Tips on Preparing for Microsoft Certifications

There are many benefits to having Microsoft certifications. Whether you have a career in data, business analysis, marketing or coding, Microsoft certifications validate your skills and expertise in using Microsoft tools and functions. Most companies value Microsoft certifications and will consider certified professionals over non-certified candidates.

Personally, I’ve taken the Microsoft Power BI 70-778 exam and will be taking the AZ 900 Azure Fundamentals exam very soon. I’d like to share some tips on how those tests are prepared and how to prepare for them as I’ve done a lot of research in my preparation.

A few things to note:

• The Power BI 70-778 exam was a lot more technical and administrative than the AZ 900. The 70-778 contained things like:
  • Fix this DAX formula
  • Fix this M code
  • How do you do this in the service?
  • How do you manage all these types of security levels?
• In any Azure certification, even in the technical questions you are not asked to write anything. If there was a question asking you to fix a DAX formula, it would be a multiple choice or a drag and drop where you drag the correct function to put it in the proper place.
• The AZ 900 exam was more of a vocabulary-type exam. The focus was on questions such as:
  • What type of service would you need for a scenario?
  • What does this service do?
  • How do these SLAs affect each other? In other words, you’d need to know how different SLAs worked and what the percentages are for them.

My best advice is do research into each exam you plan on taking for your certifications. The layout and structure will be different on each one. There are multiple ways to prepare for these exams:

• One thing not to do: Go into an exam thinking, hey, I use this quite a bit so I could probably take the exam. I’ve been using Power BI for a long time and consider myself very strong in Power BI skills and knowledge. But if I didn’t study, I would have surely been tripped up.
• A great resource is Pragmatic Works training. Much of our Power BI courses align with the 70-778 exam. Our courses are not actually geared towards the exams, but you can check out Devin Knight’s blog Devin Knight@SQL where he points out which modules pertain to exams he has taken.
• There are lots of blogs out there with information on different exams and their structures, as well as topics covered.
• Measure Up is Microsoft’s official exam certification partner for study guides. I used Measure Up to study for the AZ900 exam and it was a great tool. With the vocabulary-type style of the Azure exam, I would have fumbled a bit without having used this study guide resource.

Hopefully these tips will help you on your certification endeavors. The most important thing is to do your research; there’s a ton of great information out there to prepare for exams so be sure you use it to help you be successful.

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