How to become a Google Cloud Digital Leader ?

Google badge you will receive after passing Cloud Digital Leader Exam

I will start with a brief intro to my cloud certifications journey — After completing the 3 Foundational Exams of Azure, and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud Practitioner Exam, the last fundamental certificate of a major player in cloud services left for me to achieve was GCP’s Cloud Digital Leader.

This post will guide you on how to pass and become a Cloud Digital Leader. According to google, a cloud digital leader can articulate the capabilities of Google Cloud’s core products and services and how they benefit organizations. The Cloud Digital Leader can also describe common business use cases and how cloud solutions support an enterprise.

The Cloud Digital Leader exam assesses your knowledge in these areas:

• Digital transformation with Google Cloud (~10% of the exam)
• Innovating with data and Google Cloud (~30% of the exam)
• Infrastructure and application modernization (~30% of the exam)
• Google Cloud security and operations (~30% of the exam)

My exam lasts 90 minutes with 55 questions. Google claims that there will be 50–60 multiple choice and multiple select questions for this examination. The test uses a combination of multiple choice and multiple answer question types, and one should score a minimum of 70% to pass the exam. One must know that this exam differs from other fundamental examinations of other cloud providers in terms of results as well — Google will only tell you whether you passed the exam or not ? It won’t share the score you have received for the exam. Thus, in case one fails to pass the exam, they won’t be able to understand which topic or area they need to focus more on to retry the certification exam.

Preparation:

1. I always emphasize on making sure that we go through the learning material offered by the cloud provider themselves. And google gives you a clear learning path for each of the certification. You can begin with the Cloud Digital Leader Learning Path to gather and comprehend all important exam topics. The path consists of quizzes and thus helps one prepare for the exam while learning.
2. If you don't have much time and want to understand the basics by reading, Google offers a Cloud Digital Leader Study Guide. This 22-page study guide covers every topic adequately and should be enough to prepare you for the exam, along with some practice exams.
3. About the practice exams: Google offers sample questions.
4. If you want to learn from other sources, I have completed and would recommend Janakiram MSV’s Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Fundamentals for Beginners course on Udemy.
5. Lastly, I would also recommend going through all the practice tests provided at Udemy’s Google Cloud Digital Leader Practice Tests

Extras: There is a free udemy course available to learn the GCP concepts.

This is a fundamental certification to aim for if you want to start your journey with GCP. It is not role-specific, so anybody can acquire this certification. I hope that the information provided in this post helps you achieve the certification.

Wish you good luck. Rock it !