Certification – Conclusion

Well, if you got this far, you should have everything that you need to pass your certification with flying colours. Once you have it, take a few weeks to relax (and gloat, if you are so inclined). Then, work on maintaining it and look for your next challenge. Try not to rest on your laurels too much, or someone will pass you up. It’s always easier to maintain a lead than to catch up to someone else or a changed industry.

I hope that this helped.

Certification – Test Types

There are generally two types of tests. Those which you can go back and look at questions once you’ve answered them (generally paper-based) and those where you cannot (generally practica or “live” tests). Each of these have different strategies to win.

Paper-based
If you are taking a paper test, go through it as fast as you can and answer everything that you KNOW. If you don’t know, skip it. You should be done very quickly. Then, go back through the test and look at the ones that you didn’t know right away. If it’s multiple choice or true/false, find the answers that you KNOW are wrong, and cross those out. You’re not actually answering questions at this point, you’re just eliminating possibilities. Then, go back through and see if you KNOW any of them now that you’ve eliminated the ones that were obviously wrong. This also should not take much time.

By this point, most of the test should be answered, and the good news is that these answers are things that you know are correct, and with absolute certainty. Now you get to actually start thinking about the remaining questions. This will be hard, but you have to keep in mind that you have already answered most of the questions right. It’s OK if the hard questions are hard, just do the best you can. If you’re stuck, try to think of a real-life scenario involving the question and ask what you would do. You can also flip the question around and see what you would do if the situation were reversed. This may make the correct answer more obvious.

If there is an essay component to the test, do NOT just start writing. First, take notes of what you want to say. Then, categorize the notes by putting a letter in front of each key item. Then, within each category, prioritize the importance by putting a number in front of the letter. Then, write an introduction and segue into point 1A. Once you’ve addressed that, go to 2A, to 3A and all the way until you’re done with the As. Then start with 1B. At this point, your essay has become a game of connect the dots, and you can just write until you’re done. Don’t worry about style, the examiner is looking for correct information, not a brilliant expression of ideas.

Live Tests
As computers advance, these tests are becoming more popular. They allow the test to adjust itself to your level. Sometimes this is used to give you challenging questions, sometimes it’s used to drive you into an area that you do not know so well. On tests like this, you have to know the scoring. Keep a mental tally on how you are doing and how much of a penalty you may get by skipping questions. Then, allocate time based on what you need to do the best. It’s often better to take more time on each question than on the paper tests, because of how wrong answers can impact the questions that you get later.

Practicum
When taking a practicum, you cannot use strategy to manipulate the test system to your advantage. You either solve the problem or you do not. Luckily, there are often multiple problems to solve, so start with the ones that you know best. However, do NOT assume anything. Do not make any changes that you cannot test. Test before a change and then test after, to make sure that your change did what you think. If you have to restart a service, test after the restart, to make sure that your changes persisted. On many systems, it is easy to forget that some changes only affect the running system and are lost on a reboot. (Cisco is tricky this way.)

Also, use proper diagnostics. Test at the boundaries or interface layers. On modern systems, this is often the TCPIP stack, so use tools like netcat and telnet to ensure that the interfaces are responding properly.

Most systems also come with built-in reference documentation. Whether it is a commented configuration file, the documentation that came with the package, or a man/help page, know where to find the information and verify that you understand what you think you do.

Lastly, at the end of a test or scenario, RETEST everything that you’ve done. Make SURE that the problem is solved. It’s much too easy to break one thing when you’re fixing another.

Certification – How to test

Once you’ve prepared, you will do well on the test… unless you do something stupid. Luckily, by this point, you will know that you know enough to pass. You can let the worry go and instead of trying to succeed, you can simply focus on not screwing up. It is much easier just not to screw up. So, let’s talk a bit on how to do that:

Dealing With Panic
If you panic, you’re likely to do stupid things like skip questions, forget directions and so forth. So, don’t panic.

Yeah, like that’s going to help.

If you find yourself panicking, take a break and count to 10, slowly. Then, write down on a spare piece of paper what you’re panicking about. Odds are that your brain is stuck in a loop, and by getting things down on paper, you can see the loop. Then, find where your thinking is illogical and cross that item out. Go through the loop and eliminate the stupid thoughts. This entire process will feel like it’s taking an hour. It’s likely taking less than five minutes, so don’t worry about the time lost.

If you were panicking, those five minutes wouldn’t have been productive anyway.

Protein
If you run out of energy, you’ll know. Your thoughts will start to drift and you’ll be distracted. You may feel tired. Odds are that you will NOT feel hungry. This is because your body is stupid and doesn’t tell you what’s going on. Bring protein with you. Peanuts are good, energy bars are good. Candy is BAD. Coffee is BAD. If you start to drift, have a small bite of protein. Keep this up throughout the test. Have a bottle of water to drink too. Keep the cap on (so you don’t spill) and take small sips.

