Does it mean you can test? As has already been stated above several times, certainly not.

Does it help? I can't really think of any situations where it would be a negative (at the worst, a non-factor maybe), so it certainly can't affect your employability - which, let's face it, is a rather important part of the "software testing career" experience.

On a personal note, I gained the ISTQB Foundation cert back in 2009, and it was one of the reasons my resume wasn't thrown in the bin (and for me giving an interview etc). So I can't categorically state that it helps in that regard, but on the other hand, I was thrown into an environment where I lost my bearings for the first few months and didn't apply a lot of the knowledge I'd acquired (both through previous job experience and the cert), so in that way it didn't prove that I could test at all.

Luckily they were patient with me...

Does it mean you can test? As has already been stated above several times, certainly not.

Does it help? I can't really think of any situations where it would be a negative (at the worst, a non-factor maybe), so it certainly can't affect your employability - which, let's face it, is a rather important part of the "software testing career" experience.

On a personal note, I gained the ISTQB Foundation cert back in 2009, and it was one of the reasons my resume wasn't thrown in the bin (and for me giving an interview etc). So I can't categorically state that it helps in that regard, but on the other hand, I was thrown into an environment where I lost my bearings for the first few months and didn't apply a lot of the knowledge I'd acquired (both through previous job experience and the cert), so in that way, it didn't prove that I could test at all.

Luckily they were patient with me...