Certification Renewal Strategies

Speed-run

With both renewals, I adopted the speed-run approach initially – just dive right into the assessment and see how you go, counting on your memory of the original exam, anything you’ve read about those areas since then and any hands on-experience you’ve had since then.

While this worked very well for AZ500, I didn’t fare so well with this strategy for SC300 and so had to adapt and try a different approach.

Study And Prepare

1. Although this sounds like a lot of work, it is the most likely to lead to you passing your renewal.
2. Follow the Microsoft Learn modules that Microsoft recommend and study in the same way you did for the exam.
3. It won’t take you as long as it did for the original exam, and it has the added advantage of increasing your knowledge of the area of expertise that the certification is focussed on.

Which is better?

Study will always be the better approach in ensuring that you are actually learning – however if you are short on available time, I doesn’t hurt to go with just diving right in to the assessment and you can of course revert to study if you don’t pass, or even if you do pass, just to round out your knowledge.

Ultimately, these certifications are an attestation that you are sufficiently knowledgeable about the subject matter so that a potential employer might hire you over someone else for a role (Yes, there are many more factors, but this does carry weight with many employers).

So, if you’re just interested in collecting certifications but are lacking in experience, that is going to show either during a good interview or when in the role.

So I would definitely place emphasis on advancing your knowledge and understanding.

And in regard to the point about available time – you have six months in which to renew your certification, so don’t leave it to the last minute and put yourself under unnecessary pressure.

Summary:

In this post I talked about my experience renewing two of my Microsoft certifications, how I approached them, how I got on, what strategies are available to you, what to expect and how to prepare.

I hope that you find this useful when the time comes for you to renew your certifications!

As ever, thanks for reading and feel free to leave comments down below!

In this post, I’m going to talk about my first-ever Microsoft certification renewal experience.