After the test, you’ll feel weird. That’s a sort of protein high, and it’ll wear off. The important thing is to keep giving your brain the food and hydration it needs. Your body can be confused for a bit, it’s OK.

By the way, the reason to avoid candy (sugar) and coffee (caffeine) is because these give you easy energy. Once the easy energy is used up, your system will crash. Some people try to “ride the high” through a test. However, since crashing affects your thinking, it will impact both the results of the test and your perception as to where you are on the “high”. An exam is the wrong time to try to reprogram your brain. Use the protein, it’s more stable.

Set Milestones
Every certification test that I know uses time to control the test. Therefore, the clock is your enemy. To win, you must control the clock by figuring out how long you have, and setting milestones. Do not worry about how much time you have until the end of the test, worry about how much time you have for each question, each page, or each task. Then, if you beat time, take a short break (1 minute) to regroup and continue. If you do not beat time, at least you are aware of where you stand.

The milestones that you set will vary by test type.

Certification – How to study

Whatever path you are taking towards certification, you will have to study. Many of you probably haven’t studied since you were in school (and I suspect that some of you didn’t study much then). There are many guides online that teach excellent study habits, so I will just gloss over a few important points.

Test yourself
Test yourself often. Nightly is good, because it fits into a daily review schedule and helps you to focus the next day’s studying. If you are on a longer path, weekly testing may work better.

Know what you know
You must be honest with yourself in this process. If you know something cold, stop studying it and stop testing yourself on it. Make a note to test yourself again in a week. If you still know it cold, test again in two weeks (and so on). That way, you know what you know, which leaves you free to focus on what you do not know. It also reduces the “second guessing panic” that can occur on an actual test.

Know what you do not know
Your honesty must extend to what you do not know. The whole point of studying is to learn something, so there is no shame in missing a test question. Just note that you don’t know that subject well, and study it more before you test yourself again.

Use T-Notes
Really. They’re awesome. Don’t remember how to do this? Simply take a piece of paper (preferably lined) and draw a line down the middle. On the left hand side write a topic, and on the right, write notes that relate to the topic. As you go, narrow the topics and notes down to a one to one correspondence. In other words, you want to wind up with something like this:

--------------------------------------------

Why Certify?          | Improve Understanding

Which Certification?  | GIAC

Cost?                 | $3000 / 300 hours

Value?                | High

Study?                | Nightly

Test?                 | Stay Calm

That way, when you are testing yourself, you can cover the right-hand side and run down the column. Every time you get one right, put a mark next to it. Then, after several testing sessions, you will have a good idea what you know and what you do not.

Use Flash-cards
Get index cards, and in one colour, write a question on a side. On the other side, in a different colour, write an answer. Then, when you’re testing yourself, you can quickly flip through the deck, putting the ones you got wrong in a separate pile. Once you’re done, repeat with the wrong pile. Repeat until the separate pile is gone, then start again with the full deck. Repeat until you can go through the whole deck without missing a single question.

Be sure to shuffle, so you do not get used to a pattern and stop thinking about the actual question. If you get the cards mixed up, use the colours to make sure that they’re all oriented correctly.

Break Things
If you are going after a technical certification, break your system (or better yet, have a friend break it for you). NOTHING teaches you how things work like trying to fix them. If you are going for an admin certification, fix a system. If you’re going for a programming certification, find an open source project in your language and fix some bugs. That will advance your learning faster than anything else you can do.

Give a Talk
Much like breaking things teaches you how things work, talking about what you know makes you know it better. You can stand in front of people and give a formal talk. You can blog about your learning and have a dialogue with people. You can record yourself and podcast or YouTube yourself. It doesn’t matter how, just communicate what you’re doing to others and it will very quickly start making more sense to you.

Have a Plan, Do The Plan
Before you start studying, figure out what “success” looks like. For me, it’s having 100% accuracy on my flash-cards, problem solving sessions, and T-note tests. Others accept lower success rates. Others prefer to learn X new things. Whatever your “success” is, make sure that you have a plan to get there by the time you take your test. Then, once you have a plan, follow it.

A lot of people have trouble following plans because “life gets in the way”. They may play mental games like “I’ll skip tonight’s session and just do two tomorrow” or “I know this stuff, I don’t really have to test myself on it.” I’m going to be blunt here. People are lazy. ALL people are lazy. When you find yourself thinking this way, recognize that your lazy self is trying to take over. DON’T LET IT. Every time you think this way, it is a battle, and every time you cave, you lose the battle. Once you have a pattern of losing the battle, you’ve lost the war.

