Shaun Archer - How To Pass IT Exams Without Trying (Too Hard)

A bout a week ago, my CEO and I were interviewing a promising candidate for an IT support position. The young man seemed to be both stable and knowledgeable and the interview was progressing quite nicely. We had just gotten to the point where we were informing him of our expectations as far as certifications were concerned, when my boss made a statement which immediately struck me. He was explaining why our company policy offered each exam candidate the opportunity to make one attempt at each exam at the company's expense. "You see", he began, "Not everyone tests well. Shaun here is good at taking tests but I don't test well, I never did." "What does it mean to test well?", I thought.

After my initial reaction, I decided to disregard this statement but for some reason it stayed with me and a few days later I began thinking it through. Could it be true? Could there be an element or set of elements which allows one person to "test well" and, by extension, is there an element or set of elements which may sabotage an individual's chances of success? Most importantly, could these elements be identified, solidified and taught to others? I have come to the conclusion that they most certainly can and that is the reason this book was written.

Y ou may wonder why someone would go to the trouble of writing a book like this. I mean, in today's IT Exam world you can spend 15 minutes searching on Google and come up with the first 15 exam questions verbatim ( in color no less) with the remaining 120 or so questions a click or two away. Why would you bother to do it the "hard" way? In answer to this question I can only share my own experience and hope it can help you find the courage to try it honestly.

I graduated from University in 1999 with a degree in Biology and promptly joined the IT workforce. Even back then, you didn't debate with an employer about your qualifications. If they believed a Biology major qualified me to handle the web design and development position they had availablewellwho was I to argue? About a year later I heard about IT certifications and I figured it would be a good idea to get one to prove my ability. After all, at this point the only qualification I had was my Biology degree. All quotes I had received for the, then popular, MCSE (NT4) instructor led course loitered around $15,000. There was no way I could afford that and my employer was definitely not about to spring for it. (They gave me grief about getting a $100 piece of software to make my web development coding easier and suggested I develop their web site using the, "Save As Web Page", feature of Microsoft Word instead, for Pete's sake! I still have "fond" memories of that place, sigh.)

The good thing about not having many resources at my disposal though, was that it forced me to find innovative (and cheap) ways of teaching myself. I don't know how many of you believe in God, but I thank Him every day for these early financial challenges because without them I would never have been motivated to find another way.

Anyway, since the MCSE was way too expensive, I decided to try something in Web Development instead. After all, I was working in that area. So I bought one of the more affordable guides from the ExamCram series(which was highly recommended), got some practice tests and gave the i-NET+ exam a shot andjoy of joys, I passed. I was now hooked. I tried the Microsoft Network Essentials exam next as I figured that would be a nice, general introduction to Microsoft exams.

Around that time, I also recognized that there seemed to be some strategy involved in taking these exams. I started concentrating on exams that gave me a two for one special. For example, if you passed the i-NET+ back then, you could apply for the Certified Internet Webmaster certification, and I did. I discovered if you passed a few basic NT exams you could do an upgrade and get credit towards the 2000 MCSE, and I did.

By January 2001 I was fully involved, studying and passing exams like my life depended on it. I did four exams in January of that year to get my MCSE 2000 and become the first MCSA certified person in Barbados and among the first few in the world. How do I know I was the first? I did the exam the day it was released.

By now you must be ready to think I am a pompous self-impressed idiot and this book may almost be on its way back to the shelf, but I told you this story for a reason other than showing off. You see, I was not always like this. Four years before, in 1997, I had trudged dejectedly into my student advisor's office to discuss my horrible grades. That semester, I had failed all but one subject and the only reason I passed that one was because the lecturer gave me a break. I showed some promise in the exam so he offered to give me a C if I could at least hand in the reports for the lab sessions I had done during the semester.

It was the second semester of my second year at University. This semester's report was much like the semester before that and the semester before that. In fact much of my school life looked like that, but up until that point no one had given me an ultimatum. I had always coasted along on sheer luck, narrowly avoiding disaster at every turn. My student advisor "advised" me, that I need to either "get serious" or go, find some work and come back when I was serious. I opted for the work. I enthusiastically took a summer job on a farm owned by the father of one of my friends. He was a good and fair man, but, in my humble estimation, a crocus bag full of squash is perhaps the heaviest thing I have ever encountered in my entire life (second perhaps only to the internal workings of a washing machine).

Allow me to digress for a moment and explain that in Barbados, a crocus bag is a sack, which I believe is made of crocus fibers (or plastic I'm not sure) used to hold large amounts of ground provisions (like yams, potatoes, cassava etc) and other tough but healthy stuff. You should also know that we local Barbadians refer to ourselves as bajans.

Farm labour gives one plenty of time to reflect on life. It was during one of these moments of quiet reflection that I heard a statement from one of my co-workers which gave me the impetus I needed to go back to school. I had given up a summer job as a clerk in an office to work on the farm (labour on the farm actually paid better). I never forgot my co-workers reaction when she heard I had given up a temporary office job. Her words were, "out o' de sun?", which, when translated for those non-bajans among you goes something like - " Why would you choose to work in the hot sun all day when you have options?". For some reason those words hit me (like a bag of squash) and I thought to myself. I might have options now, but if I don't go back to university I may not later. So off to school I went.