Carrer advice & job progression

Degree suggests that the person might be more or less educated. A certification suggests that a person might be a well-trained monkey in some limited field of activity.

Education, if it is really well acquired, remains valuable for the person's lifetime. A certification makes some value just for few years at best.

I knew some decent software developers knowledgeable in computer science. I never new one who would be remotely interested in any kind of certification. I also changed job many time. I never felt lack of certification was a barrier of getting a job offer. However, there are number of jobs where certification is required or mentioned as "desirable". All such job has one feature: total lack of any creative work. Maybe this is fine. See by yourself what you want.

—SA

Having a certificate can help you get a job in the sense that you're more likely to get to the actual job interview, as you have a bit more to show than other applicants who has a similar level of experience and education.
However once you get to the interview a certificate it's null and void only the knowledge you gained while taking the certificate is worth something from that point.

What might also help you get to the job interview is participating in open source projects and/or contributing to coding communities like The Code Project.

I case you've forgotten, you posted a similar question 5 days ago
Best qualifications for getting a job as a VB.NET developer[^]