Microsoft Azure Certifications: Tips for test takers

There is nothing better than receiving an email from Microsoft that says “Congratulations on successfully completing your Certification and advancing your career! A Microsoft certification can help you advance your skills, demonstrate clear business impact, get hired, or earn a raise” after preparing for months and taking a certification test.

All that hard work has payed off and now you have a wonderful badge that you can share with the world, however taking certifications tests can be a very stressing and nerve braking situation if you are not well prepared. However most of the times everything will go well.

So after running against the clock to take AZ-301 in order to complete the Microsoft Expert Path I’ve been pursing I want to share with you some of my experience about test taking and how to prepare well:

Preparing for the test

• Schedule the test and set up a deadline, Don’t postpone it too much.
  
• Take at least 1 hour daily to study, plan ahead the subjects, depending on your experience level it could take 1 or 2 months to prepare for a certification.
• Don’t only focus on theory, connect to the Azure Portal and start playing

• Take several practice tests, I would always recommend to try https://www.whizlabs.com/, their test are very close to the real deal.
• Once you take the test review the results and focus on your weak areas.

Before the test

• Check the technical requirements the days before the test to make sure that your PC is supported, so in case you have problems you can borrow or use another PC.
• Have your phone and passport on hand.
• Don’t drink to much water and go to the bathroom, the exams can be long.
• Restart your PC
• Check that your webcam works
• Close all applications and stop some unneeded services (steam)
• Run the Person’s Vue System test at least 1 hour before exam to avoid any surprises
• Join the exam 10 minutes before, have your phone and a passeport ready.
• Avoid bluetooth devices, the test client might be very resource intensive.
• Deactivate temporarily your anti virus protection.
• When you launch the test there might be a popup Windows Firewall alert that triggers, be sure to select private networks and public networks just in case, and click allow access.

• Just relax and breath a bit, if you fail it’s not the end of the world, you can always retake the test.

During the test

• If your camera stops working, they will contact you and you will have to re launch the test.
  
• In extreme cases you can close your laptop wait a few seconds, reopen it and relaunch the test.
  
• If you have to restart your PC, contact them using the chat button and tell them you are going to restart your PC.
• You can join the same session using the already downloaded PersonVue client and the same access code.
  
• At the end if everything else fails you will have to call PersonVue and reschedule the test, they will send you an email within 5-8 business days with a voucher to reschedule your test.
  After the test

After the test

Celebrate and share with us!