How to Become Microsoft Certified with Andy Malone MVP

[Music] [Music] i'm andy malone i'm a microsoft mvp as well as a microsoft certified trainer i've been training for many years and a lot of people come up to me and they say andy how do you get started in microsoft what do i need to know how do i go forward how much does it cost is it expensive do i need to have lots of qualifications before i start and i thought what a great idea for a session and i'm going to prove to you my friends that you don't have to have a university education you don't have to have a lot of money but one thing you do have to have is confidence and the belief that you can do it because you can and in this episode of all you need to know i'm going to show you a few tricks of the trade on how you become can become microsoft certified so let's take a look at how to get certified um again just to remind you my name is andy malone i'm a microsoft mvp for 13 years specializing in security and cloud i'm also a microsoft certified trainer for a little bit longer than that i also train internal microsoft people um i write books in my spare time as well if you want to follow me you can do so at twitter and also please subscribe to that youtube channel as well i really appreciate it okay so um i mentioned i'm an author um in my spare time when i fly on planes obviously we're not doing much flying at the moment but there we go um so uh i love writing i know this is the my second book okay okay so what are we going to talk about we are talking about how to get certified and you're sitting there thinking andy i have no idea how to get certified i've got nothing no qualifications um very little money can i do it and the answer is of course you can so in this session we're going to talk about why you should get certified and also which career paths suit you i'll talk about how you can get started and whether you want to pay or not to pay again it all really depends on you know how fast you want to become certified preparing for certification of course how do you actually prepare for it and how do you practice and also ultimately how do you book and take that exam one of the nice things about taking microsoft exams traditionally you had to go along to an exam test center and you can still do that of course but now you can actually take exams in the comfort of your own home so i'm going to talk about how you can take or schedule and take an online exam so i hope you find this session interesting so why do you get certified what's the purpose well to gain knowledge obviously and experience so it's all very well getting gaining the knowledge but we also need to give you the experience as well so that you can prove your skills to you either your current employer or your potential employers in the future it will definitely involve your or improve your job prospects a million percent i got to tell you um the it industry is is screaming out for people screaming for people um so again career paths decide you know what what interests you are you interested in administration in the cloud are you a developer are you interested in security so once you decide on which area you're interested in then kind of focus on that area okay again another reason for certification gain insight into new and emerging technologies one of the things i love to do is i try and read about emerging technologies things that are coming in um for example you know artificial intelligence um robotics you know stuff that not many people are talking about really kind of read up on these things and that's how you become kind of um invaluable to an employer another thing obviously there's a couple of statistics microsoft learning did a couple of studies and it said upon it upon earning a certification 23 of microsoft certified technologists receive received up to an average of a 20 salary increase and that's a fact you know i remember starting in this game years ago and every time i passed a microsoft certified exam i would get an increase in pay and it was fantastic and it really encourages that um certified employees are often entrusted with supervising peers so if you start off as a you know a technician or something like that you'll get promoted the more certificates you've got the more skills that you have again it will fast track you for promotion so definitely a plus plus um to pay or not to pay so obviously um there are tons of online free resources i've got loads here on my youtube channel and also on my blog andymalone.org um so that do you choose between a self-study solution so you know purchasing the books doing the uh doing courses online and so you can take out trial subscriptions or free subscriptions um with many providers and then there's obviously pay subscriptions as well you can do in-person training so i'm an instructor i would teach you in a a training center so the the advantages of that is that my type of training that i teach is very accelerated so if you want to get certified quickly as opposed to self-study or going through a college or a night class which can take months or sometimes years um certified trainers can get you trained very very quickly obviously it costs a little bit more but the resources are there so you ca and you might say to me andy i don't have that kind of money i i work for myself i've got a low paid job can i still do it absolutely you can do it all right you learn from your peers as well so as you'll see there's a ton of online communities that you can use and you can call upon and you can post questions ask questions and one of the great things about this community is that people love to share we love to share um i remember being a very young trainer and and uh you would think well if i know this then i'll i've got one up on the others and i'll i'll get more work but it was never like that it was all about sharing uh the the knowledge which was great um again no previous experience somebody said how you know do i need to have a ton of schools qualifications previous qualifications absolutely not and anybody who says you can't do it don't listen to them trust me you can do it all right okay so what i want to do is just show you a couple of useful websites um so things that you can do now my specialty is microsoft azure and microsoft 365. so one of the first