Certification Exam Prep

It doesn’t matter what particular IT certification you may be chasing, or what kind of examination you may be facing, you always want to the materials and information to help you prepare for your ordeal.

Strange though it may seem, finding nonpareil materials doesn’t vary that much from subject to subject, either. I’ve been advising IT certification candidates on preparation tools and techniques for more than 15 years now, and have distilled my search techniques down into a laundry list of recommended tips and strategies, which I am happy to present here.

But if there’s only one thing you can take away from this article, let it be this: “Follow in the footsteps of those who’ve gone before you, and succeeded in their quests.” That means that assiduous and constant search for “good stuff” has to be your primary guiding principle, and your most important information source has to draw on the experience of those who’ve already taken and passed the exam (or exams) you’re currently preparing for.

In an earlier article entitled “Self-Study IT Certification Options” I already explored the kinds of preparation materials you’re most likely to find helpful in gearing up to take any kind of certification exam. In this article, my goal is a little bit different: given any particular type of study instrument (book, practice exam, flash cards, and so forth) or information resources (study group, online forum, online or physical labs, and so on), I’d like to help you determine how to select among the several to many options you’re likely to encounter as you dig into any one of these study elements.

In other words, the previous DIY article addresses what kinds of things you should look for or participate in to help you prepare for a certification exam; this article addresses how to separate the merely OK from the good to great things that you will find as your search efforts start to turn up results.

Ed Tittel is a 30-year-plus veteran of the computing industry, who’s worked as a programmer, a technical manager, a classroom instructor, a network consultant and a technical evangelist for companies that include Burroughs, Schlumberger, Novell, IBM/Tivoli and NetQoS. He has written and blogged for numerous publications, including Tom's Hardware, and is the author of over 140 computing books with a special emphasis on information security, Web markup languages and development tools, and Windows operating systems.