(upbeat music)
- Hi, I'm Randy Russell,
the Director of Certification at Red Hat.
And I get asked all the time,
"Do you have any tips
for passing a Red Hat certification exam?"
So first of all, training can be
a very important part of your preparation.
We don't require training.
You can take any Red Hat exam
without having taken any training from us or anybody else.
However, training will fill in gaps.
Even if you have a lot of experience and knowledge,
the Red Hat certification team works very closely
with the Red Hat curriculum team to ensure
that the things that we cover on our exams
are things that they cover in the courses that they produce.
One of the most important things you need to do
is to look up the exam objectives
for the exam you're taking on redhat.com.
And you want to make the most of the training
that you're undertaking by mapping those exam objectives,
to the training and the outline and the activities
and the labs that you do in that course.
So that you're really focusing on those exam objectives.
Our courses are generally a superset of the exam objectives.
You want to be able to get to where you can do those labs
without consulting your notes.
If you're able to do that lab unassisted
it means you have got it nailed down.
You've got the information stored away in your head
that's going to help you when you take that exam.
So we have found that people actually do well
if they prepare with others.
Now, you know, sometimes we offer training in classes
where you're actually in a class with other people,
and that's a great way to learn.
But, you know, more and more people are doing self-study
and with self-study the question arises, "Well,
how can I help and prepare with other people
if I'm self-study?"
We have a really good answer for that.
And that's the Red Hat Learning Community.
Join the Red Hat Learning Community and work with others
as you go through your training journey
to prepare for your certification,
know the resources that will be available
to you during the exam.
So, first of all, what's not available.
You don't get to take your own notes.
You don't get to take a course book.
We don't alter the environments
that we provide our exams in.
You know, we don't strip the man pages
out of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
We provide the documentation
that comes with any of the products
that we're going to be testing you on.
And so sometimes it's important
not to have some complex bit of, you know,
command or configuration file syntax or something like that.
Sometimes you don't have to have that committed to memory.
What you need to commit to memory
is where you can go and look it up.
Knowing where to look for information is a critical skill.
Don't stay up late
the night before getting ready for your exam.
It's not a strategy for success.
You will be much better in that exam
if you are thoroughly rested than
if you will have exhausted yourself past the midnight hour,
trying to get ready for that exam.
Allot time during your exam to be able to check your work.
Okay, make a commitment to yourself
that if the exam is three hours, for example,
that you will work for two and a half
and you'll spend the last half hour checking the work
and fixing anything that you have happen.
Know when to move on, I have seen a lot of people
in their Red Hat certification exams get caught on one task
and just spend their entire time trying to uncover
why they can't make that one thing work.
And so if you are having that kind of a situation
where you're struggling against some particular
task, put it aside, work on one of the other tasks
and come back to it.
If you don't pass on your first attempt,
really review your exam results.
We provide some information in the score report
that we send out to everybody who takes an exam
about how they performed against the exam objectives
for that particular exam.
Look at those and see where you needed work, okay.
And I think if you focus like that, you know,
you take that second attempt on an exam,
your likelihood of doing well on it is so much higher.
If you guide your post first attempt efforts in that way.
So those are my tips for getting ready
for your Red Hat certification exam.
I hope you find this helpful and good luck on your exam.