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Many will have both, so they are the pack.
To standout you need a bit internship, voluntary work, freelancing, recognised contribution to open source, or may be just held down a non-IT job.
Certs aren't that rare, if you have anything about you they aren't that demanding, well certainly not ones you can take from scratch....

The only only part they play as a differentiator, depends on what keywords a recruiter numpty uses in a word search.

"demonstrates potential which hiring managers and recruiters understand"

If that was true, there would be no certification merry-go-round. In fact that deliberate lack of understanding was created by the cert vendors to promote reselling.