Yes, a bit. No, not nearly as much as some recruitment processes pretend.
I say that as someone who has more qualifications than you can count. Qualifications can give people a useful common vocabulary and a structured introduction to testing. ISTQB Foundation, for example, is a perfectly decent structured introduction to testing.
It also does not prove somebody can test a complicated live service.
When assessing testers, qualifications are one data point. What matters far more is whether they can think, challenge, investigate and explain risk when the neat textbook example has disappeared. If you need to assess real capability rather than count certificates, we can help with that.
You can learn the syllabus faster than you can learn the job
A motivated person can learn a lot of foundation-level testing theory in an afternoon of good videos and reading. What takes longer is judgement: knowing where to look, spotting weak assumptions, understanding delivery pressure, distinguishing a harmless oddity from a serious risk and explaining bad news to people who would rather not hear it. Qualifications are only one small input when deciding whether your testing supplier is any good.
That comes from doing the work.
Hire for evidence of thinking
Ask candidates how they approached an unfamiliar system, how they prioritised when time was short, what production defect changed their test approach, how they challenged a requirement and when they decided not to test something.
A certificate is useful supporting evidence. It should not outweigh years of strong practical experience, and it certainly should not rescue somebody who cannot explain how they would test anything beyond the textbook.
The same applies when buying consultancy. A slide listing accreditations is not the deliverable. The deliverable is useful judgement.
Qualifications are more useful at the beginning
For somebody entering testing, a structured foundation can stop them reinventing every concept from scratch. It introduces test design ideas, terminology and a way of thinking about defects and risk. That is worthwhile.
As people become more senior, evidence of judgement should matter far more. Can they design an approach for a messy system? Can they explain trade-offs to executives? Can they recognise when automation is the wrong investment? Can they lead through a major production problem without turning the retrospective into a witch hunt?
Those capabilities do not fit neatly into a multiple-choice exam, which is inconvenient for recruitment but rather important for the job.
If you want help reviewing the capability of a test team, supplier or candidate pool, talk to us. We can look at what people actually do, not just which logos fit along the bottom of their CV.