During the Magento Imagine 2014 conference, Magento rolled out the new Magento Certified Solution Specialist exam as a part of Magento ecosystem and it is finally complimenting the certification endeavours of Magento with a non-developer kind of certificate.
Long time back in February we’ve got an invitation from Magento to try this certification as beta participants, although the exam in Kiev was cancelled last minute due to the civil protests tensions and we could not take the advantage of it. Luckily, there was an opportunity to pass the exam again at the Magento Imagine 2014 where it was announced and I have gladly decided to try my luck without going through the preparations.
I was lucky enough to complete the Magento training, pass the exam and thus have decided to share some experience that might help to successfully navigate through the process.
First, and possibly the only thing you will need for the preparation at all, is believing in yourself the Study Guide. As outlined in there, questions in the exam are coming from the three areas of knowledge: General eCommerce, Magento Architecture, Elements of a Magento eCommerce Site, Application of Knowledge to Business Goals.
General eCommerce questions seemed like the easiest ones for me and should not be a problem for you, if you have worked in this area for a while. What I’d recommend to spend the time on, is going through admin and making sure that in particular you understand:
- How the Price Rules work
- What kind of configurations are available for Shipping and Tax
- How does the native Checkout work
- What do you know about the native Magento’s recurring billing functionality
- How does the layered navigation work
- How PayPal integrates with Magento
- What are the Magento Enterprise specific features and how they can be used.
One of the main points is to understand what functionality is available in Magento natively, so you know what functionality would require customisations. You also need to be pretty much familiar with Magento Enterprise.
Overall, the exam is not too difficult and I’d say that someone who is used to perform routine operations in Magento Admin and knows Magento in general would likely pass the exam. So take the exam and you’ll have this bright mark added to your profile:
Good luck and feel free to ask your questions in comments!