I am writing this to document my experience preparing for and taking the Alteryx Designer Core exam as someone without any prior experience with Alteryx.
I hope that you, the reader, might benefit from it.
The exam itself is an un-proctored exam and it is open book, designed to test your practical understanding and familiarity with core Alteryx tools and the Alteryx interface.
You will have an allotted two and a half hours to complete eighty questions which test your practical knowledge of data preparation as well as basic theoretical data concepts.
The questions are of various formats, including multiple-choice, multiple-response, matching, and practical application questions. The practical application section specifically evaluates your proficiency in utilizing Alteryx tools to solve problems. For these questions, you are given a dataset within Alteryx Designer and are required to connect to it in order to apply your skills and find solutions.
A complete breakdown is available on the Alteryx Core Certification Exam Prep Guide.
Prior to this if you have taken the Alteryx Micro-Credential exam you should be familiar with the multiple choice questions that they ask, there will be similar questions on the Core exam as well.
What I found most useful in preparing for this aspect of the exam was immersing myself in the Alteryx interface and actively solving problems. The Alteryx challenges are a great resource for this, allowing you to think through a given problem and use the tools available in order to solve the problem. The more comfortable you become with the tools, the faster you'll be able to navigate through the exam questions. Spending time within Alteryx is crutial.
During my preparation, I encountered some challenging concepts, particularly related to the Transform tools: Cross Tab, Summarize, and Transpose. I recommend focusing on understanding these tools thoroughly, as there are similarities in their functions. Additionally, having a solid grasp of what it means to pivot tables from rows to columns or columns to rows and knowing when and how to use them is crucial. These concepts are extensively tested, and being proficient in them not only helps answer questions correctly but also allows you to save time for more complex data manipulation tasks.
Some questions provide an input dataset and the tools used to manipulate it, asking for the expected output. In such cases, learning the Text Input tool proved to be crucial. It allowed me to test my answers or quickly determine the correct response if I was unsure.
By being well-prepared and gaining a solid understanding of the key concepts and tools, you can approach the Alteryx Designer Core exam with confidence.
If you are not successful on your first attempt, remember that you can retake the exam after a seven-day period. After completing the exam, you will receive feedback on the categories where you performed well and those in which you struggled.
During the exam, effective time management is crucial. It is essential to be mindful of the time allocated and avoid getting too absorbed in a single question. Fortunately, there is an option to bookmark specific questions for later review. Utilizing this feature will allow you to manage your time effectively, if it seems that you are taking too much time on a certain question, you can bookmark it and return to it if time permits later.
In summary, the Alteryx Designer Core exam shares similarities with the Alteryx Micro-Credential exam. If you have previously taken the Micro-Credential, it can provide you with a good understanding of the multiple-choice question format that will be encountered in the Core exam. However, the Core exam goes a step further by testing your ability to manipulate provided datasets and derive insights from them.
To sum it up, the Alteryx Designer Core exam shares similarities with the Micro-Credential exam but takes it a step further by evaluating your dataset manipulation skills. With adequate preparation, it's an attainable objective, even if you have no prior experience with Alteryx.
So, approach the exam with confidence !