In this blog I would talk about how to get started with Google Cloud Certified Fellow: Hybrid Multi-cloud certification program and my experience of being a Certified Fellow.
The official resource for the certification is – https://cloud.google.com/certification/hybrid-multi-cloud. Kindly check this website for any latest program updates.
Google Cloud Certified Fellow certification is a unique certification as the certification tests you on your technical vision and strategy, hands-on skills through a series on Lab, business transformation and impact and your leadership style/skills.
As part of certification, you would be evaluated on broad range of skills – how you can build, deploy and scale multi-cloud applications, creating legal, compliant and regulated products, hybrid cloud strategy, anthos skills, cloud migration, data strategy, business strategy and transformation, GTM, ROI, people management and leadership skills.
The process starts with submitting your application comprising of a-series of questions on your experience ands skills, which is evaluated by the team. Once evaluated, the next step is hands-on Lab evaluation, where you need to execute a series oF lab in the stipulated time. These are challenging assignments which evaluates you on multiple topics. For a broad List of Topics, look at the resources section in https://cloud.google.com/certification/hybrid-multi-cloud. Following the certification guidelines, we can’t reveal any content 🙂 , but my advice would be to practice enough and don’t take this lightly . You would need to clear the Labs for moving on to the next stage.
Once you have cleared the Labs, the next step would be an interview with a panel of experts. As part of panel interview, the certification team, would provide you with couple of use cases and you would need to select one and provide the strategy and solution, during the interview. This is just one part of the panel interview. The interview panelist would evaluate you on leadership skills (non-technical, team/organisational management etc. ), business acumen – understanding business strategy, use cases, ROI etc and technical evaluation, which includes presenting the solution and broad range of topics are round it. You would need strong expertise in Anthos and Mult-cloud.
I had great time being interviewed with the panelists and it took around 2 hrs. It looked like a formal interview process and questions were very challenging enough. My advice would be to prepare very well. I think the idea is to evaluate you on broad range of skills and how well you can articulate on business, technology and non-technology functions. The panelists were very nice and the idea was to get as much information from you to evaluate your expertise. I would like to thank the Google Certification team (Andy and team) for a well crafted process and this unique certification program.
After 2 weeks from my last round, I got an email that I was Google Cloud Certified Fellow. I was quite humbled and happy to get this recognition. Apart from the preparation, I feel the work and experience would help you get the certification and over the years, whatever work and learning I have gone through, I see it being utilised to get this certification.
So keep learning, keep doing good work, have patience and when the time is right, rewards would come eventually.
