How to become a Tableau Desktop Specialist

Introduction

Digitization is the future – everything that we know is getting digitized, from selling old goods to buying new ones, from availing services to paying a bill online, from trading to online banking, from finding rented apartments to property registration, from car booking to flight booking, from travel planning to hotel booking, and the list goes on. Getting bored you can watch television, favorite movies, or play games online and win prizes. It makes life so convenient for everyone that, at the click of a button you can achieve almost everything or anything.

This, in turn, creates the opportunity for new startups, new businesses, and the expansion of existing businesses. All this is possible with an enormous amount of data generated every second. To grab the opportunity at hand, companies need analysts and visualization experts along with powerful tools to process and reduce this data to meaningful business decisions or the new businesses itself.

Multiple tools are developed by many vendors for data analysis and visualization. Tableau, Google Charts, Microsoft Power BI, Leaflet, HighCharts, and Sisense are some of the prominent and powerful visualization tools. You might be thinking whether you need to learn all the above tools in order to make meaningful inferences or learn one of them. A latter option is more feasible and a better choice to make. The only dilemma would then be to know which tool is best to learn and take your career to the next level. The answer is simple, Tableau is one of the most popular tools, and Tableau certification is one of the most sought-after skills.

Why Tableau?

Tableau is a powerful tool that can be utilized by analysts to prepare, analyze, and visualize the data to make important inferences. It is a flexible and reliable tool that helps analysts to get insights in real-time even with large data size. Analysts can design attractive charts and graphs to communicate their findings to the team. Tableau easily connects to various sources and it does it simultaneously. It helps you create exceptional reports, static or dynamic, and enables you to present your work better.

Tableau is user friendly and it takes very little effort to learn it. It does not matter which type of data is required to be analyzed. You can create interactive dashboards with a few clicks to share it live on the web and on mobile devices. Companies using Tableau as tools include Fortune, Fast Company, WIRED, and WSJ.

The Importance of Tableau Certification

It is highly recommended to appear for Tableau Desktop Specialist certification to boost your confidence and gauge your knowledge. It also helps to score some brownie points in interviews and enhance your earning potential. Moreover, It sets you in focused learning mode and you tend to devote dedicated time in training which helps you learn the tool better. The objective of this article is to provide you the details regarding Tableau Desktop Certification. Interested candidates can get more details for certification in this link.

Some key points to note are

• There is no prerequisite to undergo the test, however, sound knowledge and hands-on experience in Tableau is highly recommended.
• You can appear for the exam online. The duration of the exam is 60 minutes and consists of multiple-choice, multiple responses, and hands-on type questions. The exam fee is 50 USD.
• The total number of questions asked would be 30 and marks would vary depending on the type of question, however, more marks would be awarded to questions with hands-on experience.
• Candidates must score 70% to get the title Tableau Desktop Specialist. Once achieved, it will be for lifelong with no expiry date.
• Candidates can appear for the test in multiple languages such as English, Japanese, French, German, and many more.
• Skillset validated during examination is data analytics core skill broadly categorized in Preparing, Analysing, and Plotting data for making an inference with respect to tool knowledge in defined timelines.
• Topics are further divided into subtopics and can be looked into detail in the guide book.

Here are some of the job roles for which Tableau expertise is required.

• Data Analyst
• Business Intelligence Analyst commonly known as BI
• Data Visualisation Engineer
• Data Scientist

Guideline for Preparation

Going for any test or certifications one needs to ensure many things. Tableau Desktop Specialist is no exception, you have to make a thorough plan to get certified as it costs a good amount of money and effort. Some recommendations are as follows.

1. First of all, go through the guide provided in the previous section and understand the exam format, type of questions, and passing criteria.
2. Look at the sample questions provided, try and solve it. It tells about the current level of expertise and highlights areas of improvement.
3. Before learning any visualization and analysis tools, first, build your basics for data analysis as a subject. There could be various kinds of data sources and each would require different approaches to follow. Learn how to transform the data effectively.
4. Build a solid understanding of the tool for certification such as data preparation which includes connecting to data sources, understanding data types supported by tools, filtering, aggregations, creating basic charts, analysis, and finally reporting.
5. Repeat above by trying and connecting with various data sources to enhance understanding.
6. Join a training program either classroom or online as it would be curated as per the need and can save a lot of time.
7. However only training without hands-on experience will result in a lack of expertise. Therefore apply your learning on some use cases to strengthen your hold on the tool.
8. If you get stuck with some questions and are unable to solve it, better to skip and attempt another question and come back once all the questions are completed.

Browsing through the whole article, I hope you get better clarity about the needful actions required for getting certified as Tableau Desktop Specialist. Contemplate more on the topic if still unsure. However, I would definitely suggest excelling in your career with pursuing and adding above certification to the achievement section of your resume. Lastly, I would like to wish you the very best for your future endeavors.