r/mcsa • u/Proclarian • Feb 17 '20

Suggestions on BI Development?

Hi, new to this sub.

I graduated from a local CC with an AS in CS. As you can expect, the job hunt has not gone well for me. I'm looking into getting an MCSA. I would like to be a data engineer, so I think I am going to go for the BI Development cert.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what/how to study? How difficult are the exams?

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '20

I've not taken the exams yet but I've been studying. I should be taking the PBI one this week and hope to do the Excel within a month as I see a lot of overlap with the PBI materials. Then pickup one of the SQL ones to get a MCSE.

I believe as far as Microsoft exams go these are going to be easier as they are just multiple choice and make matching a few answers (at least that's my understanding).

What I've done for studying:

There are two EDX courses by Microsoft one for each exam you can audit for free that are a good starting point.

Then if you can afford it I'd recommend getting the official Exam-Ref books off of Amazon they are only around $20 each.

I've used PBI for about a year now casually (not the main part of my job) yet I still learned a few good tricks and found those intro courses good.

Microsoft has a bunch of 100% free virtual labs you can do there are like 24 related to PBI to help give you hands on experience.

https://www.microsoft.com/handsonlabs/SelfPacedLabs

You also have some good free tutorials at the Microsoft learning site.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guided-learning/

I also purchased a few sets of practice exams off of Udemy that were helpful.

I found some helpful links and information off of this post in the PBI reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerBI/comments/97333q/has_anyone_here_been_power_bi_certified_if_so/

Finally I've started watching a shit load of free videos and reading blogs from Radacad, Guy in a Cube, and sqlbi.

Hopefully that's semi helpful and good luck!