post Determining ServiceNow Certification Legitimacy in Training and Certifications blogs

Determining ServiceNow Certification Legitimacy

Uncle Rob — Thu, 12 May 2016 01:59:41 GMT

Recently I was surprised and saddened to see a thread asking how to validate someone's certification. Its sad because the cert is such a poor litmus test of capability. Here I present questions to probe the credibility of resources, whether or not they advertise a certification. I've made some questions ideological so you can help determine if the resource is a legitimate platform thinker vs a platform instruction taker.

(Hi there - are you new to working on ServiceNow and looking to get ahead? You too can use these questions to your advantage. Seek the answers diligently as you prepare for your certifications)

Vetting the Certified ServiceNow Developer

I feel the CAD certification does a much better job at validating actual skill, but even so...

- How do you decide if a consumed service should be implemented via Service Catalog or via a custom application?

- What is the advantage to using Application Scopes if I'm not going to be deploying apps to the store?

- How do you work around the loss of various API's when working inside of a scoped app?

- What's the difference between client and server side scripting? Give an example of objects used in each.

- What area of the tool do you feel needs the most attention from ServiceNow product management?

- What's the alternative to gs.log from a scoped app?

Vetting Certified ServiceNow Administrator

With the preponderance of exam dump sites and "study guides", the CSA cert is a poor guarantee of competency. Don't look without having at least a few of these questions handy.

- Name me a couple kinds of items that can be found in a catalog

- In what situations is a Record Producer more advantageous than a Catalog Item? (swap the two if you wish to probe further)

- What three things need to be true on an ACL?

- How are custom apps licensed and why should I carefully consider before developing?

- In what situations are UI Policies more advantageous than a Client Script?

- What differentiates a Data Policy from a UI Policy?

- What's advantageous about defining an event driven notification, vs a notification coded directly into a workflow?

- What's the difference between State and Stage?

- How are choice fields different from tables, and why would I pick one over the other?

- Why would I use events to fire notifications, rather than just the condition builder?

Suitable for Both

- How do you move code from dev to test to prod?

- What should I be aware of before I turn on Discovery?

- What is a MIDServer?

- Tell me about GlideRecord

- Why should I buy Orchestration?

- Describe what Task is.

Ultra Pro Tip

- How are custom apps licensed and why should I carefully consider before developing?
(this one separates the adequate from the excellent. Can't tell you how many times I've seen adequate resources deploy functionality because it was requested... not realizing they had significantly increased the company's license footprint)

There's really no magic here. Its possible you could observe the confidence, fluidity, and detail in which a person answers the question, without even knowing the answers yourself.

Getting top end ServiceNow talent remains a challenge. If you need vetted resources, and don't feel adequately equipped to gauge them after this blog post, then Whitespace Studios is happy to assist as part of its Architecture Advisement service.

I remain yours truly,

Robert Fedoruk

Whitespace Studios

Re: Determining ServiceNow Certification Legitimacy

sabell2012 — Thu, 12 May 2016 13:36:23 GMT

Great article Robert! This is an area badly in need of focus in our industry. You bring out excellent points, and good questions to ask potential employees.

Here are a couple of more for the list:

Sys Admin:

How would you go about installing LDAP on ServiceNow? What should you watch out for?

Name a couple of best practices when creating Workflows.

App Dev:

What would be the benefit of extending an existing Script Include?

Name two ways I can test my Script Include code.

What is a JavaScript prototype? And how is it used in ServiceNow

I have one thing to say: Wish I had thought of this first; to write about! 🙂

Steven.

Re: Determining ServiceNow Certification Legitimacy

Uncle Rob — Thu, 12 May 2016 13:55:22 GMT

HAH! Well since you outblog me 10:1, don't feel *THAT* bad.

Re: Determining ServiceNow Certification Legitimacy

Chris York — Thu, 12 May 2016 15:56:10 GMT

Personally I think the Why questions are much more valuable than the How questions. How you do things are often easy to mixup and need to lookup reference for. I have been using ServiceNow for more than a decade and I still look up things on a daily basis. When I am looking for ServiceNow resources I want to know how someone thinks about a given problem. My favorite thing to ask is give a scenario of a challenge that can be solved in ServiceNow, and have the person I am interviewing describe to me in as much detail as they can what steps they would take to solve that problem.

Re: Determining ServiceNow Certification Legitimacy

Paul Ciarfella — Fri, 13 May 2016 11:27:46 GMT

Great topic and great questions. Like any technical interview, depending on the experience of the candidate, you also have to ask them to demonstrate how they've used the technology in their work. So instead of "how would you", I ask "how did you", "did you have any problems doing it", "in the end was there a better alternative solution that should've been pursued". Whether this is Java, JavaScript, a UI policy versus a client script, I can poke and prod to (hopefully) get the candidate to demonstrate actual experience beyond passing a 100 question test.

Given that there are so many questions or posts in the community asking for cheat sheets, test questions, etc., it won't be long before there are similar interview cheat sheets ... How long before someone posts a cheat sheet that answers your questions????

BTW I am going to answer your questions on my own ... there are some areas that I have much less experience in than others, and your questions are pointing out my own weaknesses!