I was not successful in my first attempt to pass the Alteryx Core Exam. I faltered under the time pressure and didn’t finish the all 80 questions with in the 2-hours’ time. I was also complacent, I expected it to be “easy” as it was an open book, open to Google, open to check out all the resources in Alteryx platform kind of Exam. To my dismay, it was tougher than I thought. It is beyond theoretical functions of a tool and googling during the exam won’t help, its rather a waste of time. Moreover, you’re doomed if you spent more than 10 minutes on the practical part, which I did.
But as all that didn’t go well, it was an experience to learn from. Failing from the exam taught me to do better and study more smartly this time. Here are some insights I can share:
1. It’s okay to fail. The Alteryx Core exam can be taken as many times as possible until you pass. Actually, one of the best (or odd) ways to prepare for it is to take the exam itself. Being familiar with the exam environment helped me study better.
2. Give yourself time to learn. It’s a process. I personally think it was too soon to jump into the exam with just few days of being introduced to the software. I’ve read and watched all the Core Exam resources, but it isn’t enough without getting yourself truly familiar with the Core tools.
3. Internalize the “power” of each of the tools, in such a way that when you’re given an input and expected output, you can mentally figure out the tools required before bringing them into the canvas or vice versa. And this way, it can help you manage your time, bring up the speed in answering theoretical questions and more time to solve the practical ones.
4. Don’t depend on Google. Instead use the example button of the tool, most of the times the answers of the “tricky feature questions” are found there. While studying for the exam, look closely at each tool, run it and examine the input and output of the examples and these are already major clues for most theory questions.
5. Practice builds confidence. This couldn’t be emphasized more. I didn’t do enough practice before my first exam as I thought the training lessons were enough to get through the “easy exam”. So, try to do all the challenges in the Core guide. Some of them seems to be advanced problems but there are multiple ways to approach them. This is a good exercise to discover more new things.
6. Theoretically, you have 1.5 minutes to answer all 80 questions within two hours. But ideally spend only 30 seconds for a theory question and 4 minutes for ones with datasets. Mark an answer and if you are not sure, just flag it before proceeding and you can review it later when you have time. Manage your time and don’t leave any questions unanswered.
Since the day I failed I started fresh, practiced every day, did all the challenges in the guide and refer to the community and my colleagues for answers when I’m stuck. I took the exam again after 9 days or at least when I felt prepared for it and set my mind to accept whatever the outcome may be. The time pressure was still nerve wracking, but this time, I could answer the theory questions swiftly which gave me enough time to focus on the practical questions. I sort of ran out of time again, I wanted to go back to some answers I flagged but time was up. In the end, I was just relief to see a green letter this time.