In this blog, I will go through some of the ways I prepped for the Alteryx Designer Core Exam, along with some useful tricks that I believe helped me pass.
I wont go into what the exam is or how it is formatted as there are countless blogs/internet posts which will tell you just that. What I aim to do is to give you my experience of taking the exam and what I felt helped. To start, the main thing I want to get across is don't be afraid to fail!
In my experience, I would say it is actually kind of a good thing to fail on your first time (of course passing first time is great but failing is when you really start to learn the ins and outs of Alteryx tools). After failing, I really started to delve into each tool, how they work. After practicing, I can really say that I understand why I would use a certain tool now.
When I started in the DS, I was not very technical (or so I thought) and initially I struggled to keep up with the rest of my cohort when we were doing Alteryx. I found some of the basic challenges difficult and worried whether I would ever be able to pass the Core exam. Maybe this was my imposter syndrome kicking in...
Three weeks into training, we were tasked with taking the Core exam. We were to take it and use it as a learning curve to practice and get our heads around how the exam worked. We took it and some of my cohort passed first time. I started to doubt even more that I would be able to pass but trust me, take the exam - even if you don't feel fully prepared. You will get there in the end!
Taking it gave me such a good idea as to the timing, layout and structure of the exam - much more than any blog could! From here, I worked on the areas that I fell down in and eventually I passed!
The way I went about taking the exam was:
- Taking the exam as a practice run. If you pass then brilliant, if not, now you know what areas to focus on.
- Use google. This is an open book exam and google is your best friend. There are hundreds of free resources available.
- Answer the general/multiple choice questions you know and bookmark the rest for later. Don't spend too long on questions you aren't sure of, leave it and come back. You never know, you may come across another question which answers it for you!
- Timing is key! The exam is 2 hours and it goes by very fast. The practical questions take more time and are worth more so focus on these.
- Guess - in my experience, it is better to make an education guess (by process of elimination opposed to leaving lots of questions blank)
- Don't compare yourself to others! Everyone learns and takes exams different. This exam differs for every person and the questions change each time. One person may guess 10 questions and get them all right, whilst you get the same ones wrong. Use each fail as a chance to learn.