studying for the test will benefit you.

Esri Technical Certification exams are offered worldwide through Pearson VUE, Esri's global testing partner. The computer-based exams consist of 90-95 multiple-choice questions and take approximately two hours to complete. Currently, they are offered in English only.

http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/winter1011articles/technical-certification.html

i did the beta for the desktop associate exam (bottom rung on the certification).

Multiple choice questions. All on the computer. Some diagrams as well.

• Def need to read up on the v10 stuff (or whatever is the latest version). Most of my experience is 9.2-->9.3.1, and there was quite a few Qs around specific new things at v10 which would have caught me out, but luckily I did a bit of revision with the web-help the week before.