Frequently Asked Follow-up Questions on Google Cloud (GCP) Certifications
p.s. You’re probably here because I sent you here from a chat on one of the social media. I do this because, like you, I have quite a few people reaching out to me and I’m too pressed for time to be able to type out replies individually to each person. Or when I’m traveling, it might be a long time before I’m able to respond. So this suits us both.
Following my posts on each of the Google Cloud Certifications, people reach out to me on LinkedIn and Twitter with further questions. Most of the questions are very similar, and I want to save some time for both you and me with this listing of common questions and answers I’ve exchanged with others. Some of these responses are verbatim, while others have been rephrased.
How do I know when I am ready? How do I know I’ve covered all the required material?
That really is the toughest part. The material is very vast — both deep and wide. The more we learn, we realize that there is way more to learn. I doubt if there is any end to it. And I don’t know of any way easy way to get around it but preparing better — not just learning more, which you have to do, but also getting a sense for when to stop.
My experience has been that the GCP exam questions s are better approached in a logical, deductive process rather than a brute force method. Common sense and reasoning beats by-hearting.
Here are some tips:
- read notes written by others (check awesome-gcp-certifications repo)
- study best practices (there is a link on the left nav wherever available)
- go through the exam guide (table of contents) on the Google page for that certification
- if the topic is going beyond the exam guide, maybe you can stop going any deeper (note: there will still definitely be some questions from some remote corner of the documentation. So this tip is mostly about maximizing the available time rather than being exhaustive in your learning.)
- consider overlap and specificity of exam topics. For example, BigTable has some coverage in Architect but deeper coverage in Data Engineer. So if you’re studying for the Architect, know the properties and best practices of BigTable but don’t go too far into it.
- don’t attempt to by-heart all CLI command options, but know some of the key ones. I’ve still got exam questions about command line options, but how many can one learn? You can make reasonable guesses and arrive at the right answer through a process of elimination even without having complete knowledge.
- don’t attempt to by-heart hands-on labs and commands in them. The exam questions are more scenario based.
I’ve done the courses and labs, studied the docs, but I’m still scared.
That is natural. All of us go through that phase. I’ve done almost every certification on GCP, but when I go for a new exam, I am nervous and doubtful whether I’ll pass. At some point though, you have to take a leap of faith.
Maybe you will fail once, but use that as a learning experience, prepare again, study harder, and go back again and do it.
There is no shame in not getting through the first time. Many, many people who have reached out to me have failed but then come back better prepared and succeeded. You can too.
I attempted the Professional Architect but failed. What do I do?
Have you done the Associate Cloud Engineer exam yet? If not, do that first and come back to the Professional exam again. The Associate Cloud Engineer sets a good horizontal base to all the other exams. Attempting and passing the Associate exam first will give you an easier first step to the other exams. You’ll get a good hands-on with the type of questions all the GCP exams have. Also, the confidence boost from passing the Associate is a very useful moral support that helps you with the other certifications.
But I don’t have a free coupon for the Associate.
My recommendation remains that you do the Associate first. If that means that you have to pay up from your own pocket for the exam, then do that.
Ok, so I passed the ACE. Which should I do next? Architect, Data Engineer, Network, Security?
Of course, this depends on which of these aligns best with your job. But if you had an equal option for any of these (after completing the Associate Engineer), my recommendation is that you do the Professional Architect next. This exam requires you to make decisions/choices from among a wide array of solutions provided by GCP. It sets a broad, solid base and understanding of GCP as a whole. It does not deep-dive into all technologies, but that’s for other certifications.
After the Associate Engineer and then the Professional Architect, I don’t believe there is a specific order which is advantageous. Depending on your job, preference, and comfort level, you could do any of the remaining in any order. Networking and Security are kind of deep-dives beyond the Professional Architect. There is some overlap in the study material between the two, but I have no preferred sequence for attempting them.
Data Engineering, Cloud Developer, Collaboration Engineer — these are all separate lines. Once you finish the Professional Architect, pick them up in any order that you like.
I have been preparing since many months. In practice tests, I’m always around 50–60%. There is some or other things in the corner of docs, I’ve missed or not understood correctly. Is it just bad preparation or am I doing something wrong?
Try the official practice test also and see how you fare. If you’re not doing well, I suggest you retake the test until you get used to the format, the way you reason through it, etc.
Also, at some point you have to take a leap of faith. We could be studying for ever and not feel confident. I’m at that stage for the next exams I’m studying for.
