This subject came up in class today when talking with my students. Many of the students in the class are preparing for a certification test and wanted to know how the other students were going to prepare for their exams. This was a group of very experienced professionals most of whom had numerous certifications and I thought this would be an interesting topic to pursue. So I posed the question this question to them: “What do you use to prepare for certification exams?” The responses were varied and quite Illuminating. Some of these students have an impressive study regimen!
There were varied answers – but all of them included some sort of hands-on experience. Many of the students had at least one server with several students having 2 or more servers at home. There was one student who had an extensive network of 8+ servers, several routers and switches and other devices – but he was an exception. In many cases, the students with just one or two servers were using them to run virtual machines for their studying (and fun – after all – that is what we do – play with computers!). One student used a test-bed network at his work to prepare for his certification tests. But they all had some network to actually work with the product.
The one thing in common theme amongst all of these students was that they had hands on experience with the product – either at work or in their own home network. Over the years, I have had students who have had very little hands-on experience and yet have still managed to pass their exams. In some cases this was due to their memory, in others they were able to use the experience in the classroom to help them prepare for their test.
I am not going to go down that thorny path of discussing braindumps – this is not the time nor place for such a topic – maybe in a later post we can discuss the ethics of using them and what they mean to the IT industry as a whole.
So what do you need to pass a certification test? A good understanding of the subject matter, lots of hands-on experience and a willingness to spend the time to prepare – seems simple enough, right?
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