Instead of taking on a project last Friday, we were instead tasked with sitting our first attempt at the Core certification for Alteryx Designer. Thankfully, I managed to pass the exam which means I can now continue to solidify my abilities and look towards achieving the Advanced certification further down the line!
What is the Core certification? Well, as the name suggests, this exam allows users to test their knowledge in the 'core' principles of Alteryx, including questions about the fundamentals of the programme and the most frequently used tools within it. Upon passing, the certification is valid for 2 years, before you need to renew. However, if you are to pass the advanced exam within these two years, your Core 'expiration time' will automatically reset!
How is it examined? The certification consists of a 2-hour exam, inclusive of 80 multiple choice and practical questions that require quick building of workflows. It's also worth mentioning that, although the exam is open book, I wouldn't rely on this too heavily, and you should try and stick to short google searches and key pages on the community help page to prevent going down rabbit holes and eating into your time. Finally, the pass mark is 80%. Full details can be found in the official exam prep guide.
So, how is it? Quite a common feeling amongst everyone is that the questions themselves were fairly straight forward, other than a few bits of awkward wording. However, the real kicker was how tight time was. Whilst 90 seconds for each question seems generous, this soon disappears once you digest the question and hop over into Alteryx, especially if you begin to stumble upon issues. Although I did manage to finish (with only 5 seconds remaining!), there was no time to go back and check anything which is obviously a bit of an issue.
How to alleviate some of this time pressure? Much like most things in life, I found that preparing for the exam really put me in a good position. When I say this, I don't mean sitting up all night revising and spending days on end in Alteryx, though that's obviously not going to hurt! I actually mean just doing some common sense steps so you can skip the tedious parts of getting going. Here are a few tips that certainly benefited me:
- If possible, use more than one monitor! I hooked my laptop up to a second monitor and used one for 2 x Alteryx instances and the other for the exam and the community help page/google!
- Prepare a dummy workflow. I set one up with a text input with around 3 columns and 5-6 rows, including a few different data types, before adding a select and browse tool just in anticipation of things that may come up. Having this handy means you can quickly throw extra tools on and configure them as necessary to help visualise an answer.
- Stick to reliable sources for your 'open book' searching; use the Alteryx community help pages and official documentation, as well as the examples that you can find by clicking on a tool within the software and pressing 'open example'.
- Struggling with a question? Bookmark it and come back to it later! I have to admit that somebody told me about this feature after the exam. I went through the certification without realising this was possible which added a bit of stress, thinking I needed to figure out a question before I could proceed. However, apparently there is an interface at the top which allows you to pin it and come back at the end - at least I know now for the advanced exam!
- If you need to prioritise, shoot for the practical questions first! These require you to download datasets, input them and then build a workflow to arrive at one of the multiple choice answers and so are naturally more time-consuming. Because of this, they're also worth more marks and so it'd be sensible to put these ahead of the others if you really need to. However, the goal is obviously to answer all of the questions!
Hopefully this little blog has given you a bit of extra insight into the Alteryx Core certification and fingers crossed some of these little tips can help to take some of the time pressure of your shoulders. If you need any extra help in preparing then, as well as just getting your hands dirty and playing around in Alteryx, there are plenty of great resources online, including a short mock test! Good luck!