I think that education on a subject is wonderful and everyone should go out and get that education. And certification? Fine, because that entails a lot of training and education.
But Certification for proof that you know what you are doing,.. I find it useless when hiring. I have found, personally, that my favorite approach to hiring is this:
Quick glance at skills
Quick chat on phone
Drop a few questions - Whats the difference between UDP/TCP? What would the command 'ss' do? How many bits in a byte?
If i'm satisfied that it is a candidate im interested in -- "SSH to this box and install and configure nginx, dnsmasq, php, and mysql to work according to the requirements on
http://youareinterviewingwithmenow.mycompany.com
If they can do that, I will schedule an additional onsite interview that consists of a similar test, in front of me.
Certifications -- I've had plenty of people that obviously cheated, that had certifications.