Eugene Lebedev is a Power BI consultant by background. Before founding Vidi Corp in 2021 he created Power BI reporting for Autodesk. His Power Bi reports were used by VPs of Finance and C-suite of Autodesk. As part of Vidi Corp, Eugene created dashboards for Google, Teleperformance, Delta Airlines and 200+ clients worldwide.
I recently passed a PL-300 exam and got certified as a Power BI developer by Microsoft. I decided to tell you guys all about it while it is still fresh in my mind. Let me tell you all about it.
The number one question is: is this Microsoft Power Bi exam worth it? Obviously, only you can answer this question to yourself but I will share my experience to help you decide.
You want to learn something new from studying towards the pl-300 exam. Trust me, you will learn something. I personally have 4 years of experience working with Power BI and remember, it was launched 8 years ago. I personally learned quite a bit of new information about the product. Here is the thing, when you do the work, you learn a few techniques and then you just keep using them for all of your projects. You only know what you have to know to get your work done. However, there is much more to learn and in my opinion, taking the exam is a great way to do it.
If you are new to Power BI and you want to learn more about it. I thought this was important to mention because I don’t want to create the impression that you have to have 4 years of experience in order to pass the exam. In fact, Microsoft created a beginner-friendly system to study for this exam. They have detailed online articles with pl-300 exam tips, multiple-choice testing systems and some online labs that explain to you with screenshots where you should click.
If you want to test whether you would learn something, I recommend you do a practice test. I will leave the link in the description. It consists of 50 multiple questions testing 4 areas of Power BI:
At the end it tells you which areas you are good at and which ones you can improve. You can then work on the areas where your score is the lowest.
You can work on those areas by taking some official online learning by Microsoft for the PL-300 exam.
Microsoft groups content into learning paths. Every learning path consists of modules and every module consists of several articles. Some of those articles are theoretical, explaining how Power BI works. Others are practical showing you where to click. Some learning paths contain a lab where you can open a virtual desktop and click around Power BI yourself.
If you are planning to study towards this exam, I would recommend you go about it like this: first, you do the test, then you see which areas you need to work on. You work on those areas, take the practice test again and you continue iterating.
You can complete the learning paths for free, however sitting an exam costs money. The cost will depend on which country you sit in. For me, it was £150 since I live in the UK but my colleague from Lithuania only paid 100 Euros.
Just before the exam you will get a link from Microsoft to the online examination portal. When you log in, you will need to turn on your camera, show your ID on the camera and show around your room. This is a way for Microsoft to make sure that you don’t have anyone else helping you and you don’t have any notes.
You will need to keep your camera on throughout the whole exam. I had a situation during my exam when I forgot to remove my headphones. Someone from Microsoft joined and they told me to remove it. This is just a good demonstration that they are actually watching you.
Once you pass the exam, you will get your certified badge. I was surprised to find out that the badge expires every year. If you want to retain it next year, you will need to take the exam again.
I believe so.
I was on a call with a potential client and when I told them that I recently got certified. They told me that to them it means that I definitely have the minimum level of technical skills needed to get their work done. I believe this is exactly what the badge demonstrates. Everything else will depend on your portfolio and professionalism.
The bottom line is that PL-300 is the only official Power BI certification at the moment. It is the most credible certification on the market so if your goal is to gain technical credibility, it is definitely worth it to take the exam.
