Preparing for the GitHub Foundations exam was a wake up call for me. I’ve used GitHub for years, but was shocked by how many features I didn’t even know about. Regardless of if I even passed the exam, there was an immediate benefit to how I utilized GitHub. That said, let’s walk through some of the things I did to prepare.
Read the Study Guide
First thing is to leverage the Study Guide. The GitHub foundations guide gives a detailed breakout of what topics will be on the test. As long as you’re familiar with most of the items listed in the guide, you should be able to pass the exam. Simple, right?
My recommendation to use the study guide to identify strengths and gaps in your learning. Take a digital or printed copy and put a checkmark on the topics you know really well. Put a circle or an X on the topics you aren’t comfortable with. Do this exercise periodically as you learn and prepare for the exam. As the test date gets closer you should have more and more checkmarks.
Take the Free Microsoft Learn Path
Microsoft has a free learning path that closely follows the Study Guide. If you did the recommended evaluation exercise above you can target your learning by reading through the modules where you need the most work. The downside to the Microsoft learning path is that it doesn’t come with any video instruction.
Read the Documentation
Another extremely useful technique I employed to prepare for the GitHub foundations exam was to read the documentation. With study guide and personal assessment in hand, you can use the search bar to find details to every topic you are struggling with.
Take Practice Exams
Another way to gauge your progress is to take practice exams. There are lots of resources out there for this that are both paid and free. One of the best free resources is https://ghcertified.com/. Here you’ll find practice tests for each exam with over 100 questions. You can specify how many questions you want to practice with and it will randomly pull from the pool of questions. These questions are very realistic to the actual exam which makes this one of the best ways to prepare.
My recommendation is to do these practice tests in small chunks. The questions are randomly selected so even if you do a small number of questions you should still get a good variety. Depending on how much time you have, do 10, 20, or 30 questions at a time. You need to get at least 70% of the graded questions on the exam correct so if you are doing that consistently on the practice test you should do fine on the exam. Although I’d recommend getting at least 80-90% of the questions correct before scheduling the exam.
Practice Concepts As You Learn Them
Learning gets solidified when you put it to practice. Once you’ve learned about what GitHub Actions is, don’t stop there! Go into a test repository and create one, run it a few times and see how it actually works. I’m of the opinion that it will be so much harder for you to pass the GitHub Foundation exam if you approach it with a textbook attitude. Get into GitHub and play around with its features as you learn them!
Conclusion
There are so many ways to prepare for this exam! Everyone learns differently so try out a few of these options and find the methods that work best for you!
Remember that not everyone passes it on the first try and that’s okay. Don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t go well the first time. Look at as another opportunity to keep learning. As I mentioned before, there is immediate personal value to be gained when you learn more about GitHub.
Still unsure if the GitHub Foundations Exam is right for you? No problem. Check out How to Decide Which GitHub Certification to Take. This article will walk you through the research process I used to determine which exam to take.
With that, I wish you the best of luck! I’d love to hear how you do on your exam. Feel free to post on LinkedIn and tag me using @Jayden Rasband.