No, it will look ugly if you don't know how to write a resume, nor how to spell.

Depends on what they are looking for.

Depends on the context that the cert was obtained.

Personally I have a lot of respect for someone who goes and gets a cert of any kind. I don't particularly have a lot of respect or expectation for the certs themselves.

You have to understand that companies create cert programs primariarly as a tool to sell product. Cisco is much more interested in cert candidates knowing all of the new funky bells and whistles in their product than they are in cert candidates knowing how to configure a Cisco device running IOS 9.x that's on an internal card in some old Synoptics or Cabletron hub, or INDX node. In the real world though, you may need to know how to do that.

Microsoft isn't any better nor are any other vendors.

Having a cert or certs is only one more clue about the type of candidate that I'm interviewing. It mainly shows the candidate isn't completely lazy and expecting that everything is going to be handed to him on a silver platter. But the lack of any certs at all isn't particularly a bad thing. It could show if the candidate has been working elsewhere that he's been too busy to get them - which might mean that the previous employer really depended on him to be doing a lot of things.

Now, with this in mind you have to be aware that as a general rule things work differently with small and large companies and hiring.

With a small company the hiring process is generally very short. Candidates quite often interview with their bosses right out of the box. The need for a long pedegree isn't that important except that without the pedegree and without the experience you are going to be offered a lot less money if they think you can do the job.

With a big company you almost always have several layers of 'flappers' who in the words of my sales manager, 'can't help you, but can hurt you' ie: people who offer nothing whatsover to the hiring process except obstructionism. Mostly these people are there to prevent total time-wasters, such as the candidates who are on unemployment and are just coming in to interview so they can tell the unemployment people that they interviewed at some place, and really don't want a job there. Unfortunately these flappers generally tremendously overestimate their own importance to the hiring process, and my experience is frequently reject perfectly usable candidates based on things like missing certs, degrees, etc.

So what it boils down to is there's no free lunch. If you say to hell with it I'll just shoot for gaining a job with no experience and no certs, then you probably should write off even an attempt to apply at a large company, and stick with applying at small companies, and accept that your going to have to take a lower wage for several years. If you gain the cert and have no experience then that opens the door to a larger company and probably better benefits, although still not that high a wage. And for someone new to the industry, it is highly advisable that you put in a few years working for a large company, because frankly once you get really skilled and good at your job, your probably not going to be willing to put up with the political bullcrap of a large company, and end up working for a smaller company at a much better environment, and better salary. And the experience at working at a large company is invaluable because until you have done it, you will not understand why many of the things exist in networking products.

Ted