Getting an Azure Certification is a great way to expand and validate your knowledge on the continuously evolving Microsoft Azure Cloud and give a boost to your career. In this blog post, I’d like to share with you 6 steps on how to prepare for an Azure Certification Exam:
Step 1: Get familiar with the exam’s outline
First, you’ll want to have a good understanding of what is expected of you to know for the exam. The best way for that is to refer to the exam’s outline on Microsoft’s website, download the outline in PDF format and keep it handy throughout your whole study process. The image below shows you where you can download the detailed outline (using the exam AZ-204 as an example):
Once you have the outline, you’ll want to carefully review the bullet points that are presented. These bullet points will be your compass and guide you to what to study for the exam. You should expect to be tested on every single of those points so be prepared!
Step 2: Search for resources
Once you’re aware of what you should study, you can start searching for resources that could help you. Microsoft provides great free learning paths for each of their exam that will help you to prepare. You can find that learning path on the bottom of each exam page (using the exam AZ-204 as an example):
Tip: if you’re planning to go through Microsoft’s learning path, I would suggest, if you don’t already have one, to create a Microsoft account before deep diving into the material. With a Microsoft account, you can gain experience points (and level up!) as you complete the different modules in the learning path, bookmark modules and keep track of your progress. It just makes the whole learning experience more fun in my opinion.
Also, there are some study guides that you can find on my blog (under Certifications > Microsoft) and other great study guides from multiple blogs that you can find on the web to help guide you in your studying. Thomas Maurer has an amazing blog for study guides and anything Microsoft’s tech related.
Furthermore, if you prefer to watch videos, there are great (paid) platforms such as Pluralsight, A Cloud Guru and CloudSkills.io just to name a few. On YouTube, John Savill’s Channel has great content on Azure.
The bottom line is, you should make your own research and compile a list of pertinent material that aligns with the exam’s outline to study.
Step 3: Plan
Once you have compiled the list of material that you’ll want to go through, you should start a plan. For example, you can start by studying the points that you are less familiar with. Also, each section in the exam’s outline has a ponderation which should give you a good idea on what the exam will focus on. The planning part is really up to you, but I suggest to still have one (even if it’s a rough one) to give you an idea of how long it will take you to reach your goal!
Step 4: Schedule your exam
You could schedule your exam once you’ve studied everything and feel ready to take the exam. However, I think scheduling your exam in advance (even if it’s 2-3 months from now) is a great way to keep you accountable become the exam now becomes “real”. If you’re approaching the exam’s day and you realize that you’re not ready, you can always reschedule it; just make sure that you respect the Microsoft’s reschedule policy, very important! Otherwise, you might be charged!
Tip: If you’re working for an employer, you should definitively ask if your company has vouchers!
You can schedule your exam from the exam’s page on Microsoft’s website as shown below and follow the steps (when you schedule your exam, I suggest that you use your personal Microsoft account):
Step 5: Study and Practice
Now, the fun and longest part of the process: study and practice! It’s time to go through the material that you’ve compiled earlier. I will leave this part up to you because everyone’s method is different. Also, if you have access to practice tests (such as MeasureUp), you should take advantage of them as they will give you a good idea of the format of the questions, what to expect and assess your knowledge. Make sure that your practice tests are Microsoft Certified.
Also, Microsoft recently released an “Exam Sandbox” where you’ll be able to experience the look and feel of the exam before you take it.
Step 6: Take the exam
Today’s the day! Here are some tips for your exam:
If your exam is at a test center, try to get there early. If you’ve decided to take the exam from another place other than the test center, prepare your workspace in advance and make sure you’re in a quiet closed room with a clear desk (all details and rules will be provided to you in the confirmation email of your exam).
If you’re not taking the exam from a test center, make sure you have a reliable network. Worst case, you can prepare a hotspot on your phone and switch to it if you lose connection to your main network during the exam.
Be conscious of the amount of time and questions you have for the exam (each exam is different).
Read each question very carefully - a piece of information could either be crucial or only there to mislead you, be careful!
If you’re not sure about the answer to a question, try not to spend too much time on it; you can mark it for review and get back to it later.
Try to give yourself some time at the end of your exam to review your answers
One last thing…
One last thing I’d like to say to you is to embrace the process every step of the way. The process will most likely not always be smooth and easy, you’ll probably have to study after-hours or early in the morning if you have a full-time job. However, never lose sight of your why and why you wanted to do this to begin with. For me, it was to expand my knowledge, keep myself up to date with the Microsoft Cloud to be able to provide more value to my work, team and projects.
I hope this article was helpful to you to prepare for your first/next Azure Certification Exam and I wish you all the very best in your studies and endeavours.
I’d love to hear your feedback and if you have any comments or there’s something you’d like to add based on your experience with Microsoft’s Certification Exams, please let me know in the comments below!
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