Last week, I had the opportunity to take both the Alteryx Foundational Micro-Credential and the Designer Core Certification. As someone who hasn't taken an exam of over two hours in 10 years, I was nervous to begin. Here are some tips I can share that helped me pass the Core Certification.
Exam basics:
- Free
- 80 Questions
- Multiple choice and multi-select
- 2 hours 30 minutes
- Passing Score: Changes (keep an eye out for the page before starting your exam)
- Exam can be taken once every 7 days (if failed)
- Tools covered:
Tips:
Make a game plan.
One of the most important things to do before taking the exam is to figure out your time. Due to the breakdown of the exam, some questions are worth more and should be allocated additional time. Why is planning your time important? It allows you to keep yourself on track and prioritize what needs to be done. The best thing about having a game plan is the ability to pivot once things go wrong. My plan included me taking around a minute for 1-point questions and around 5-7 for 3-point questions. However, after completing only 30/80 questions in over an hour, I knew I had to switch up my tactic. I was only aware of that because I set a plan and noticed I was dramatically off. I took a step away from the computer came back about 5 minutes later and pushed forward cutting time in questions I was confident about. This 5-minute break (though not built-in) provided me with the time I needed to reset and focus… especially because I wasn’t used to the test length.
Have all materials open.
The entire exam is open book. This is because in real-world applications you will have access to outside resources. By having a few resources open you are saving your time in opening them during the exam.
These are a few resources I had open prior to beginning:
If possible have two monitors available to you while taking the exam. This is one point I wish I did during my exam. It can be time-consuming to switch from one view to another in order to do searches or work within Alteryx on one screen. By having two monitors you can have one strictly for Alteryx and another for searching and the exam.
Keep Alteryx handy/ Text Input will be your best friend.
Have Alteryx open during the exam! Though a majority of the questions can be answered by memory, it is great to have Alteryx open to double-check your answers. Along with that, by having Alteryx open you can use text input! Text input was a lifesaver for me throughout the exam. The great thing about text input is that you can take a portion of the data write it in and then test possible solutions.
*Even though you can do this for the majority of the exam watch out how reliant you become on it as it can be a huge time suck.
Read every question carefully.
Take time to make sure you are reading the question carefully and know what they are asking. The exam isn't meant to trip you up, but there will be times that there will be more than one possible answer. In these, cases take a second and think about which answer is most correct.