Are you looking to become an AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate, or an AWS
Certified Solution Architect Professional in 2021? Well then, this video is for you.
For more free videos on AWS Certifications or cloud computing, please subscribe and hit the
bell. Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs, and I'm the founder and CEO of Go Cloud Architects,
and today we're going to be talking about how to pass the AWS Certified Solution Architect
exams the right way, so not only can you pass the exam, but you'll do great in your career.
And we're going to break this down into several steps. The first step we're going
to actually talk about, we're going to call it learning. And this may sound obvious,
but we want you to learn, and we want you to learn via a good book. We want you to learn via
an [equest 00:00:46], but we want you to learn the fundamental materials. And the reason why,
I've interviewed countless individuals to work at large global organizations for really good jobs.
And I will tell you that if you are certified, it's a lot easier to get an interview than
it would be if you are not. But when I see someone with large amounts of certifications,
the first thing I asked someone is what do you know best? And then they tell me something and
I ask them if they can't answer any of my questions, I feel as if I've been deceived.
And that turns the interview negative, and it turns it negative fast.
So make sure that you are prepared and the best way to be prepared for a job interview
or a cloud architect exam is to learn. We like as a means of learning either books,
e-books, e-courses, you have several options, pick something that's going to be good for you.
Two, find a study group. And the study group can be one of the best things you'll ever do. Now
it's optimal if people in your study group have a capability or a background, because that way you
can make sure to help each other. But if you can't find that, build a study group. The study group
will keep you accountable. You'll at least be in an environment where you can learn something and
try and explain it to others, which will reinforce your depth of learning. Now, I will tell you, I
am so keen on the concept of this that I actually provide free every week we do a 90 minute session.
And what we do is we actually ask people that subscribed to the list, and I'll
list the link below in the description below. And people come onto the list, we set up a 90 minute
call once a week. And a week before we asked them to give us their questions.
And we will answer people's questions on this call. We do this as free mentoring. It's always
done by one of our AWS certified instructors. But the point being is, find an accountability group,
because what you find is if you read something yourself, you may understand it, but you may not.
But if you've got some place where you think you understand something, but you know you understand
the rest but not this, ask someone for help. And if the person is able to help you great. And if
not, ask someone else for help, find a new video, but never stop until you get understanding of the
concepts. But we do that once a week and sign up for any of our free mentoring sessions. And we
don't discuss sales of any kind on any of these things. We just once a week for 90 minutes, we
take your questions related to AWS certifications, and we present them to you on a live forum.
So the next step after finding an accountability group or a mentorship group is to read the
AWS Whitepapers. And here's the thing, the AWS Whitepapers talk all about the AWS services. But
Amazon is basically testing you on AWS services. So this is basically Amazon in their own words,
describing their services. And you know what? We find that a lot of exam questions
come straight out of the Whitepapers. So prepare yourself and read the Whitepapers.
Now I recommend after you read the Whitepapers is step three to build
yourself a really good cheat sheet. And here's the kind of cheat sheet that I mean.
Me, anytime I read a book or I'm learning something, I like to take the main components,
say an outline form, and write them all down. And then I'd like to flesh them out
with the key points of every topic that's going on. So for example, if I was going
to build myself a cheat sheet on storage, I would first learn like what block storage is,
what object storage is, what file storage is. And then I would learn the AWS versions.
I would write down EBS. And then I would talk about all the things inside of EBS,
what kind of a volume you're going to use, what kind of encryption, and I would do the same thing
for S3. And I would do the same things for EFS. But build yourself a list. And here's
the reason I want you to build the list. When you build yourself a list, you're forced to not only
learn it, but you'll identify any gaps that you have. Many, many, many, many years ago,
because I've been in tech for about 25 years, I was in internal medicine as a nurse practitioner.
And here's what I can tell you. Here's how we learned. We'd watched something, we would do
it. And then we would teach it. And the reason we taught it is it reinforced the concepts to
others. So the concept of doing something and then teaching it, vital way to learn. So by
building yourself that cheat sheet, it's going to give you incredible opportunities to do better.
Now step four, I am not a fan of practice tests. And I say that while still recommending them. And
here's the thing, I can tell you someone that's bought a practice test and studied for an exam
via practice test and nothing else, because they have a certification. And when you talk to them,
they don't know how anything works. It's just a paper certification. And you don't want that. What
you want is to be certified. Being certified is going to offer you numerous career opportunities.
But you want to have the depth to back it up. So not only can you win on the technical interview
and get the job, but you'll actually be able to do the job, and succeed, and thrive in your job,
as opposed to being a problematic person that can be terminated at some point.
Now the next step is to schedule your exam. And schedule your exam, give yourself some time.
And I don't want you to schedule your exam until you can consistently score a 95%
or better every time you do a practice test, because you want to pass the exam. The exams are
expensive and you don't want to fail them. Plus, it's never good for your ego if you fail. In life,
if we fail, we get back up and do it again. But if you can not fail it's even easier on you.
So the next part comes actually, last minute preparation. And I can tell you, there's
nothing you can study in the last 24 hours of an exam that's going to prepare you for the exam,
especially not an AWS exam. So the day before the exam, I want you fresh. I want you well rested.
I want you to have a healthy dinner. I don't want you to drink any alcohol or take any other
substances that can impair your thinking. The AWS exams are interesting and a bit complicated.
They ask questions in a very wordy manner, and the questions are challenging to read.
And there will be multiple options for answers. And in many cases,
many of the options are actually correct, they would all work, but they're not the Amazon way.
So if you have a big tech background like me and all of a sudden you're taking an AWS exam,
you've got to say, question, okay, these three could work, what is the Amazon way? If you're new
to tech, you'll be in some cases, a little blessed because you'll only know the Amazon way. But point
is, is going to be multiple right answers. And you're going to have to be in a position to
pick the best of the answers, because only one's going to be right for AWS.
So make sure you're in a position. So be fresh because if you're tired, you're not going to be
able to read these questions as carefully as you need to, you're going to make a mistake.
You don't want to miss something does all of the following except or not, and not see the accept or
the not, and then get them all wrong. So we want you to be fresh and there are. And then, once you
pass the exam, and if you do it this approach, we're pretty sure you'll be successful. But
even if you're not, you'll be able to retake it shortly because you understand the key materials.
So in order to join our free moderated by our instructors weekly mentorship group, please check
the link in the description below. We're also offering a free AWS certified solution architect
professional practice exam. And the link for that is also in the description below. Thank you so
much for watching this video. We love teaching and we love bringing videos to you on passing
AWS certifications every week. Thank you very much again, and we can't wait to see you soon.