I passed Google Cloud Certified Cloud Digital Leader — here’s how I did it

Google Cloud Certified digital toolkit

When I started getting my hands dirty with Google Cloud services because of work and school, I asked myself that I need to know the big picture of Google Cloud to get the most out of it. Why not learn them and be certified at the same time? That’s what I did. In this article, I will share my 7-day learning journey and the process I took from the first to the last step.

Article contents

• Learning Journey and Exam Tips
• Exam Proper

Learning Journey

• If you’ve taken other certifications from Google Cloud or even from other cloud providers, or you have experience with cloud technologies in general, you will quickly pick up some concepts during your learning journey. This means that the learning curve is not too steep. However, Cloud Digital Leader is like an introductory certification to Google Cloud, so even if you don’t have much experience with cloud technologies, that is entirely fine.
• In my 7-day learning journey, I watched an hour per day of freeCodeCamp’s Cloud Digital Course on Youtube, so I completed it in 6 days. Note that the course isn’t aligned with the latest exam coverage from the certification guide, but the topics are still relevant. With that, be sure to read the guide first.
• On the 1st day, I tried a practice exam from Udemy to whet my appetite just to get a taste of the topics. I know I’d fail it, but passing the practice exam wasn’t the point — I was trying to prepare my subconscious. Later on in the course, I encountered some concepts which were mentioned in the practice exam. That’s a metalearning strategy: association.
• If you bought a practice exam with multiple sets, take them one per day at a time, then after you took them all, retake them from the top one by one. This is another metalearning strategy: spaced repetition. Be sure that you read the summary of the result and understand why your answers are incorrect. The goal is to pass them all until day 7. On day 7, I passed all the practice exams.
• The questions are mostly in a scenario-based format, so put them in the perspective of someone that makes a cloud technology decision.
• Eliminate obvious wrong choices. If the question asks you to decide on the best storage solution for a scenario, and one of the choices is too generic or related to another service, it’s most probably wrong. For example, if the scenario is about a new company migrating its container images to Google Cloud, would you choose Cloud Storage over Container Registry?
• Create a game plan. Earlier, I mentioned my 7-day game plan. But that may not work for you. No one’s really sure about making a plan, but just do it that makes sense for you, and stick to it. The last day in your game plan is when you’ll take the exam. In my case, I took it on the 7th day. Once the plan is ready, book the certification exam. This is another metalearning concept: Parkinson’s law. Once you set a date, you’ll do whatever it takes to cover the topics and become ready.

Exam Proper

• Be sure to uninstall any recording software installed as a browser extension or desktop application and have a backup computer ready with a working camera and microphone. Ideally, the computer should be “clean” (i.e., as if the OS is reinstalled/refreshed). Otherwise, follow the machine setup guidelines and fix any issues during the machine diagnosis.
• One problem I encountered during the exam proper was that Google’s exam partner’s software (LockDown Browser) can only be launched with a link, which will become available on the exam date and time. This means the diagnosis will only happen at that time, and you only have several minutes (not sure if it’s 15–30 minutes) to secure a successful diagnosis before the schedule expires. The software detected some issues with some installed apps on my machine. The uninstallation took some time, and before I knew it, the schedule expired. The good thing is that the support rescheduled it to another hour.
• Be sure your Internet connection can support video streaming. This is because your desktop, camera, and audio will be recorded and streamed, so a stable Internet connection is a must.