Sharing experience on trainings and certifications

[Anton Lykov]

Hello all,

I have been hired by ServiceNow in July 2022, and since then I had a chance to attend many trainings and take a handful of certification exams.
I did not have previous experience with the ServiceNow platform, and I thought my experience might be useful for others, so I decided to write this article.
It does not tell generic things about trainings and exams, I will be prompt and specific about my experience with ServiceNow.

First, I would like to mention a few things which would help you to take your trainings efficiently, and then pass the exam:

1. Make sure to take on-demand trainings as the official ServiceNow certification path prescribes.
2. Some trainings have the option to play videos at a different speed. It was comfortable for me listening to most of the trainings at 1.5 or even 1.75 speed.
3. Do all the labs.
4. Read the student’s book from the training cover to cover.
5. For the first exams you decide to take (most probably CSA and/or CIS-ITSM), spend additional time playing with a developer instance or taking additional trainings which you can find at developer.servicenow.com.
6. Try to find mock exams if you can. For some certifications, mock exams are available on Udemy. Even though the quality might be not so good, take the mock exams.
7. Points #5 and #6 would help you identify the areas where you need to know more. Make sure you follow up and read the documentation on these topics. It might happen that you have a question that Is not explicitly covered in the traini
8. I had a much better experience taking the exam on-site rather than remotely. So if you have a chance, my advice to you is to take exams at the test center nearby.

Then, please see some tips for each exam I’ve taken:

1. A general tip for newcomers to the platform – don’t be afraid, everything is logical and the information is pretty well structured in the trainings. The exams are also not so difficult as they could have been. More importantly, if you have experience with similar solutions from major competitors, your previous knowledge will help you. Not from the technical point of view, but the concepts you know would be definitely useful.
2. CSA – it was probably the most difficult for me, because this was the first exam I’ve taken. Spend more time, make sure you take additional time to play with your developer instance, and just play with the platform to know more generic features.
3. CIS-ITSM – your general ITSM and ITIL knowledge will help with this exam, but since there are a lot of capabilities, make sure you also take enough time for trainings available.
4. CIS-HR – this one was a bit easier. Probably one of the main factors which helped me was the fact that I was using the onboarding capability and some others when I started to work for ServiceNow.
5. CIS-CSM – there were many new concepts for me, so this one was more difficult. Probably as difficult as CSA or CIS-ITSM.
6. CAD – this exam is special because it is more technical, it requires you to remember some JavaScript methods and functions, although it does not require you to code during the exam.
7. CIS-HAM – this was easy, because the exam talks a lot about how HAM works, not about how it can be customised. And the concepts of HAM are mostly industry best practice.
8. CIS-SAM – this was easy as well. I think I even took both HAM and SAM on the same day because there’s an overlap between the two.
9. CIS-APM – this was an easy one too. There are not too much new concepts in APM, and it contains less questions than some others.
10. CIS-Discovery – this is a bit different, but again, if you are familiar with the methods of discovery used in IT, it will help you to learn and remember information which you need for the exam.
11. CIS-SM – service mapping has substantial overlap of knowledge with discovery, so I took both Discovery and Service Mapping on the same day too. Most probably, if you are ok with Discovery, you will have no trouble with Service Mapping training and exam either.
12. CIS-EM – for me, my previous knowledge about event management, as well as experience with different event management software was helpful.
13. CIS-CPG – in case you have experience or the basic certification with Azure or AWS, it will help you a lot. Since I had both Azure and AWS basic certifications, it helped me to learn and be more successful during the exam.

I will keep adding information to this article about other exams as soon as I take them.

Best regards,

Anton Lykov

[Allen Andreas]

Hi,

Thanks for the article. That's a bit more than a handful? Haha. and in less than a year?

For future readers regarding point 6 above, I would be extremely cautious and diligent when utilizing any 3rd party site for "mock" exams "exam dumps", etc. Historically, that information can be either inaccurate, incomplete, or flat out contain incorrect answers (as if the assessment is built wrong), a decent amount of time they cover material other than the "focus area" for the exam (which then distracts you from studying relevant concepts and topics related to the exam you're pursuing), or the material has been obtained in a way that violates the terms and conditions from SN (aka blatant cheating). I've reported numerous courses and videos on YouTube/Udemy and the like related to cheating and jointly worked with ServiceNow to alert them to these flagrant issues to which they've filed copyright claims and gotten the videos and such removed from being online. Always take appropriate precautions when studying on any other platform, as in point 7 above...where you see a question that is not covered in any official training material...

It's commonly recommended for people to simply refer to:

• The course material on Now Learning
• The e-book, if applicable
• ServiceNow Blueprint document related to the focus area of your exam

Those three bullet points will keep you in safe waters and guide you towards success.

For point 8, everyone learns and has different preferences when taking exams...while on-site may be what one prefers, others may prefer the remote (online) option. Only you know which option will be best for you. It's important to think through that and do the option that feels right to you.

Best of luck to everyone in your certification and training journey!

Thanks again for the article and sharing knowledge!

[Anton Lykov]

Thanks @Allen Andreas for useful notes.

Regarding mock exams or brain dumps, I absolutely agree that they are the least reliable method of learning, that's exactly why I've put them below everything else in my list, and when I did it, it was the very last thing in my learning process.

Regarding on-site vs. online exams, I just had a lot of technical issues on the way (corporate laptop, firewall, external webcam, etc.), therefore I ended up driving 30 mins to my nearby exam center, and taking my exams there. I absolutely agree that if one feels comfortable with remote exams, and there are no technical issues, it is totally makes sense to do it online.

Thanks again for commenting and sharing your thoughts!

[r2020]

If you have few minutes can you put the certifications in the order  of preference from easy to difficult. I am trying to confirm which certifications i can complete for the CTA. I already have CSA, CAD, I wanted to get two or three more. I do not have any preference as my company uses several modules ( event, ITSM, VR, SM, HAM...discovery....so i can pick and choose the easy ones) 

[Anton Lykov]

Of course it depends on your experience with particular products, but for me the easiest ones were HAM, SAM and APM, most probably.