So last week I have passed the Alteryx Designer Core Certification. All data schoolers are asked to take the exam within the first month, as demanding as it sounds, it is still a pretty fruitful experience. For me I feel like I over-worried, so I thought I should blog about some personal experience during the exam and some tips so you would not spend the whole day before worrying instead of resting properly (which I did not, probably the first tip: Don't panic and take some good rest on the night before!).

Okay so you are probably preparing the certification and looking for some resources. And luckily lots of data schoolers have blogged about their experience too and they were really helpful to me (blog posts from: Alisha Dhillon, Louise Le and Henry Coley-Fisher). Try to read their blog posts too, because we might have run into the same situation as you would in the exam.

Some general exam information

The exam is 2 hours long, has 80 questions, all in multiple choices format. But there are 7 practical questions, which will need you to download the dataset and use Alteryx's workflow the find the answer. So those might be the questions you need to be more careful with, as practical questions worth higher marks than the general questions.

There are also some questions have the option of "select all that apply", make sure you read the questions carefully and do not miss any possible answers.

Now there are something you should do/know before the exam:

• Read the prep guide, know what kind of tools they will be examining
• Do some Alteryx weekly challenge, familiarise yourself with the tools
• Make sure you know the tools' basic functionality in Alteryx (e.g which tools can also perform the same function as the other tool)
• Have Alteryx designer opened before the exam, even if it is not a practical questions, you can still find the answer with a workflow.

Into the exam!

• Some would suggest to do the practical questions first as they worth higher points and might cost you more time
  • I would suggest not to as the exam has no way to indicate which questions are practical questions
  • You will need to flick through all questions to find them. So for me I did not follow that suggestion
  • So answer the questions IN ORDER
• Do not linger too long in one question
  • As we have only 2 hours and there are 80 questions. If you are stuck in a question for more than maybe 30 secs (my own standard here), flag it and come back to it later
• Even if you know the answer but unsure, flag it and come back later
  • I flagged around 10 questions in the end and went back to check when I know I had time left
  • Found 1 flagged question with the "select all that apply" where I did not select all correct answers, managed to retify on that one
• As the exam is "open book", try to keep a keep tab opened so you google whenever you are stuck, don't spend too much time though (see above).
• Time is tight yes, but make sure you read the questions carefully. As there might be questions testing your knowledge on specific tools

So these are my tips from the experience of taking the exam, hope you find it useful. I certainly did find the pervious blogs useful and they helped me a great deal in preparation, both physically and mentally.

I certainly feel a bit more confident in using Alteryx and feel more prepared in the upcoming challenges.