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How Do I Go about Getting Admin Certified?

By Kelly Lyons, IPRO Product Learning Experience Team

After using IPRO’s software, have you determined that you’re ready to take the next step in your learning journey? If so, becoming a Certified Administrator might be the best option for furthering your product knowledge (and your career prospects). Although becoming an IPRO certified Administrator may seem daunting at first, IPRO has got you covered! We have created a simple certification process, and we offer scaffolding every step of the way.

To get started, you can sign up for one of our public or private Administrator trainings. The requirements for each training vary based on the product—check out our Learning Center for more details on the recommended skill level necessary to take each class.

What to Expect at an Administrator Training

Administrator training is 9 or 10 hours total (depending on the product being trained on), but we break the course out into 3-4 sessions (again depending on the product) to ensure that our learners have the best experience possible. We strongly recommend scheduling these sessions 1-3 days apart to maximize retention of the material. We have found that having a small gap in between the sessions helps our clients avoid information overload. These sessions are quite dense, providing all the information you need to know about the administrative functionality of each product and the workflows they can assist with. We want to make sure you have enough time to take it all in.

To help us cover all the information you might need as an Administrator, these sessions are lecture-based. While we won’t have time to troubleshoot individual issues, you can feel confident that you will walk away from this training with a stronger and more detailed understanding of the software and how it can be used to help your organization.

What’s Next?

After completion of the training, you can begin preparing for your Administrator exam. To take the exam, you must have a minimum of six months experience using the application. Getting hands-on experience in the product will put you in the best position possible to succeed when your test date arrives! Before taking your test, you also will likely want to study with some of the material on our Help Center. This searchable platform is a great resource, providing tons of valuable information to prepare you for the exam.

Taking the Administrator Exam

To begin the exam process, you will first want to make sure you have a purchased exam available. If your organization bought a private training, one certification exam should have been included in the purchase and may be available for use. If you do not already have an exam available, the great news is that you can purchase one a la carte for $500. These can be purchased directly from the Certification Exam page of the Learning Center. You may need to have an exam unlocked prior to purchase–no worries! This is just to ensure that you’ve met the prerequisites. You can reach out to us at [email protected]and we will be more than happy to assist!

Once your exam is unlocked and purchased, you are ready to begin. What can you expect? Initial certification exams consist of two parts: a multiple-choice section and a long-form question section. Each part has a time limit of one hour.

You will need to pass the multiple-choice section to move on to the long-form section, but they do not need to be taken at the same time. Just keep in mind that once a section has been started, it cannot be paused, so make sure you set aside some uninterrupted time to complete each section of the test. Another exciting point worth noting is that each part of the exam has one retake available, so if you don’t pass the first time, you will have the opportunity to take it again, free of charge!

You might be wondering what to expect after you have completed both parts of your exam. Our trainers will grade your long-form exam within a week of completion, so you won’t have to wait long to find out your score. As soon as your grade is available, we will let you know if you have passed or if your retake is available. When you pass the exam, you’ll receive a certificate and a Certified Administrator badge that you can add to your LinkedIn profile and your email signature!

Once You’re Certified

After you pass your exam, you’ll be a certified Administrator for an entire year! On an annual basis, you’ll receive a notification letting you know that your certification is up for renewal. This email will provide you with all the information you’ll need to set up your renewal exam. The renewal exam is shorter than the initial certification exam, and it only costs $100 to renew. The material you will be tested on includes features added or changed in releases throughout the past year. We hope you’ll find that the benefits of having and keeping the certification are well worth the costs associated with it.

We look forward to you joining us as a certified administrator!

Keep checking out the Product Learning Experience team’s regular blog series for more information on our products, the Learning Center, and the types of training we offer!

If you’d like to learn more about IPRO’s products or if you’d like to purchase an Administrator training (or any other type of training), head to our online Learning Center: https://learn.staging.ipro.com/

IPRO’s Help Center, where you can find documentation on all IPRO products, can also be found here: https://my.staging.ipro.com/help

If you have topics you’d like for us to cover in this blog, please feel free to comment on this post and we will incorporate your ideas in future posts.