places if you if you want to go is this place this is microsoft learn so docs.microsoft.com learn so microsoft learn as you can see basically contains two rule websites really one is learn and one is documentation so first of all the first thing it says to you is how do you want to learn do you want to learn in your own schedule do you at your own pace um how to become microsoft certified so this is going to be a good reading for you guys later uh once up once you finish this session and then get the details on uh what to do but what do i learn andy what are you interested in what are your skills um are you numerate do you like com computer do you like programming i do you want to be a developer you can make a lot of money as a developer um other things that you might want to do is you might be you know um i i want to be a specialist in a particular area security um a product specialist like for example microsoft teams and things like that um again you can see there's microsoft do a number of um favorite kind of qualifications here as well so there's everything here and it tells you what the what the various things are now i have to be honest i love these learning paths that microsoft have here so you can see that you've got azure fundamentals and microsoft 365 fundamentals look at the times though four hours nine hours of training and is that a full course absolutely it's a full course it's the full thing and after this you can then go and take the ms 900 or the az 900 certifications and these are the fundamental certifications for microsoft 365 and azure and so you can get started for absolutely nothing okay so there's a whole ton of free online certifications there so the idea is obviously once you've got your learning path you know you've decided so for example azure of course is all about infrastructure as a service in fact azure is a huge uh plethora of many many different topics microsoft 365 again if you want to that's your traditional it guy so and you can manage users deploy you know email for example microsoft exchange microsoft sharepoint um again yeah there's a whole ton of career paths there available to you but these are two fantastic places to start so this the learning path for azure would get you started with the az 900 certification and you you've also got the ms 900 certification and in many cases right now you're getting the stuff for free okay so there's no excuse all right so that's the first place go to microsoft learn there's a ton of free stuff here um okay um andy i've i've i'm i'm going through the microsoft i'm going through this all right so let's say i'm going through the fundamentals and i'm watching a video and the video looks great but the guy is explaining something and you just don't understand okay i just can't get it take a tip write it down okay you know if there's if there's a piece of information that you don't understand take a note of it use the courses as a skeleton yes so think of these courses as a skeleton all right um so then once you've done that the next thing that you want to look at um well they call it docs.microsoft.com for a reason because basically this is the core documentation repository for all of these products so if you want to really know a particular product and exactly how it works this is a fantastic place to begin all right so again whether it's for example microsoft dot microsoft azure let's say microsoft 365 enterprise what's involved with it what are the resources how do i get started and how can i learn about this and again this quick start guys this video trainings there's all kinds of resources here as well uh again you know key elements how do i deploy it how do i learn it nobody expects you to learn this stuff instantly take it in baby steps yes no bits yes learn the core and then build on your knowledge but you can see here for example here's a set here is identity so the i mean there this is basically everything that you need to know so you can this is like complete training kits training manuals and this is basically what the microsoft product groups put out for you guys to learn the content okay um absolutely awesome repositories okay so docs.microsoft.com um another thing by the way um if you are um microsoft conferences uh one of the nice things about microsoft conferences you can attend you can register a microsoft conference this is an advert by the way for microsoft build for developers and normally these conferences are about two thousand dollars two and a half thousand dollars a year but the thing is because of the corona virus crisis right now you can register for free online they're running them as online conferences okay later on in the year you'll see microsoft ignite the same okay again other fantastic ways to learn so technical documentation docs.microsoft.com microsoft learn tons of resources there now you're probably thinking andy that's great but i need experience i can read about this stuff every day but i need experience okay so how do i how do you get the experience well you can go to let me go here so azure.com start for free okay start for free you can get up to two hundred dollars of uh azure content uh you get a month free okay so you can go in um what i recommend to you by the way um the thing about azure is um you can really only have kind of one subscription so go to outlook.com create yourself an email address then go into azure and register with that email address if you need more time create another email address and then create another subscription okay it's a fantastic way to learn all right so again there's uh you need to learn you know there's loads of different products so what are you interested in blockchain analytics databases identity security what's your thing okay a great place to start all right so that's azure.com azure.com um myself i'm a specialist in microsoft 365. so microsoft 365. again um go and try it have a go the only way to to learn it is to actually do it so for example if i go to the enterprise subscription here just for business reasons don't bother with the home or the small business stuff by the way um because all these certifications are based on enterprise products so go in and have a look at the products and plans and again probably the one that the exams are are really kind of focused on