A Step-by-Step Guide to Passing Alteryx Designer Core Certification
Are you preparing to take the Alteryx Designer Core Certification exam and wondering how to pass it within a month? In this article, I’ll share my personal approach that helped me succeed, which may be useful for you too.
Firstly, check out this article if you’re still unsure whether Alteryx Designer Certification is right for you.
Let’s start with some background information. The Alteryx Prep Guide for the Core exam is a great resource to help you prepare for the exam. They cover everything you need to know about the exam itself. However, in this article, I won’t write about the exam curriculum in-depth since there are many articles already available online.
Now, let’s dive into the steps I followed to pass the Alteryx Designer Core Certification exam within a month.
Step 1: Interactive Learning Path
Alteryx provides an interactive learning path (“Getting Started”) that guides you through a series of presentations of the tools you need to know for the exam. Instead of relying solely on this learning path to teach you everything you need to know, I recommend using it to get an overview of the tools and functionalities you need to understand in theory and practice during the exam.
Step 2: Take the Exam
Yes, you read it right, taking the exam is the second step! I took the exam not because I expected to pass it but as part of my preparation. I took my sweet time going through the exam questions and noted down some tricky ones to investigate later in my own time. When I submitted it after 2 hours, I had gone through approximately 70% of the questions. I ended up with an exam result of 58.7%, which meant I wasn’t far off from passing — I just needed to be quicker next time.
Step 3: Engage with Exam Questions
After my first failed exam attempt, I went through the questions I had noted down and researched the correct answers. In this process, I learned a lot more about the tools than just what was asked in those exam questions. Another welcome side-effect of this is that you get a good understanding of the Alteryx documentation. During the next exam attempt, you’ll read questions and remember where to find the info on the Community pages.
Step 4: Weekly Challenges
One thing I learned during my first exam attempt was that I lacked practice. Weekly Challenges are Alteryx tasks posted on the Community for all Alteryx practitioners to challenge themselves, maintain a diverse skillset, or even entertain themselves on a Tuesday morning. Weekly Challenges lend themselves well to better understanding tools and figuring out use cases.
The practical questions you will encounter during the exam will be similar to some of the Weekly Challenges on the Alteryx Community pages. The best approach here is to make sure you complete those Weekly Challenges that are recommended in the Core Certificate Prep Guide and, if needed, look up Weekly Challenges that cover tools you are struggling with using the labels on the right side of the screenshot below. The real win here is that each Weekly Challenge has several solutions posted in the comments. I have learned a lot just from trying to retrace other people’s workflows.
Step 5: Passing the Exam
I attempted the exam again 8 days after my first trial attempt. I recommend you take the exam every 7 days regardless of whether you feel ready. The exam is really the best prep material so the more you engage with it the better. You might fail the second and third attempts depending on what base knowledge you started with, but each exam attempt will take you a big step closer to passing.
Step 6: Leverage the Open-Book Format of the Exam
If you could use some advice on how to leverage the open-book format of this exam, check out this article I have written about step 6 and which pages to open in your browser before attempting the exam.
In conclusion, passing the Alteryx Designer Core Certification exam within a month is achievable if you allow yourself enough time to practise. The interactive learning path, completing Weekly Challenges, taking the exam regularly and engaging with the exam questions will give you the necessary practice and knowledge to pass the exam. Remember to leverage the open-book format of the exam and have the relevant pages open in your browser before attempting it.
I hope this advice is useful to build your own study plan — please reach out if you have any questions or let me know about your progress in the comments!
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