In the last weeks we - DSDE2 -  prepared for taking Tableau’s Data Analyst Certification exam. Yesterday was the day I took the exam and luckily I passed. But because there were several ups and down during the preparation phase in regard to my optimism whether I’d pass or not, I decided to put my experience into words.

Our first exam - the Alteryx Designer Core Certification -  was comparably easy to prepare for. It’s an open book exam and you have the Alteryx challenges to give you helpful practical training. For Tableau’s Data Analyst Certification you have neither of this, which left me with a bit of uncertainty on how to study.

My first tip now that I have taken the exam: don’t waste too much time on practicing the hands on part. It doesn’t help much to do a lot of WorkoutWednesdays. The ten tasks that were given to me in the exam were fairly easy. You don’t need to remember difficult calculations or apply deeper logic, it’s really more showing that you know how to do certain things. Those things are listed in the Exam Guide and you should definitely look into the areas you would normally need to google first.

For the theoretical part of the exam I can recommend to check out the Study Guide with links to Tableau’s help pages. I did spent some time just reading those and recreating some of the examples which helped I think. There are definitely some calculations I usually don’t use that much (like FIRST() and LAST() or the different RANK functions) where I am glad I looked into before the exam. There are some pages out there that have practice questions and hands on tasks which are helpful as well. For the questions regarding Tableau Prep it might be a good idea to do a few Preppin’ Data Challenges, especially if you have not used it in a long time and might have forgotten some of the functionalities.

In my experience one of the main tasks of the whole exam is to take your time to really understand the questions. There is no need to rush. I took my time, read every question twice, reviewed all of them and still had 15-20 minutes left in the end. Some of the questions are weirdly put – especially for non-native speakers – and/or describe a whole scenario. Other questions might feel like (or in rare cases actually be) missing relevant information.

My last advice for taking the exam is talking to people who already took the exam. I for my part am always happy to help, so feel free to contact me!