Category: Certifications
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Fall Down? Stand Up!
Tuesday morning I passed my fifteenth straight certification exam (dating back to May 2025). I am grateful, but I am also remembering that hard work pays off. My worst streak was not quite a decade ago, when I failed eleven out of twelve (January, 2014 through June, 2017). I sat my first certification exam in…
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Maybe… Unlikely.
I maintain a spreadsheet in which I record every single certification exam I have taken – pass or fail. One of the bits of data that I record are the number of exams I’ve taken by calendar year. I opened it this week not to add anything, but to look up something that someone asked…
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Certification Exams: Some things don’t change!
Following the class that I was teaching one night this week I got up from my desk and sidled over to my kitchen table. I had an appointment to take a certification exam at 10:00pm, and it was nearly time to log on. Nearly, but not quite time. I had a discussion with some of…
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Outside My Comfort Zone
While my focus has of late shifted to cybersecurity, I have spent most of my teaching career focusing on Microsoft technologies. It made sense, since as an IT consultant I had always specialized in Microsoft infrastructure technologies. Even with my recent shift to infosec, I am still the go-to instructor for the Microsoft stack for…
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Stackable Certifications Revisited
Nearly five years ago I wrote an article about Stackable Certifications. This was when I had just earned my first two stackable certifications from CompTIA because I had passed A+, Network+, and Security+. For passing four CompTIA exams I had earned five certifications (adding CIOS and CSIS to those three). I am not sure if…
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Certified in Cybersecurity
I have been security-minded for most of my adult life. Whether or not I have always lived it is another matter, but I have learned my lessons and have done my best to continually improve. While I have been taking IT certification courses and exams for nearly twenty-five years, it was only in 2022 that…
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Do The Right Thing…
While I have been using and learning computers since 1979, by my own definition I only became a real IT Professional when I passed my first certification exam in 2003. At that time I was already aware of a lot of people in the business who were… less than reputable. When I went out on…
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Stackable Certifications
While I have been chasing Microsoft certifications for two decades, I never gave any real thought to CompTIA. I had nothing against them, I just never pursued them. And then a couple of years ago, a training broker reached out and asked me if I would deliver Network+ and Security+ courses for one of their…
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Another Exam Experience… a harrowing one!
Someone asked me recently why I used to prefer going into a testing centre to sit my certification exams. I told them that if anything went wrong, the staff had a direct line to get faster support, but that fewer things were likely to go wrong. This week I sat my third exam in the…
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Wouldn’t You Know It?
Last Tuesday I passed a certification exam that was quite valuable. It was a difficult exam, but in the end the system congratulated me. I was extremely happy… and then I had to wait. Minutes, hours… it was not until the next morning that I received the email from CompTIA congratulating me on my new…
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Certification Exams… At Home Again.
· I should go back and see just how many posts I have written about certifications… if I can count that high. It has long been a topic that I have been passionate about, and that has not changed. When I looked at my Microsoft Learning Transcript the other day I was surprised to see…
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Don’t Do It…
A few days ago, a former student emailed me the most unfortunate question. I have been an IT trainer for fifteen years. For much of that time, and with few exceptions, I have been giving out my personal contact information. I have always told my students that even though the class is over, I am…
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Touchdown!
I like to deliver the same message every time I teach a class, whether it be Microsoft, CompTIA, VMware, on-premises or cloud technologies. I have been teaching certification classes since 2006 and started attending them as a student several years before that. I know that there are good instructors and great instructors… and there are…
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The Exam Room: Welcome Home!
I have, over the years, written many articles about certification exams, and about the exam process. Some of what I was about the actual exam experience… including Time Tips for Certification Exams. So many of my exam experiences involved driving to a testing centre. Fortunately the last few exams that I have taken – and…
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The End of An Era… Again.
Around 2005-2006, when I was running the Montreal IT Professionals Community, Microsoft announced that due to a lawsuit from the Quebec Order of Engineers, Microsoft would be eliminating the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) designation in the province of Quebec. As a community leader I rallied against that; my position was that it would create…
