The Secret to Passing the Microsoft Office Specialist Exams
If you are trying to get ahead in you career today, you will
know that the computer skills you have under your belt are what
will make the difference between you moving up the ladder or
down. When it comes to trying to prove your computer competency
in using office applications there is no other certification
path that stands out like the Microsoft Office Specialist
program. With over 3 million exams now undertaken and well over
2 million Microsoft Office Specialist Certificates issued, this
certification has become the one to get to prove your skills in
using Microsoft Office.
One thing I have found though is that many people fail these
exams first time around and there really is no reason for it.
The way the Microsoft Office Specialist exam works is that you
will be taken into a room and sat at a computer. On this
computer you will be asked by the computer to carry out a series
of tasks. Each set of tasks is designed to represent tasks you
would be expected to do on a day-to-day basis.
These exams really are a good representation of what people
would be expected to do on a day-to-day basis. I should say I am
a little bias since I am a Microsoft Office Specialist Master
Instructor and my company is a Microsoft Office Specialist
Authorised Testing Centre but having trained about 4,000 to
5,000 students through my training centre in Townsville,
Australia the certification exams really do represent the skills
you would be expected to perform in your workplace.
There are in fact seven exams in the Microsoft Office
Specialist Program and they are the Microsoft Word Core and
Expert Exams, Microsoft Excel Core and Expert Exams, Microsoft
Outlook Core Exam, Microsoft PowerPoint Core Exam and the
Microsoft Access Core Exam. If you were a Secretary or Personal
Assistant, I would expect at a minimum you would have passed the
Microsoft Word Core Exam and the Microsoft Excel Core Exam. If
you hold the position of a salesman, I would expect you to have
the same certifications as the Personal Assistant or secretary
plus the Microsoft PowerPoint Core certification and maybe the
Microsoft Excel Expert Certification and Microsoft Access Core
Certification.
Ok, so how do we prepare for these exams.
First of all, you need to choose how you want to study for
these exams. In terms of passing these exams it doesn't matter
whether you want to do a course at a training centre, buy a self
paced training program or doing the training on the Internet.
Use the form of training that you feel most comfortable with. Me
personally, I prefer to use self-paced training where as many of
my students prefer classroom based training. Each training
method has its own advantages and disadvantages. One thing to
note, if you are going to go to a training centre, make sure at
the very least they are a Microsoft Office Specialist Testing
Centre and that they will give you a training manual and
exercise disk to take home with you to keep. If the training
centre doesn't give you a manual then don't waste your time with
the course even if they might be the cheapest. In computer
training, cheapest definitely does not mean the best.
Step 1. Once you have done the course or studied the
Self-Paced material make sure you redo all the material within
7-days!
One mistake many people make, is thinking that they can do a
two-day computer training course then walk away as an expect. If
that's what you think, than it is totally fanciful. Computer
Training is like a sport, if you want to be a professional then
you must train as a professional. The first step you need to do
in any training regime is to go back through all the material
you did in the computer training course in the first 7 days
after you the finish of the course.
Studies have shown over the years, that each 7 days you don't
review your material, you will loose 50% of the material. Each
week you don't review the material you loose another 50% which
means in 6 weeks or so, you will remember nothing from your
course. All in all you may as well, not have done the course in
the first place.
Step 2. Write a brief statement in your own words, the key
terms used during your course.
The next thing you must DO! Is to write a brief statement in
your own words about all the key terms you learnt during the
course or in your self-paced material. One of the challenges you
will have in the exam is deciphering what they are asking you to
do. Sometimes, I have found the language is very difficult to
understand because it is written in American English (no offence
intended to my American colleagues). In one of my Microsoft
Outlook Core Exams, I was certain I was going to fail the exam.
The only reason I passed was by identifying the key terms in the
text that related to the application and by knowing those I
worked out in each question what exactly they were asking me to
do.
Step 3. Practice, Practice, Practice - Get lots of Practice
Exercises
The next thing you must do is to get as much practice as
possible. Most training schools will have structured their
material so that at the end of each topic you will have some
questions to answer and also some sort of homework exercise to
do that will put all the tasks together into one exercise. The
key here is to practice as much as possible. Check out the
internet for places where you can get lots of practical
exercises or make up some of your own.
Step 4 - Do a Pre-Assessment Exam to see if you are ready.
One thing I have learnt from doing these professional exams is
that they are absolutely nothing like the exams you would have
undertaken at school, college or at University. My
recommendation that I would make to anyone sitting computer
certification exams is to purchase a pre-assessment exam for the
exam you want to take. What the pre-assessment exams do is to
test your skills prior to sitting the real exams. Most of the
pre-assessment exams I have seen are pretty good and pretty
close to the real exams. I personally recommend either the
pre-assessment exams from Certiport, Transcender or Self-Test
Software.
When you do the pre-assessment exam, you should score 80% or
above on the first go. If you don't, do not do what I have seen
many people do, and that is to just keep doing the exam till you
get all the questions right. What will happen if you do this is
you will build up a memory of the questions and you end up
knowing the requirements of the question without truly being
able to interpret what the question is asking you to do.
Once you have done the exam once; DO NOT under any circumstances
re-do that exam for 7 days. This will help stop the memory build
up, of the questions.
What you MUST do once you have completed the pre-assessment exam
and got a result is to look at the results of the test and find
out which questions you got wrong and go back and study those
areas more thoroughly. Then, after you have reviewed the
material and waited 7 days, then try the pre-assessment test
again.
You should in the second attempt score 90% or better. If you do
achieve this then you are ready to sit the real exam. If you
don't, then you need to follow the same process again for the
next 7-days.
After the third time using the same Pre-Assessment exam, I
recommend people try a different pre-assessment exam before
being 100% sure they will pass the exam. The more you use the
same exam, the bigger risk you face in retaining that memory of
questions.
Most pre-assessment exams usually come with 2 or 3 different
exams to try. If after three attempts of each pre-assessment
exam and you still find that you can't pass at 80% or better, I
would strongly recommend finding a mentor and also checking to
make sure the training material you have purchased is covering
the required material.
Step 5 - Pass the Microsoft Office Specialist Certification
Exam!
Obviously once you have done this much training and practice and
you have passed your pre-assessment exams you are now ready to
sit the real exam. One thing to remember, Microsoft Office
Specialist Exams are commercial exams and because of this, if
you fail the exam, you have to pay to resit the exam. The cost
to resit these exams can vary from as low as $80 US to $135 US,
in many cases the prices are set by the Microsoft Office
Specialist Testing Centre.
The good news is that if you have followed the steps I have
outlined, I will be very surprised if you didn't pass on your
first attempt.
Step 6 - You Are Finally A Microsoft Office Specialist