What next after Designer Core Certification?

dan626LXV6

Hi everyone,

I recently obtained the Alteryx Designer Core certification and am currently seeking employment. I'm considering pursuing either the Designer Advanced certification or the Server Administration certification as my next step.

I'm curious to hear from others in the field - which of these certifications do you think is more valuable or marketable in today’s job market? Any advice or insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance!

Dan

TheOC

hey @dan626LXV6 
To answer your question directly, I would suggest that each have their place depending on what type of role you are looking for. My personal recommendation would be to work towards the Advanced certification as there is really great content on there that can relate to both Designer and Server.

Outside of certs, there are multiple routes I would recommend, none of which would be a 'wrong' answer:

1. Try your hand at Solutions within the Designer Discussions board. You will quickly learn the type of problems (and use-cases) faced in Alteryx, and how to quickly solve them. This will make you a very adaptable user.
2. Find some interesting projects in Alteryx that are related to the industry you want to work in and build them. A few good places to start would be:
   - Alteryx Weekly Challenges
   - Kaggle (Great for datasets and competitions)
   - Alteryx Use-cases
   This should help you build a little portfolio of projects. From my perspective at least, this is more important than pure certifications when it comes to employment.
3. Network! The Alteryx User Groups are a great place to meet people relatively near you, and speak to people in the industry. I would also recommend checking out the SparkEd jobs board (https://community.alteryx.com/t5/SparkED-Job-Board/tkb-p/SparkED_Jobs). It's not used so much now, but I think it may be useful for you to see what other roles are asking for.

Good luck on your search!