are the microsoft e5 certifications forget the price it doesn't really matter about the price but what you want to do is you want to learn more okay and the key thing here is that you can scroll down and you can have a trial subscription um okay so that's the first thing so as i've said with azure and 365 you don't need to pay a lot of money so what are the other ways to learn well as i mentioned as well as the docs repositories there's also some fantastic free hands-on labs from microsoft here so again you can uh explore and acquire the skills at your own pace or you can schedule instructure-led workshops all right so obviously some of these may have fees but these definitely do not so you've got the self-paced labs absolutely awesome way to learn here as well and there's a there's a whole bunch of these uh hands-on labs okay um yeah now again depending on on what's available some may may be available some may not be available at the moment um okay so uh other places i mentioned getting help from the community one of the best communities and also for learning as well out here is the microsoft tech community these are again i'm involved in this as well basically it's problem solving learning um there's tons and tons of free stuff there's loads of events going on around the world and obviously online at the moment as well where you can learn resources now as well as learning through community there are also tons of free courses available as well so you can see here that this is called moak this is the massive online database and there's tons of free microsoft courses here again a lot of colleges and universities use these so from everything from developers languages you know i t everything here this is a fantastic resource okay and again it's all absolutely free of charge okay so this is an example learning path for microsoft's enterprise administrator expert or mcae certification now this is comprised of um at least three exams okay but don't be put off by that um so each of these exams are essentially testing you i'll come back to the column on the left hand side in a moment but how do you get started remember that ms-900 that i mentioned again if you're into azure you can take the az career path the azure expert career path this is the microsoft 365. i'm just doing this as an example okay so the basically the two core exams that you need for the ae is the ms 100 365 identity and services so you can see that the the skills measured you need to know what the different services are user identities and rules how to access an authentication and also what are the different 365 workloads so these are the exam requirements now compare that with the second exam the 101 so the 101 exam deals with mobility and security so in that exam it's focusing on deploying modern devices managing microsoft 365 security governance and compliance so those are the two core exams so one of the things that microsoft introduced about a couple of years ago was something called role based administration and over on the left hand side of the column there there are different roles so you know what are you interested in are you interested in messaging for example microsoft exchange are you interested in teams uh you know collaboration are you interested in security so for example i took security and that's the ms 500 exam yes and that gave me i passed that exam i became a microsoft certified security assist administrator associate which is not easy to say at this time of day so i've taken that exam i get that certification and then once i passed the 100 and the 101 i then qualify as an administrator enterprise expert yes so there you go that is the core certification excuse me so next um okay so you've decided on the exam you've done the skills you've done the reading you've practiced you're ready to schedule that exam and actually go for it so how do we do it so again basically visit the exam page so just google it it will take you to the microsoft learning page here when you're ready to schedule the exam again select your country so if you're in the u.s or in the uk then schedule this exam so the all the exam details will come up and it will schedule the exam okay check your profile so you'll you'll be asked to create an account so a microsoft learning account um again make sure that you fill in the form who you are where you live your details and again all of this is is private of course it will then create a microsoft certified id and this then follows you right throughout your career okay um if you have troubleshooting if you have problems then you can go to the uh the vue website um and they they can help you but normally normally it's it's it's pretty good i've not really had much much issues um okay so verify your exam discount eligibility so at the moment microsoft are doing free resets uh and they've also cancelled for example if you have to cancel the exam they're not charging you at the moment which is fantastic okay so and often you find that if you fail an exam microsoft really really want you to pass so again they'll encourage you they'll give you free resets okay so again if you do have a cut a a a voucher code you can put that in there okay now where do you want to take the exam do you want to schedule it at home or do you want to schedule it in a a testing center well i would suggest probably at home all right so you can take the exam at home uh it's um perfect you can take it you need to have a quiet room somewhere somewhere nice and quiet um there can't be anything on your desk um when you this is by the way when when i mean a computer-based exam i mean it's called it's a proctored exam so you have a proctor who was watching you yes so they watch your every move so be very careful if you stand up and leave you fail okay you can't use your phone you can't talk to anyone and it's just like um proper exam conditions all right so you decide um where you want to take the exam and then what microsoft will do is they will say okay if you want to take this at home let's do a pre-check so first of all they'll check your wi-fi speed connection and they'll check that you've got a microphone then your webcam works and then everything looks good okay so once that's been done you will get green ticks on everything and that means fantastic you you're okay