Hello there, this is an OKTA Certified Professional and OKTA Certified Administrator. Yes, you have read correctly. This year, I have completed two professional certification courses back to back. And, today I am going to share my entire course and exam related experience with you.
At the beginning of this year, while I was searching for better opportunities, I came to know about OKTA and their Professional training courses. Without wasting any time I logged in to their website. There I saw an interesting offer for exam fees. The exam fees have been reduced to just $ 50 per subject for the December/January session. Normally, it is charged as $250 with a re-examination cost of $100 per paper. Frankly, I can say that this discount insisted me to pursue the course immediately.
Firstly, I cleared the OKTA Professional Certification Course. Believe me, it demands immense study to qualify. I tried my level best and covered all the topics and the result was very self-satisfying.
This professional course study provides me the highest level of knowledge regarding OKTA. Therefore, I didn’t think twice to go for OKTA Certified Administrator exam. The discount on exam fees was still valid. So, without any further delay, I booked an exam slot for the same.
Preparation
Now the most important question that arises is that How do I prepare myself in the best way? Well, I begin with the search for the functions of an OKTA Professional. I found that these executives need to be familiar with OKTA technologies and processes related to simple directory integration, single sign-on federation (SSO). This is required to handle the probable application aspects of User Lifecycle Management.
My next step was to collect the materials for the study. OKTA has videos and slides containing all the basic information about them. Apart from that, there are many online study guides, blogs, and articles based on OKTA documentation knowledge. All of them served the role of the facilitator for me.
Even some structured training is generally organized by OKTA but that is a bit expensive. Henceforth I have decided to go for other ways like reading documents and also playing the exam game in an OKTA test environment. You can also do the same as there is free access to the OKTA Dev account to play such exam games. This game is really helpful to know the product well without disturbing the settings of the production environment.
But now the problem arises that the documents and guides are loaded with huge information. If you go to search for everything, you may get confused. So it will be better to pick up the exam-related topic information from them. I also did the same otherwise to learn the whole documentation was beyond my capacity.
The best tip which I tried was to note down all the important topic related information from all the docs for the Professional exam. But in the Administrator exam, I applied different tactics. My previous experience helped me a lot in cracking that exam. The reason behind the same is that the second time it was clear to me what OKTA can exactly demand from me.
Supervising
OKTA exams are proctoring by Examity. Basically, I didn’t have any idea about Examity, so I was a bit nervous. The only advantage of Examity for me was that I can schedule the exam as per my convenience. After that, the only thing to do is just login according to the scheduled time and they will provide you the link. Click on the given link to start your exam.
This is going to be a thrilling experience for you. You might be thinking what is thrilling about the exam? Well, this is so because of the strict rules and regulations. First of all, you need to sign in 15mints before the starting of the exam. Don’t forget to have your ID card with you. Then an invigilator will appear on your screen. Yes, he will supervise you in the entire course of your exam.
Before he offers you the questions he will have a quick check of your room. This is to make sure that you are not having any other person in the room. Even you are not allowed to wear hats and dual microphones. You will not be allowed to prompt the answers loudly. After all the checking protocols are done properly they will start taking your exam. You will have 90 minutes but probably you will not need the whole duration. Interestingly they will declare your result as soon as your exam is over.
DOMC
As everyone knows that OKTA exams are conducted in Discrete Option Multiple Choice (DOMC) format. It is very unusual than the other multiple-choice format. One option will be presented at one time and you have to answer. If your answer is correct only then you will move to the next question otherwise your exam is over now and there.
This system is to judge whether a candidate knows everything properly or just want to guess the answers. Sometimes while practicing if I failed to answer a question, it ‘detonates’ and was not able to move to the next question. So to deal with the same, I went on for repeated practice exams. It will help to boost your confidence while answering the questions in the exam.
Most surprisingly, I was not having any idea about the pass-marks at the time of the exam. But when I saw my result, it was pretty good than qualifying in the exam. So, this was the time for the celebration when I finally ended up with profound foundational knowledge. This is perhaps the main aim of OKTA. They want all their professionals and administrators to know the system well.
So friends as a qualified professional and administrator, I can suggest you that don’t study just to qualify for the exam. But try to gain as much knowledge as possible about OKTA.