Know what that makes you? A loser.

Don’t be a loser.

Do NOT Cram
Cramming doesn’t work. All it does is make it less likely that you will sleep well before you take a test. Have a good dinner. Set several alarm clocks, and go to bed early. If you can’t sleep, get up and go for a quick run, then go back to bed. That way, you’ll be rested, energized, and alert before you take your test.

Certification – Costs of Maintaining a Certification

The act of maintain a certification also has associated costs.

Re-testing
Some certifications require you to re-test every so many years (often four). That means that you have to budget for both the test itself and either the time to prepare to take the test or a refresh course. Keep in mind that the more technical the certification, the more things will change between tests. This will affect your prep time estimate or drive the need to go to a prep course. In either case, understand that the value of a second test to maintain your certification ensures that you still know and understand the subject sufficiently to be certified in it. Thus, certifications that require re-testing often maintain their value better than the ones that do not.

Dues
Some certifications require yearly dues to maintain your certified status. This practice helps to maintain the financial solvency of the certifying body. However, it does put you in the position to yearly decide whether the certification is giving you a value equivalent to the cost of the dues. If all the organization is doing for you is taking your money, I would suggest that may not be worth it. Consider any other opportunities that may come your way because of your certified status. Some “member” programs that go with the dues will give you discounts on programs or access to a group of experts. If you are availing yourself of such resources, by all means, pay the dues. However, be sure to think about WHY you’re paying the dues instead of just paying them.

Continuing Education
Many certifications have a continuing education requirement. In other words, in order to maintain your certified status, you need to dedicate time and money to continuously educating yourself in your field. This can be a pain, as you must, at the end of every cycle (usually one year) demonstrate that you have been learning. If you are not good with time management, it can produce a rush to complete education before you lose your certification.

You can get around this problem by treating the process like the running of a marathon. Every week, you just make a small step towards your CPE goal, and by the end of the cycle, you should be well ahead of where you need to be. This not only fulfills the requirements, but continuously reinforces the thinking that the initial certification helped you to achieve. Of course, it is important to account for this accurately, but like all habits, this will improve with practice.

The costs of continuing education is governed by you. There are usually options for a variety of budgets, ranging from $10,000 training classes to free podcasts and webinars. Just keep your eye on the prize, and you should be fine.

Certification – Costs of Attaining a Certification

When pursuing any form of higher education, the subject of money often comes up. It is common for people to question what a certification is “worth”, and just as common as people to respond in terms of salary increases compared to the cost of getting the certification. This is erroneous thinking. As you have (hopefully) already read, the true value of a certification is the learning that it brings you and the new ways it gives you to think about problems. Comparably, these are the terms in which you have to account for the costs of a certification.

There are many ways to attain a certification, the common ones are listed below with a short breakdown of that they actually mean

Boot-camp
In a boot-camp situation, you generally go somewhere and do nothing but focus on the certification for about a week. This is often very expensive, as you (or your company) must foot the bill for tuition, meals, lodging, travel, and any other incidentals that may arise. Additionally, during this week, you are not able to make money for your company, so the company often gets a double-whammy on the financial side.

That said, this method tends to be highly successful in filling your brain with the knowledge needed to pass the certification exam. This is good if the primary goal is getting certified. However, if you want the learning to become permanent, you have to ask yourself if you learn best in one shot or slowly and over a period of time. If you can actually absorb information that quickly, and you are willing to talk with your fellow classmates and learn from them, this could be a very cost effective way for you to learn. If not, consider a different method.

Mentor
Some certifications offer a mentor program. As a mentor, the “instructor” is available to help you understand specific topics, but the learning is expected to be mostly on your own. As such, it tends to be somewhat cheaper than the boot-camp scenarios. However, the financial cost is offset by increasing the time cost. Simply put, it takes more time for you to gain the certification. Depending on your learning style, this could be a good thing. If the extra time is needed to get the new patterns imprinted on your brain, then this method is definitely worth the time cost.

If, however, you approach this program from a perspective where you only think about it during the mentor sessions, it is unlikely to be effective for you. This method takes more work on your part than the boot-camp does. If you have the passion, go for it. If not, it’s best to give it a pass.

Study Group
Some people prefer to learn from their peers, and to that end, will form a study group for the purpose of helping one another learn enough to pass the test. This tends to be very inexpensive from a financial standpoint, but extremely expensive in terms of time. In addition to the learning that you have to do on your own, you have to carve even more time out of your week to attend the study group. Moreover, everyone in the group has to do this to be successful.

Often, these groups dissolve into chatter, which is socially enjoyable, but a waste of resources compared to the ultimate goal. If you have a group of people that you KNOW can stay on task, and you ALL are interested in actually learning about the topic, go ahead and try this method. However, only go into it with your eyes wide open.

