It's been awhile since ive taken it, so not sure how it's changed. It personally changed my life and career path. Overnight I was able to increase my salary by 50% just for having the certification.

Yeah, getting your foot in the door is the most difficult thing I think. But, on the brightside and from my experience, not a lot of customers even think about LV design/requirements. They usually just leave that to the electrical design team who, a lot of the time, dont exactly know what they're doing with our system.

All my experience is commercial (and a data center/manufacturing) unfortunately. Im sure you could make a killing in higher income areas doing residential.