Does your course and courseware correspond with the current exam version?  It is practically impossible to pass the exam having studied for a retired, previous version of the exam. Google and Amazon will happily provide access to out-of-date training materials where merchants care nothing about how effective and safe an engineer you will become.

Know that between old, out-of-date, and dangerous books and videos, unauthorised and unverified courseware. Independent organisations mimic CompTIA courseware and shorten course duration, hence missing out critical information. There are far too many ways for you to make bad training investments and to hinder your career. 

Before investing inany course, book, video series or labs, make sure they are fit for purpose. The industry has a host of out of date, incomplete and rehashed CompTIA courseware on the market and only a few that are perfectly fit for purpose.

Purchasing your exam voucher at the start of your training is a great motivator and the power of investing money in your career focuses your efforts like nothing else. 

Have you booked and scheduled your exam with Pearson Vue? Just like purchasing your exam voucher early, creating your account with the examination board and selecting a date and location is another great motivator. 

Will you take the exam at home, with a remote proctor? This is very convenient but has an increased risk. If the remote proctor is unable to verify any part of your exam attempt, your exam will probably be cancelled. You accept a higher level of responsibility with home testing.

It is safer to find a local exam centre and schedule a seat early enough to secure a great date and time for your test. This mitigates the risk of remote testing and benefits from being a distraction-free experience.

Have you met the course pre-requisites before starting your CompTIA training?

Alternatively, have you assessed the course and exam pre-requisites and accept that you will need to work harder than average to fill your knowledge gaps while studying?

Failure to assess the published CompTIA Course Pre-requisites is a main cause of exam failure.

Do you have clear, independent, verifiable, and accurate evidence that you have covered all the exam domains? What exam prep metrics are you using to identify that you have retained enough theory and do not have gaping holes in your course knowledge?

What indicators do you have that let you know that you have a suitable working and exam-ready ability to manage the systems? The exam will test your technical ability and experience to recall the systems, services, and process from the course. 

The exam domains are different from the course lessons. What analysis will you use to confirm you have suitably up skilled your knowledge from the course training and are work and exam ready?

Prepare to be exam happy!

The SMART training systems in The CompTIA Student Success Kit, provide complex analysis of your training progress. The clear feedback they provide will focus your efforts on becoming exam ready and your work prowess.

Have you worked with all the systems that the exam will test you on? What about gaining the depth of experience and ability with the systems, applications, and services that the industry expects a CompTIA certified engineer to have? 

Top Tip: Even investing in the full length, official CompTIA course, will not provide you with a viable working understanding and ability to work the core systems. All you can achieve on the course is access to most of the tech and, at best, a basic understanding of the systems. Typically, to gain a better understanding of the systems and become exam ready, you will need access to them and work on them for another 16 hours. To start to earn an industry viable level of ability and the expected systems experience, you need about 32 hours in addition to the official, CompTIA course.

Technical ability has always taken second place to covering the theory on the full 5-day official course. Imagine what you lose out on if you invest in a three or four-day course.

CompTIA Performance Based Questions continue to cause an unprecedented number of exam failures. The reasons behind this sad and regrettable state remain the same. Even attending courses including the name ‘certification’ or ‘exam course’, you are unlikely to be taught about the PBQs or if you are, you are not likely to cover more than one or two.

To be exam ready to face the CompTIA PBQ’s, and not be phased by their complexity, or lose too much exam time dealing with them, you need a professional understanding of the theory. PBQ’s brings together various industry disciplines, such as legal, best practice, technical, company constraints and demands. The diverse disciplines are wrapped up in as many as three or four scenarios in a single PBQ. Unravelling and diagnosing what is important takes time, but you have on average one minute per question. True, PBQs do have extra time allocated to them, but unless you are ready for them, they will upset your exam efforts, steal too much time, and damage your exam mojo.

Expect between 2 and 7 PBQ’s in your exam.

CompTIA has anything from 10 to 21 practice PBQ’s embedded into their CertMaster Learn Systems. To fully prepare for the exam PBQs work the CompTIA practice PBQs. They will make you a better, more capable systems engineer.

Do you have a clear understanding of exam etiquette and know how to avoid having your exam nullified? Do you understand the two options for taking the exam and appreciate the heightened risk of home proctoring? 

Be sure that your actions will not cause Pearson View Invigilators to report you and void your exam.