to continue scheduling your exam so then you say okay i want to do it at my home and click next you need to agree to the exam taking policies once you've done that review the price and the cost of the price again it varies around the world depending on the exam uh and then click on done you can choose your language again depending on the exam might be in english might be japanese or whatever just a word of warning by the way if you are a non-english speaker don't worry you can specify that and you you often get a little bit extra time in the exam approximately how long does an exam take andy it's normally the schedule it for about three hours but the exam itself doesn't last that long they give you a little bit of time for questions and things like that all right um select the date and time so when would you like to take the exam just a quick tip here by the way um be careful not to shed your leg i mean you can you can but sometimes if you schedule an exam for a weekend i've discovered sometimes that the support people don't work at the weekend so if you have a problem and the exam crashes which occasionally it does not very often but it does if that happens then don't worry about it because the next working day they'll re-credit you with that exam and you can then reschedule it again so do the choose the date and time and then you're good to go review the exam itself review what you've booked and then when you're ready uh check out uh and so on just note the reschedule policy um microsoft do facial recognition for exams so you can't book the exam and somebody else can do it you have to show physical government issued id you need to upload a copy of that to microsoft and they they compare the person who is sat in front of the screen with that so you can't cheat it they're very very strict okay cancellation policy you can typically cancel approximately five days before the exam if you do it later than that normally there's a small charge but as i say microsoft are waiving that at the moment pay your money and that's it you get a confirmation email and you're pretty good to go so a couple of tips for the exam um make sure prior to exam day make sure that you've got at least one form of required government id a passport a government issued identity card again it must have your signature and your photo the name on the card must match uh the the name of the exam or the registration must match your government id so be careful that you know you don't book yourself as andrew and your name's andy or something like that you could have problems okay so uh an exam day basically you start your exam so you log in microsoft.com learning go into your dashboard and you can see the exam is here then the proctor will come on they'll do a number of tests just to make sure they'll ask you to take photos of your exam environment so they can't be anything on your desk no papers nothing nothing okay a top tip try and go to the bathroom before the exam you're not allowed to get up and move around and in fact if you move out of screenshot you automatically fail the exam all right another tip do not talk during the exam don't even talk to yourself because the proctor will think that you're talking to somebody who's listening and trying to to get answers you will fail the exam okay a good tip piece of advice all right so um there you go do the exam so go through the exam itself won't go through the process and then at the end of the exam you'll know right away whether you've failed or not okay tips um let's say the score uh the average passing score for an exam is 700 out of a thousand and if you've got a score of 400 300 you're not ready for the exam you need to go back and you need to focus and you need to learn you will get a a printout of your which strengths and weaknesses focus on the weaknesses and try and build that up however if you get a score of 650 680 you're really close okay rebook that exam pretty quick all right another top tip by the way if you're booking an exam you can and you fail an exam you can book it right away for the next day if you fail it twice however you have to wait a fortnight you have to wait 14 days before you can reset that again all right so just be careful with that all right exam basics so just generally um you know there might be anything between 40 and 60 questions always answer all the questions you can also in some exams mark questions for review and then go back at the end of a section typically plan for three hours although 150 minutes approximately for the questions and 30 minutes for instructions comments scores and so on all right remember it's more than just uh multiple choice you'll need to you know sometimes there's drag and drop questions things like processes how do you create a user okay what's the process involved you need to drag them into the correct order um you can actually purchase um practice tests so for example measure up um they work with microsoft and they produce some excellent um practice tests so when you've when you've done all your your studies and you feel you know i'm going to have a go at maybe some practice questions that's a great resource as well some practice some questions also have case studies so you take on the role of an engineer within your organization and you get a case study and it typically says okay this is where we where we are this is what we need and then based on those requirements you then answer those questions so that's typically how an exam is formed okay okay so there we go please subscribe to my video channel and also at andy malone as well all right so there you have it how to become certified with microsoft it's not that difficult what is necessary though is the fact that you can go for it get some reading done get some practice done there's tons of resources out there and there's some great communities that people who are willing to help you and help answer questions i really hope you've enjoyed this session and if you have remember click on that subscribe button and come back and see me again alright thank you so much have a great day [Music] you

Channel: Andy Malone MVP

Views: 9,318

Keywords: Microsoft Learn, MVPBuzz, AndyMalone, Microsoft Certified Exam, Microsoft Learning

Id: mds95j8GI7k

Length: 35min 25sec (2125 seconds)

Published: Wed May 13 2020