The Value of AWS Skills Builder Badges

Introduction

During a slow weekend, I had time to take the trending?AWS Partner: Generative AI Essentials (Business) ?assessment. This opportunity made me challenge the value of these badges.

In this article, I explore AWS Skills Builder?Badges, how they can benefit you, and if they are worth investing your time.

What are AWS Skills Builder?Badges?

AWS Skills Builder?Badges enable individuals to showcase their AWS knowledge and skills. These badges validate that the individual has completed a particular course or certification. They are a great way to demonstrate to potential employers or clients that you have the necessary expertise to work with AWS products and services.

Additionally, earning these badges provides a sense of accomplishment and motivation to continue learning and growing in cloud computing.

AWS Skills Builder?Badges are generally free to earn.

Target Audience

AWS Skills Builder?Badges' target audience is individuals interested in showcasing their AWS knowledge and skills, including AWS employees and partners.

Experience

At the time of writing, there are two tracks for AWS Skills Builder; business, for business and salespeople, and technical, for us geeks!

Training Material

As a seasoned AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional since 2015 and someone who has been working with AWS at an enterprise level for nine years, I skipped the training. Instead, I tested wanted to test my skills through online assessments. Therefore, I can't provide any feedback on the quality of the course content since I didn't take it.

Assessments

All assessments recognise acquired knowledge following associated AWS online training.

Business assessments typically encompass 20 questions, whereas technical assessments typically encompass 40 to 50 questions. Assessments take around 30 to 60 minutes to complete, but I was multitasking, so not tracking time.? Training courses vary depending on subject and content knowledge depth.

I recall some nasty questions in the technical assessments marked as multiple-choice with checkboxes instead of single-item nodes with only one clear answer, so look out for these!

Value

The online courses provide outstanding value for obtaining subject domain knowledge at pace with the convenience of online training and at no cost.

I decided to start exploring AWS Skills Builder?Badges to prepare for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional rectification exam. The badges seemed like an excellent resource for getting ready for the exam taking again, so I was excited to see what they could offer. I feel the badges were a valuable addition to my study plan.

They also offer AWS techies to showcase their?niche?on an exhaustive cloud platform. For example, no AWS exams currently map directly to serverless or storage subject domains.

If you're someone who's looking to boost your confidence or can't afford to take the AWS Certified exam, then AWS Skills Builder?Badges are just what you need! They're a fantastic way to demonstrate your progress and showcase your skills.

Opinion

The business assessments were simple, given a decent focus and memory. However, the technical assessments were more challenging, often requiring a deeper platform knowledge.

Based on my experience with technical assessments so far, I would say they fall somewhere in the range of AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner and AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate in terms of difficulty.

I predict some of these subject domains coming into the realm of AWS Certified Specialty-level exams. For example, Storage and Serverless exams to accompany Security, Networking, etc. Also, these AWS Skills Builder?Badges should expand to cover AWS services such as Amazon Connect, Amazon SageMaker, etc., for an efficient way for AWS onboarding its customers and partners.

Also, even overlap AWS Certified Specialty-level exams as an entry-level way of proving subject domain competency, so additional AWS Skills Builder?Badges in Big Data, Data Analytics, Database, Networking, Machine Learning, and Specialty, for example.

I recently discovered that AWS displays badges alongside its AWS Certified exams on the popular?Credly.com ?dashboard. They have moved away from keeping the achievements exclusively on their Skills Builder website. It's great to see AWS taking steps to make its credentials more accessible and visible to industry professionals.

These AWS Skills Builder?Badges offer an excellent way to showcase and differentiate in a crowded market.

Summary

This article explored AWS Skills Builder?Badges and how they can benefit you. So, go ahead and?start earning those badges ?today!

About Me

As an experienced AWS Ambassador and Technical Practice Lead, I have a substantial history of delivering innovative cloud solutions and driving technical excellence in dynamic organisations.

With deep expertise in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, I am well-equipped to enable successful design and deployment.

My extensive knowledge covers various aspects of cloud, the Internet, security technologies, and heterogeneous systems such as Windows, Unix, virtualisation, application and systems management, networking, and automation.

I am passionate about promoting innovative technology, sustainability, best practices, concise operational processes, and quality documentation.

Note: These views are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organisation, employer or company mentioned within the article.