The Role of Professional Certification
By: D Ma
Tags: Data Visualization, Analytics, Tableau, Certification, Data Science

Why do you need a certification?

The is no doubt, that data is a key asset for the organizations and it is important to treat it right in order to get completive advantage. Tableau is a best of breed technology on the market that allows us to work with data, slice it and do complex data analysis on the fly. However, it requires us to understand the key concept of data analytics and we should know how to “drive” Tableau in order to deliver value. Moreover, we are working in competitive environment and we should constantly improve our skills and learn new technologies, new features and data analysis methods to be on the edge.

In this post, we will learn why it is important to master Tableau and pass the official Tableau Certification. In addition, we will discover that available certification types as well as share additional resource to master Tableau and prepare for successful certification.

TL;DR: Should I pass Tableau Certification? Yes, you should, 100%.

Why Certification is matter?

If we look into Wikipedia and see what does certification means:

Certification refers to the confirmation of certain characteristics of an object, person, or organization. This confirmation is often, but not always, provided by some form of external review, education, assessment, or audit.

In other words, it is the confirmation of our knowledge. In case of data analytics and information technology, it refers to our knowledge of a particular tool or methodology. In our case it is Tableau Desktop.

Certification is checking not only our Tableau knowledge, but it is evaluating our ability to comfortable work with data and communicate with people by using powerful visualization techniques. Moreover, it requires understanding of overall Business Intelligence solution and its role in organization. On the screen below, is high-level diagram for the typical organization that is using Tableau:

Modern analytics solutions

This diagram has three layers:

Source Layer — this layer has source systems, it could be business applications like Sales Force, files, transactional databases and so on.

Storage Layer — this layer consolidates information into Data Warehouse and in some cases leverage Big Data solutions like Data Lake, Hadoop, Spark.

Access Layer — this is the area of Tableau (BI tool), where business users can access data from storage layer or in some cases in source layers.

Idea, behind Tableau is to democratize access for the data. In other words, business users will use rich Tableau functionality to slice and dice data, connect various systems, databases, files, visualize data, build dashboards and explore the data.

This picture clears tells us what is the scope of exam. As a professional Tableau Developer, you should be able to know how to connect data, explore it, slice and dice. Often, you have to build Dashboard or tell a story with the data. It is good to know the best practices of data visualization in order to make your work effective and impactful. In some cases, we should calculate new metrics and leverage Tableau Table Calculations or Level of Details. Sometimes, parameters can help us to filter the data and add self-service functionality. Finally, we should have some knowledge of statistics and know how to use built-in functionality for forecasting, trend lines and clustering. As well as, know about Tableau Server and how to share and publish our work.

Let’s try to understand, what is the reason for certification and why it is goes beyond than just “nice to have”. There are many reasons, why data professionals are obtaining official certification. We can identify at least 3 top reasons:

1. Demonstrate to knowledge of subject and prove that skills are up to date

2. Requirements for employer

3. Requirements for the customer

Demonstrate to knowledge of subject and prove that skills are up to date

First of all, certification gives people stamp of approval that company is looking for. It means that the persons who passed the certification exam can claim that they really do know what they are doing. Hiring managers usually are looking for somebody that’s certified, because they can be confident that they’ve made a good decision. As a result, if you really want to differentiate yourself, if you want to be able to prove to the wider world that you’ve actually mastered the product, that you really do have the skills, and set yourself apart, then it’s well worth the time and effort to study and practice, to train to take the certification exams and eventually pass them, so that you have that brand, that stamp of approval that says not only am I a Tableau user, and not only I am savvy, but I’m actually able to prove that I’m savvy. It feels wonderful when you feel like you’ve done a good job, and it feels great to know that you’re a part of something that is absolutely transforming the business.

Requirements for employer

Often, employers have strong requirements for Tableau Skills. They want to hire Tableau Professional and they will set a baseline with Tableau certification. It means, in order to pass interview or even get a chance for the interview, we should have a certificate.

Sometimes, organizations decide to invest into the workforce and allow everyone to get Tableau training and pass certification exam. It is very good practice and organizations are willing to invest into their employees.

Requirements for the customer

Sometime, we can see the opposite situation. The organization wants to hire external freelances or consulting company. Their main requirement could be the availability Tableau certification. Moreover, Tableau company requires all consulting partners to have certification in order to provide high quality service.

As a result, it doesn’t matter what is the reason behind the certification. It is obvious, that having certification is better than not having and it gives us advantage on the market. Moreover, it will guarantee that we have required skillset and Tableau knowledge and can do analytics job.

Tableau Certification Path

On the screen below there are five available certification exams:

Currently, Tableau offers us two paths:

Tableau Desktop

2. Tableau Server

Let’s look to the summary table about the exam and it’s requirements and purpose: