5 Tips to Achieving the AWS Associate Certification Level

I am a cloud professional with over 20 years experience in IT and have recently completed the AWS Associate Certification level. Below are my 5 tips to help you on your journey and if there are any questions you would like to ask me, feel free to DM or comment.

Tip 1 : Just start. I know it sounds simple, but a clear kick for me was seeing that the world of cloud engineers, architects and other professionals were gearing up their certifications significantly in the past couple of years. This means that having 10+ experience is not enough anymore and you need the certifications to meet the table stakes. I could have easily started my journey 3 or 4 years ago, but career always has a way of being a distraction.

Tip 2 : Bunch certifications together. In my experience so far with the AWS Certifications at least, is they have a lot of overlap. For example, EC2, ELB, Databases, S3, CloudFormation, and BeanStalk are covered in depth through all three Associate level exams and make up a good percentage of questions. Therefore, learn it once and apply it several times.

Tip 3 : Find a course that works for you. Early on in my journey I bounced around different course creators until I found what worked for me, and everyone is different, so take some time on this. For me I really like Stéphane Maarek courses on Udemy. It might sound strange, but his French accent actually improved my learning. I had to listen harder and concentrate more. Weird I know, but I think it comes from my time working here in Hong Kong. Being in working groups with other people whose first language is not English, really made me pay more attention in meetings and general working life than ever before, and I think it translates well to learning.

Tip 4 : Don’t try and learn AWS with courseware alone. You will see this tip from everyone, including from my chosen courseware creator. Some of the concepts are a little difficult to get from words and diagrams alone, you need to experience it. At the end of the day most of you attempting these certifications are technical and what do us technical people love to do? Pull things apart, break them and put them back to together again, and in the cloud world it will not cost you a lot of time or money to do this, so sign up for the AWS free tier today.

Tip 5 : Ignore the exam score. To this day my lowest score was on the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam with a high 700. As you move through the exams you will notice the questions change and many weird and wonderful answers are available to choose. Don’t get distracted and know how to spot an obviously made up product or service name. This will get easier as you move through and gain more experience with AWS. In my experience so far, if it sounds too crazy or too complex (cloud should be easy) then it is most likely the wrong answer. 

I hope these tips will help you a little in your journey to becoming more #AWSome !