Books / Self Study
This is probably the least expensive in terms of dollars and you have complete control over the time cost. However, studying on your own often only works well if you have the passion and drive needed to learn on your own. This method is not for the passive learner. If you pursue this path, I strongly recommend that you develop a schedule for yourself and stick to it. You have to be brutally honest with yourself and constantly test your knowledge. It also helps to commit to a specific testing date, as this puts pressure on you to keep to your training schedule.

If you pursue this method, you will lose the learning opportunity of bouncing ideas off of others, but if you are dedicated to your path, it may not matter so much. However, your success will also be linked to the quality of the book you choose. This is why I recommend picking up multiple certification prep guides (raising the costs). That makes it more likely that you will learn the material and not just the way that author chooses to present the material.

Testing
There is almost always a financial cost to taking a certification test. There is another one for re-taking a certification test, so be sure that you can pass before you sign up for one. The hidden costs here include travel, hotel, meals, and time lost to taking the test. Also, anticipate being exhausted after an exam and do not plan to be productive during the trip back. Odds are that you will just want to sit and fret about how you did. Depending on the exam, you may or may not know for days. Remember that this stress has a cost as well.

Certification – Poor Picks – Specializations

We are exploring my poor choices for areas in which to certify. Today we will look at High Level Specializations

I’m somewhat ambivalent on the subject of the top-tier certifications. In theory, you should be able to learn a lot in deep detail on those, but I suspect that they are too focused to give you the primary benefit that certification provides — holistic thinking. I have also noticed that most of the certifications at that level seem to be vendor-specific, so I have to wonder how many of those certifications are about making money for the vendor instead of education.

However, there has been talk in some certifications on focusing the top-level certs to be more industry or job related, so there could be some value in those. You’ll need to evaluate that for yourself.

(Disclaimer: I do not have any specializations)

Certification – Poor Picks – Low Level Certs

We are exploring my poor choices for areas in which to certify. Today we will look at Low Level Certifications

Let’s face it, if a certification is easy to attain, everyone who wants it will have it. Don’t waste your time. Instead, focus on a challenging certification. Some see value in a beginner going after a low-hanging certification, but I think that it’s doing them a disservice to allow them to think that the certification itself is what matters at that level. The processes of studying and practicing test-taking skills are far more valuable than the certification itself. Their time is better spent getting a basic book/website and learning on their own until they’re at a level where certification will help them out.

Once you have narrowed your focus, take a look at the certifications available in that area. Most certifications are “tiered” with low, middle, and high levels of proficiency on which you are tested. If you do not have much experience yet, you may be tempted by the low level certification. Don’t be. Develop the experience needed to go after the middle level. You’ll get a better learning experience AND a better story to tell. You will also be able to better distinguish yourself from those people that start at level 1 and stop.

(Disclaimer: I do not have any low-level certifications)

Certification – Poor Picks – Vendor-specific certifications

Of course, there are some bets that I wouldn’t make. I’m not necessarily down on specific certifications, but I am down on specific types of certifications.

Any certification that locks you into a specific vendor has, at its core, an interest other than the certification alone. If a vendor is pushing a certification, they want to make you expert in their technology over similar technologies. This raises the demand for that technology and increases their sales. Pretty much all of the large technology vendors have a certification program. These, of course, as the most popular certifications, as they are promoted by the sales department of each vendor.

The big problem for you, is that these certifications will lock you in and links your career to the future of that company. This can be even more dangerous than specializing in a specific programming language. That said, there is an out. In some places, there is no vendor-neutral certification in a specific technology (at a high enough tier). In those cases, you are best off going after two certifications! That way, if one company stumbles, you have the other one to fall back on. You can also brand yourself as an expert in the technology without being a sales person for a specific company.

(Disclaimer: I am Linux certified by both Red Hat and Novell.)

Certification – Personal Picks – ITIL

We are exploring my personal picks for areas in which to certify. Today we will look at ITIL

Best Practices are always in vogue, and they are starting to be formalized by systems such as ITIL. ITIL is a methodology for streamlining IT to the business’s needs. As IT becomes increasingly tied to business systems ITIL and systems like it will become increasingly important. At this time, ITIL is one of the best known systems for doing this, but as time goes on, there will be others. I strongly recommend that you take a class prior to certification in this (or other) methodology. Most methodologies are similar, and having a firm and solid grounding in the concepts for one will make it much easier for you to learn another should you need to.

This certification is worth pursuing if you are in charge of integrating IT with the business. If you are still on the help-desk / daily workload part of your career, you should familiarize with the ideas behind ITIL, but you might want to hold this one until later.

(Disclaimer: I do not currently hold an ITIL certification)