Skills assessment FAQ for learners

Tags: ACG

How does the Skills Assessment work?

The Skills Assessment is an evolving assessment that helps establish a baseline for your knowledge and any skill gaps. At the beginning of the Skills Assessment, you choose your skill level along with your specialities. The Skills Assessment then begins assessing your knowledge in comparison to the baseline skill level and speciality you chose. The questions become more or less difficult, depending on whether you answered them correctly or incorrectly. Your Skills Assessment will generate once we have sufficient data.

Can I pause the Skills Assessment?

  • We want to simulate as much of an exam experience as possible.
  • We want to gather the most accurate data.

Make sure to set aside enough time to take the Skills Assessment without interruption.

What if I don’t complete the assessment in the allotted time?

If you’ve reached the time limit, a screen will appear indicating that the assessment has run out of time. But not to worry. The questions you have answered will still help us in determining your skill set.

Why isn’t there feedback for my Skills Assessment progress?

The number of questions you get varies depending on your answers. The Skills Assessment is constantly changing as you take the assessment so we aren't able to determine ahead of time how many questions you’ll end up answering.

Can I see if my questions were right or wrong?

This Skills Assessment is used to identify the courses you should start with. What you missed will be covered in the courses recommended to you. Once in a course, you can also take practice exams to identify your knowledge gaps.

Can I retake the Skills Assessment?

While the Skills Assessment can only be taken once, our practice exams can be taken as many times as you want. (Though we don’t recommend taking a practice exam more than a couple hundred times).

Can I access my results later?

If you intend to share or keep the results, we recommend printing or taking a screenshot of them, since they can't be accessed later. We are working on adding this functionality.

Are the results tied to my A Cloud Guru account?

The Skills Assessment results do not currently tie to your A Cloud Guru account.

Is the Skills Assessment just for AWS skills?

No, the Skills Assessment supports both AWS and Azure.

What does each “Level” relate to?

The following table outlines the broad characteristics of each student level. These levels are used in the design and production of our course curriculums and learning paths to ensure content is taught at an appropriate level.

Level:

Students at this level:

Novice

  • Understand fundamental Cloud Computing concepts and ideas.

Apprentice

  • Navigate the appropriate vendor GUI.
  • Have a basic understanding of security and core Cloud services.

Practitioner

  • Have hands-on experience building Cloud solutions.
  • Have a practical understanding of security.
  • Have exposure to more advanced topics such as containers and serverless.
  • Can often analyze and evaluate different architectural options.

Professional

  • Have a thorough understanding of, and experience in, building scalable infrastructure and applications.
  • Use infrastructure as code and can effectively evaluate and reason with regard to architecture and technological options.
  • Understand the trade-offs between various solutions.

Guru

  • Have an advanced understanding of Cloud Computing.
  • Demonstrate expert knowledge of security, networking, DevOps and infrastructure.
  • Have the ability to propose new and innovative solutions.
  • Have a strong understanding of architecture, trade-offs, cost, and people considerations.

I’ve got my results, now what?

The following table shows suggested starting points based on your assessed skill level:

Discipline

Learning path

Assessed Level

Starting point

Architecture

AWS Architect

Novice

AWS Certification Preparation Guide

AWS Architect

Apprentice

Rethinking Architecture in the Age of Truly Commoditized Compute | James Simmons

AWS Architect

Practitioner

#109 - Your Very Own API

AWS Architect

Professional

Kubernetes Deep Dive

AWS Architect

Guru

-

Data

AWS Data

Novice

AWS Certification Preparation Guide

AWS Data

Apprentice

AWS Certified Developer - Associate

AWS Data

Practitioner

Building Resilient Serverless Systems with "Non-Serverless" Components | Jeremy Daly

AWS Data

Professional

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional

AWS Data

Guru

-

Developer

AWS Developer

Novice

AWS Certification Preparation Guide

AWS Developer

Apprentice

Introduction to Git

AWS Developer

Practitioner

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate

AWS Developer

Professional

S3 Masterclass

AWS Developer

Guru

-

DevOps

AWS DevOps

Novice

AWS Certification Preparation Guide

AWS DevOps

Apprentice

Mastering the AWS Well-Architected Framework

AWS DevOps

Practitioner

AWS Certified Security - Specialty

AWS DevOps

Professional

Kubernetes Deep Dive

AWS DevOps

Guru

-

Security

AWS Security

Novice

Introduction to CLI

AWS Security

Apprentice

Introduction to AWS CloudFormation

AWS Security

Practitioner

#109 AWS Systems Manager Session Manager

AWS Security

Professional

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional

AWS Security

Guru

-

Question left unanswered? Contact our Support team and we’ll be happy to help! If you're an admin who would like help understanding skills assessments, check out the Skills Assessments FAQ for admins.

back to top


If you need help, please contact Pluralsight Support.