"When you had a stack of resumes, were certs and/or degrees a factor in which ones got interviewed?"
Good question. I need to add my IT career ended 10 years ago. So I was in networking from the beginning until 2004. Taught myself Novell - it was the first large scale solution. In the early 90's servers with networks was the new thing.
As a manager in the late 90's early 2000's I found the people who taught themselves were the best. They were at it all the time AND they could obviously learn on their own.
Now - to answer your question. Certs would mean something to me back then. All the BS people had was theory. A Novell cert, or a Citrix cert or a Cisco cert was good, but I was able to talk to all applicants. We had a "gauntlet" interview process. Every engineer was invited to interrogate every new hire!
A little rough on the applicants, but we got the best people. One guy went on the big a Big Dog at Citrix. He is still there.