Microsoft certification

re: Microsoft certification

George Quitugua — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:44:03 GMT

Trust me...if you've ever held a conversation with Harold, you would be able to tell that he is "certified". No doubt he smoke through the exams in 50 minutes. I believe the same is true of most people in the industry. Even if they are not certified, if they know their stuff, they could easily pass an exam in under an hour. Having the real world experience makes all the difference.

re: Microsoft certification

Microsoft Training Hyderabad — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:42:01 GMT

I guess that's the reason why experience in the product helps you to pass these exams. 6 out of 6...! Way to go!

re: Microsoft certification

Harold Wong — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:54:11 GMT

Let's make it clear, I did NOT cheat in taking these exams. I used my personal hands on experience with the products in taking these exams. There are quite a few questions that are definitely targeted at administrators who actually perform day to day administrative duties of Windows or Exchange or OCS. I admit freely that I don't do day to day administration of any of these in my role, but I am in the business of espousing these products and getting others up to speed on these products. Because of that, I do spend a lot of time installing and configuring these products. I also try different things and try to learn as much as I can about different usage scenarios. It is this experience that helped me to pass the exams I took without spending an enourmous amount of time doing exam prep.

The one exam I had a difficult time with was exam 236 (Exchange 2007) since it had quite a bit of cmdlet syntax on the exam. As I stated earlier, I don't perform day to day duties with Exchange 2007 so I just have not (and will not) memorized all the different options for each of the cmdlets. I am embarrased to admit, but I did have to retake this exam after a little review of cmdlet options before I passed it. For those of you who are Exchange 2007 administrators who work with large deployments, you probably do use a few more cmdlets on a regular basis and would likely do fine.

So like Russ stated in his post, if you know the product and have hands on experience, you should be able to pass the certification exams because you work with it on a day to day basis.

If you don't know the product and just visit the braindump sites so you can pass the exams, then you are doing yourself a disservice as well as the entire certification program (not only the Microsoft program, but any other ones out there).

Harold Wong

re: Microsoft certification

Tom N — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 23:09:28 GMT

I know you didn't cheat but I wonder if the new forensics software would have flagged you.

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2008/070708ed1.html

Congrats on the certs, overall I thought the exams were a little easier than the 2003 exams (I went the upgrade route)

re: Microsoft certification

Russ Kaufmann — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:39:38 GMT

Harold, you just proved one of my points around certification.

If you know the product, passing the exam should not be a challenge.

Congrats!

re: Microsoft certification

Harold Wong — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:24:49 GMT

Gary, that is a good question.

I happen to be in Seattle for our bi-annual technical training event and Prometric is onsite with "free" testing for us. I'm sure Microsoft does pay for each test, but I don't pay myself.

There are over 100 testing machines in the room and it gets pretty crowded.

Harold Wong

re: Microsoft certification

Gary Nordstrom — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:28:25 GMT

Harold,

Did you pay for all those tests or do you get free testing from Microsoft?