Hi all,
I'm considering whether I want to go and obtain the newly revamped Expert certification later this year (probably around when Alteryx Inspire 2025 is happening). I made heavy use of the Learning Paths in this community to obtain my Core and Advanced certifications, and I was wondering if there was a similar learning path for Expert certification. If not, which path or combination of paths would help me prepare the most?
Best regards,
smchenry2014
Not sure if there is a learning path, but I took the expert cert exam at Inspire last year and narrowly did not pass. I would say take the difficult weekly challenges that relate to the exam topics and focus on solving them quickly. If you master the relevant tools and can quickly learn new datasets you should be in good shape.
This might give an idea of the breadth.
I haven't taken the expert certification for several years and it's been revamped a couple of times, but my advice is to know ALL the included palettes. Obviously predictive is a part of the exam, and spatial as well, but prescriptive was a part of both exams I saw, and In-DB was a part of one of them (not sure if it still is).
In the expert exam, you may not create a macro to show "creating a macro" like in the advanced exam, but you will need to build them just as part of your solution. So, definitely know the ins and outs of Batch (including multiple control parameters) and Iterative macros.
In my experience of passing the expert exam at Inspire2024, the best learning contents was Weekly Challenges. Expert exam will examine your ability from many perspectives so it's very important to be trained in all categories, unlike Core/Advanced exams.
In my case, I often use Macros and Reporting tool at work but not often use Spatial and Predictive tools. I focused to solve the Weekly Challenges of these categories at top priority before the day of exam.
Also, the speed of solving is important to get passing score within 4 hours. The guideline is being able to solve basic/intermediate level of weekly challenges within 15 minutes.
I'm not sure how Expert exam will be renewed but I guess the basic ability to be assessed would remain more or less.
Good luck!
All of these are great ideas. I would add that the topics on the current version of the expert exam range in difficulty. The more obscure/scary-at-face-value topics have easier questions, and the more common topics have very challenging questions. Practice your fast problem-solving skills and iterating your thinking if you get stuck.
My biggest advice for the Expert exam beyond preparing the right topics is time management. Most of the questions are solvable given enough time, but you will not have enough time. Calculate out how much time you will allow yourself to spend on each question, then force yourself to stop when you reach that time limit. You only need 4 right answers to pass out of 7.
Good luck!!