Experience for Systems Admin Exam

[pdowney27]

While looking at the blueprint for the CSA exam which I'm looking to go for, I came across this section:

Additional Recommended Experience

• Industry experience with database concepts and system management. 
• System administrator role and/or access to ServiceNow administrative applications and modules. 
• Some knowledge of IT Help Desk processes and the incident, problem, and change workflows are also helpful. 
• Three to six months of experience using and/or maintaining a ServiceNow instance.
• General familiarity with industry terminology, acronyms, and initialisms.

The problem is that this is all new to me, and I don't have any prior experience besides taking the admin fundamentals course (which I just completed). So I would like to know if it is best to get a job as a systems admin first to gain knowledge before taking the exam, or pass the exam before applying to jobs? If the latter, how else can I gain experience without actually having a job as systems admin?

[Mark Manders]

I can tell you (from experience) that only having the theory will make it hard to pass the test and that's also how it should be, in my opinion. When you are a Certified System Administrator, the company hiring you should be able to rely on you knowing the stuff from experience, not just having the paper (that's why learning exam questions is always a bad thing).

I understand that it isn't easy: getting a job that you aren't certified for (yet) but, on the other hand, if this is the path you like to take, go for the job first, so you can get hands on experience and pass the exam easier, because you know what you are talking about. Also, maybe your company will pay for the exam, so you don't have to do it yourself.

Do think about this: you don't have the job yet. What if you pay for the exam, get certified and can't find a job within the ServiceNow ecosystem and go into a different field/platform. Then it is a waste of the money spend on the exam. It's looks great on your resume, but being certified without experience, won't help in landing your next job.

If you are set to get certified before getting the job, get a PDI and just start playing with it. Make sure you understand the different parts of ServiceNow, the modules, what it can do, etc. Build flows, dive into the business rules, client scripts and ui policies to see examples so it is easier to relate to. 

Again: don't go for exam dumps. Learning questions may help in getting the piece of paper, but doesn't help you in knowing what you are doing and that is the most important thing. The certifications aren't worth as much as they did before. Experience is. It's better to tell a future employer that you build an app on your PDI that can do something awesome and that you are working towards getting certified, than to say that you are certified but can't even explain how to conditionally make fields mandatory.