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jimlucari

Re: Certification Training – How much do I need?

It is an often overlooked fact that training is not required before attempting to pass a certification exam. However, training is often what most certification candidates think about first. They often look at the certification they want and almost immediately look for the training to help them achieve their certification goal. This is understandable, since they are ultimately attempting to determine what is included in the exam. They want to know what they will be tested on, and they want to ensure they have the right skills and knowledge for the exam.

Candidates can find what topic areas are covered in the certification by finding the exam or exams related to the certification on our public website certification-learning.hpe.com and viewing the objective weighting for that exam.

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View the exam data card for Deploying HP FlexNetwork Core Technologies for an example. This is one of the quickest and easiest ways to determine what areas the certification will cover. On the page you will also find supporting curricula.

But how much is enough?  While the answer is subjective, here are a few guiding principles that will help you with HPE certifications. I’m sure that this guidance will work with other vendor certifications. To start, ask yourself how long you have been doing the job at a regular frequency. For the lowest level certifications, often doing the actual work for 2 or 3 years is usually sufficient. With the lowest level certifications this may be even less. Then look at the objective weighting and determine where your experience may have gaps. If there are a lot of gaps in what you believe your skills include, I suggest you take the recommended training. If there are only a few gaps, you may want to purchase an HPE Press study guide to review the areas you may not have had a chance to experience.

As you move up in levels, beyond the professional to expert or master, you will also find that training alone is likely not sufficient. That is because experts and masters should be able to solve new problems based on prior experience and knowledge. Often an expert or master level certification requires at least five to seven years or more, along with the recommended training.  Training at these levels, while as robust as possible, is not ever enough to generate five years of experience in a few weeks.

Helpful hint: Need help navigating to the exam data card? Visit certification-learning.com, select View all certification exams from Certification pull down. Select the exam you are interested in for the weighted objectives and exam content.

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What do you do from here? Determine your skills gaps from the data card for the exam, pick up a study guide, and select one or more classes if you need. All the best on your journey toward certification.

About the Author

jimlucari

Jim Lucari leads certification solutions enablement in Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s WW Sales Enablement organization. He is responsible for sales and technical certification exam development and program operation, certification course development, certification architecture and framework, translations, HPE Press publications, and remote lab operations. Jim has been in IT technology work for over 30 years with experience primarily in networking and storage technologies. He has 20 plus years of experience in training development and certification.

Comments

I have a log in for the HPE Learning Center and most of the certifications available there require training..

If they didn't require training I'd have more certifications or this case you might call them service qualifications.

As a point of clarification, service qualifications are not certifications. Certifications do not require training.