The Alteryx Core certification is a great way to test out your knowledge and skills. While also allowing you to add more certifications to your CV/resume and LinkedIn. You also earn a badge in the Alteryx community, which is a nice little reward to boost your confidence about your skills.
Last month, DSAU2 members, myself included completed the Alteryx Designer Core Exam. In this blog I will go through what the process was like and my tips for passing.
The Process
There are four levels of certification offered by Alteryx; Core, Advanced, Expert and Partner certification . The Core , Advanced certifications and Partner Certifications are free, so they are an excellent way to test your skills. When you register for an exam, at the start of the following month you will send an email with a link to the exam. Though a few of us from DSAU2 didn’t receive email with the link, but this was easily fixed by emailing Alteryx with our confirmation of registration. The exam contains multiple choice 80 questions and goes for 2 hours. In order to pass, you need to obtain 80% or higher, but you are given three attempts each month so there is no need to stress about this.
Tips for Preparing for the Exam
- Read over the exam prep guide. It has sample questions and what all the tools will be involved in the exam. The Core certification is 20 of the core tools, so make sure you know what tools are included.
- Do some Alteryx Challenges, there is no better way to understand how the core tool works than to actually using them.
Tips for During the Exam
- Have Alteryx open in the background during the exam. This is a great way to quickly check some tools that you are uncertain of. Also, you will need it for practical questions, so make sure it is open before you begin.
- Make use of the Alteryx Community and google. The exam is open book so use these to lookup or double check your answers. I found that for most general questions I used these to check my answers.
- Have a piece of paper to jot down questions you want to go over if you have time. Also make a note of the questions that are worth 3 marks, that way you can first go over the questions that are worth the most.
Tips for after the exam
Don’t stress about failing, your allowed three attempts each month, and it is free. They don’t give you the exact questions you get wrong, but they do tell you the percentage of correct answers for each category. So, use the results to improve in certain areas. For me, one of the areas I had to improve the most in was cross-tab and transpose, so I focused on this before my second attempt.
Most importantly have fun and take it as an opportunity to better understand tools, I definitely have a better understanding of the core tools in Alteryx after completing it. Now that I have passed, I hope that later this year when even greater knowledge and more experience, I will be ready to register for the Advanced certification.
I hope that this has been helpful in understanding the process and tips for preparing and passing the core certification.
