Do certification hurt the job hunting?

[ado ra]

I will get my master degree this December. I am MCSE, OCP DBA, JCP. I begin to send my resume through email to many companies one month ago. But till now, I only get three phone calls and one phone interview. What's wrong? Can someone tell me? I am sure my resume is perfect. And I do have some working experience in my assistantship. Do my certifications scare the company? Do those certifications let them think I am cheating? I am really confused now. Yes, I havn't too many experience. But at least those certification should prove that I have basic knowledge.
How will the company think about my certification?
Hope to get help!
Adora

[Peter Lyons]

I think the most important thing I did during my recent job search was do all the calling myself. In other words, if you send someone a resume, follow up with a phone call a few days later.

[fan mo]

My experience is:
* depend on where you live. If you live in CA, I don't believe
you only have several phone call and one interview with your
background.
* SCJP is not so useful. Company only care about professional
experience. I don't think SCJP is very very useful in job-hunting. What they asked me the most is whether I have
working experierence in software industry. So I suggest
people don't count on SCJP totally. It may let disappoint you
in your job-searching.
keep trying.

[Viji Bharat]

All:
Certification should help in the process. Adora, I won't think anyone would not call you because you have listed so many certifications in your resume. Well, how will the prospective employers know how you perform or how much you know without interviewing you? So, certifications should help if you answer their questions well.
Secondly, I would say, it is good to follow-up for before or after the interviews. Atleast, it will show that you are interested in the position/company and remember that they might have so many candidates sending in their resume so it is possible that they might take time to get back to you.
Having said all this, Adora, ALL THE VERY BEST to you in your job search.

[Steve Fahlbusch]

Adora,
Could your certifications hurt - yes in some instances, but overall i would say no. I would not discount a prospective hire based on certifications, but i would not tender an offer based solely on certifications either.
The same can be said for your masters, there may be some organizations that think you will be overqualified with a master, most probably wouldn't.
Key points:
Try to contact companies and see if they have some sort of college recuiter. I have seen many, many companies that hire to "junior" lever through the college recuiter while experienced through the "main" Human Resources.
While on the point of HR, a lot of times HR pre-screens applications prior to sending on. If the requriements for the job are a, b, and c; make sure in the cover letter or the resume you state "i know a, b and c". Make it easy for the HR people to send your resume (or application) on.
When i hire for senior positions, i could care less of education or certifications, i want to see the level of understanding of the area that person will be working. Usually I have the candidate make a presentation of some related topic, that the canidate has interest.
When i hire for junior positions, again i could care less of education or certiciations, i want to see how the candidate handles problems, defines solutions and communicates with others in the group he might be working with.
Why i have included the two paragraphs above is, everyone that hires does so in different ways. The more you can get to know about what the postion will be doing and how the interviewer likes to do things will help a lot.
Dont skimp on effort for your resume. Mostly everytime i send a resume it is a custom (one-off) for the particular position. I will stress what i consider to be important, i will outline the non-so-important.
Ask others who have been job searching lately. Find out who is hiring (when i was teaching, there would be periodic recruitment drives from certain companies, they would come in and make offers to 10-20 students at a time, then move on until 2 or 3 years later).
Make sure any professors that you have a good relationship with know you are interested in obtaining a job.
Have a pet project you can talk in detail about. It doesn't even have to be exactally what they are hiring for, but it is really great to see a candidate that can describe a project they really enjoyed working on and being able to elaboate on what things about the project were interesting.
And if you send a resume, follow up with a phone call.

hope the above helps
steve