I have been preparing for GCP […] exam since last month but I don’t feel confident. So how can I boost my confidence?
Do the Google practice exam, try to work through all the case studies, study best practices, do more QwikLabs. All of that will help increase your confidence.
It is common not to be confident about the exam because there aren’t any similar tests to try out with. Your option is to try and cover as much material as possible and then take a leap of faith. Try the Google practice exam. Also learn all the best practices. Study the decision making flowcharts on which solutions to choose. Do a lot of qwiklabs and get hands on practice. After doing all of that, you just have to attempt it. If you don’t make it in that attempt, then note down the kind of questions you got, the subject areas that the questions were from, the wording and type of questions, etc. Practice again harder based on that and attempt again.
Can you give me any additional tips?
If I do have any, I will include it in the blog posts for the benefit of everyone. So, no, I do not have notes specifically for any person beyond what is in the notes. I’m also collecting notes from other exam takers for all GCP certifications here: https://github.com/sathishvj/awesome-gcp-certifications
Do you have any question dumps?
No. First and foremost, it is against the rules of the exam. Moreover, I highly recommend against them as you are going to be worse off with that approach than actually picking up GCP skills with courses and hands-on practice.
Is there any course that comprehensively covers the material and guarantees passing the exam?
I haven’t researched/reviewed all the courses, but my guess is that there isn’t and there never will be. The material is too vast for courses to be exhaustive — they’ll end up recreating all the documentation. The courses are great to give you the fundamentals, but you will need to pick up way more knowledge from the documentation and by doing hands-on exercises.
Which courses do you recommend for <your> certification test?
I’ve mostly taken Coursera courses created by Google, studied the docs, and done additional QwikLabs quests and labs. I have not reviewed most or pretty much any of the other courses to give you a recommendation. Since I’m already certified, neither do I have the time or motivation to review any of them. So I am unable to recommend any particular online course. But these are the course publishers, in no particular order, that I usually hear others mention: A Cloud Guru, Coursera, Linux Academy, Pluralsight.
Can you mentor me?
Though I would like to help each of you, I do not have the time for that. Therefore, I try to help multiple people together by creating material (see the AwesomeGCP channel), collecting material (see this github repo), writing my own notes, speaking at conferences, and conducting workshops and study jams.
Should I do GCP certifications or should I do AWS or Azure?
As of now, I prefer GCP, but it is not to say that the others aren’t good. I believe that there is enough space for all these public cloud vendors and more. Which of these you should take up is primarily going to be a function of your job demands. But if you are just independently picking one, here are some considerations that might help you.
Disclaimer: this entire section is mostly anecdotal evidence resting on unverifiable data
AWS has the largest market share. Azure is the next biggest. And GCP, next. However, GCP is the fastest growing among the three. There are (almost certainly) more jobs right now in AWS but there are also proportionately many more certified AWS professionals than GCP certified professionals. I would therefore guess that there is greater demand to supply ratio for GCP professionals than AWS professionals. So having a GCP professional certification could help you stand out from the crowd and even command better income.
How long should I study for the exam?
It depends. There’s no one answer to it as it depends on where you are coming from — do you work in that area regularly, do you have other cloud certifications, do you generally do well in multiple choice question exams? I know people who have studied for many months and still flunked, while I also see blog posts from people who studied just three days and passed.
Is there value in doing the beta exam?
I don’t think there is much. I’ve done three beta certification exams but I have not seen any substantial gain from the significantly higher effort. The exam itself is a torturous 4 hours — not including travel time to the location. For me, each time that is almost a full day gone. There is no food/snack break in between. Assuming that I left home an hour or so earlier, that’s about 5 hours minimum with no food. After a few hours of these tough questions, I can barely focus. And if I fail, I have to pay full price and try again. Why would I put myself through that without a significant incentive? There is a discount of about 40% on the price, but even for me who pays from my own pocket for the exams, it is not worth the effort.
Worse yet is that there is very little but the documentation to prepare with. Nobody has written any guiding notes, there is no practice test, no online courses (though Coursera usually has a high level course by Google instructors). It’s easier on your time and sanity to take the exam when it is generally available.
Are you a GCP trainer? Can you train me?
Yes, I am an Google Authorized trainer. Proof. However, this is usually for corporates. For a trainer, the time to train an individual or a group of people is somewhat similar. As an individual it wouldn’t be cost effective to pay the price that a group of people would pay. Therefore, for individuals, I recommend you take some of the online courses which work out much better. Google and other training coordinators also setup online trainings occasionally. You can see that here: https://cloud.google.com/training/courses
Can you help me with the answer to this practice question?
