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

[JWJW]

I know is been almost 2 years.. but this is good info. Thanks