Certs are maybe one of the last things my colleagues and I look for on a CV. However, in many cases, it does help a bit to have some relevant certificates listed there, especially if the candidate is applying for a junior position, or a position which does not explicitly require a tertiary degree, since it shows that they have made some effort in the right direction. Unfortunately, very often they had gone through some brain dumps and cannot demonstrate even basic subject matter knowledge in person.
When I worked for a company which tracked this religiously, an average junior candidate with at least one certificate listed on his application had a lower score than an average junior candidate. The observation was the same, people frequently sunk time into some cert which taught them some syntax quirks, or were so shallow that the basic concepts behind what they (supposedly) learned were totally foreign to them. Too little practical knowledge for it to matter.