If it is a question from the official practice test, then yes. For others, I would rather not. That’s because I am unable to verify where you got the question from. People have reached out to me with questions that look eerily similar to the actual exam. Maybe you got it from a legitimate source or maybe you got it from an exam dump, but I’m unable to verify which. So in general no, don’t send me practice questions as I strongly disapprove of question dumps.
Update: put the question on Stackoverflow. Somebody else or I could answer it there.
Does passing the exam ensure higher salary?
A survey in 2019 showed that among the cloud certifications the GCP Professional Architect paid the highest. But that is statistical data. It doesn’t mean it will apply to every single person.
Do you know of jobs in GCP?
I do hear of them based on those who reach out to me. However, there is no central collation as yet. I am hoping to fix that gap this year. Give me some time to work on that.
QwikLabs is costly.
I have been collecting free codes that you could use: https://medium.com/@sathishvj/qwiklabs-free-codes-gcp-and-aws-e40f3855ffdb.
There might not be enough codes even with that. If you find the labs useful (and I think they are very useful), take a monthly subscription. It is worth the $55. If you work for a company that uses GCP, chances are that they will sponsor that cost.
Can you publish more QwikLabs codes? & Some of the QwikLabs codes you published have expired.
I don’t create the codes myself. I only collate what QwikLabs puts out.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to figure out which ones have expired. Of late, when they publish the codes they’ve also been mentioning the expiry date. I have started including that for your convenience.
I don’t have QwikLabs. Where can I practice?
You can create a new gmail account, sign up for Google Cloud and get 300$ credit which should be good enough to practice with. You will need to put in a credit card number for each signup to legitimize it, but I don’t think it is automatically charged if it goes beyond the credit limit. Please check that yourself.
Certification Exam Related Issues
Kryterion/Proctor suspended my exam! Why?
During the exam, if you seem to be doing something suspicious, they will suspend the exam. They want to ensure that you are not possibly cheating. Some of the reasons I’ve heard:
- Looking away often from the exam screen
- Reading out your questions aloud or even whispering it loudly
- Looking down into your lap often
- Signing/diagramming in the air
If my exam gets suspended, what should I do?
First, you should chat with the person who is proctoring your exam. In the past, others and I have had our exams re-started after about 15 minutes.
If that doesn’t reach a good conclusion, you should contact kryterion support: ktnsupport@kryteriononline.com
If they are unable to give you a resolution, try reaching out to Google: https://support.google.com/cloud-certification/gethelp.
Earlier, there also used to be this email id, but I don’t know if it’s still valid: google-cloud-certification-support@google.com
There were network problems. I got a FAIL result. How do I know it was not because of the network issues?
Network issues are very common. I’ve faced it too at almost every onsite or remote proctored exam. Online exam proctors like Kryterion take that into account. The examination process is built with that contingency considered.
Were you able to do a review of the questions at the end? Did you see any differences in the answers compared to what you selected? My guess is that it was consistent with what you answered. So it’s unlikely that network problems were the issue.
These exam questions are often deceptive — it looks like the answers might be easy but it often requires that you look at the details. So the best thing you can do is to go back and check what you probably misunderstood or answered wrong. Prepare again and take the exam again.
Notes from each of my exams
For those appearing for the various certification exams, here is a list of sanitized notes (no direct question, only general topics) about the exam.
Overall notes across all GCP certification exams
Notes from the Professional Cloud Architect exam
Notes from the beta Professional Cloud Developer exam
Notes from the Professional Data Engineer exam
Notes from the Associate Cloud Engineer exam
Notes from the beta Professional Cloud Network Engineer Exam
Notes from the beta Professional Cloud Security Engineer Exam
Notes from the Professional Collaboration Engineer Exam
Github Repo
A collection of posts, videos, courses, qwiklabs, and other exam details for all exams: https://github.com/sathishvj/awesome-gcp-certifications
Practice Labs
Collection of free QwikLabs codes for practice: https://medium.com/@sathishvj/qwiklabs-free-codes-gcp-and-aws-e40f3855ffdb
Wish you the very best with your GCP certifications. If you still have more questions, you can reach me at LinkedIn and Twitter. If you can support my work creating videos on my YouTube channel AwesomeGCP, you can do so on Patreon or BuyMeACoffee.
