Today, I took my first Tableau certification to become a Tableau Certified Data Analyst!
There are a lot of rules associated with the testing environment, so I decided against taking the exam in the office or from home. Some of the rules are that there can't be items in reach that would make it possible for you to cheat, nobody can enter the room you are in, you are not allowed to eat or drink or really look away from your monitor. That means that if you take the test online, you need to prove with photos that you are sitting on an empty desk or that nobody is in/or can enter your room, etc.
To be on the safe side on the day of the exam, I booked a test slot at a Pearson VUE test center.
The Booking
The booking is similar to booking an online exam. You can then instead search for test centers in your city and if they have free spots available. My city had four test centers, and in one of the two closest to me there still were a lot of appointments free for the end of the week.
The booking confirmation just tells you, that you need to have your ID with you when you go to the test center, but doesn't specify if you should bring anything else. The good news: you really only need your ID!
The Test Center
I arrived half an hour early to be on the safe side because there was no information about it on my booking confirmation. The staff at the center checked my ID, took a photo of me, and let me sign the test contract. Then I could decide if I wanted to start the test immediately or wait until the official start of my appointment.
The Exam
I had my exam in a small room with four desks. One other person was taking a test in it as well. We were divided by screens and obviously not allowed to talk. The test center staff watched us through a camera from outside, and if we had technical problems, we were instructed to lift up our arms so that they could come into the room to help us.
The tutorial section for the exam was going by a bit too quickly. I couldn't fully read and understand all of the 12 sheets in time. But after that, the exam went as I thought it would, and there were not a lot of technical difficulties. The only problems I sometimes had with the virtual Tableau testing environment were that the screen was quite small, and I had to do a lot of scrolling inside the program. That made it hard to drag and drop dimensions/measures, for example.
The only real technical difficulty I had was that on my computer, there was a German keyboard installed, but a US keyboard setting on the computer. That meant that all the symbols I needed for the coding parts were completely mixed up. I held up my hand to get some help from the staff, but they couldn't change my settings once the test was already running. They at least gave me a second US keyboard to look up on which key their symbols are. So for example instead of using ALT+CTRL+7 to get the '{', I needed to use SHIFT+Ü to get it. Very confusing, but somehow I managed it. ;-)
After Finishing
It took me around 90 minutes to finish the exam, and afterward, the test center staff immediately got a printout that showed that I passed the certification (Yaaay!). I was really surprised by that, I thought it would take a few hours to get confirmation.
All in all, I'm really happy I went to the test center so that somebody is there to help in case of technical difficulties. Extra stress on exam day is really not something I would have needed.
If you are taking your exam soon, I wish you the best of luck with your certification prep! :)