Becoming a Neo4j-Certified Professional

Earlier this year, Neo Technology announced the launching of the first, official, Neo4j-Certified Professional designation.  

(Side note: Yours truly is among these certified professionals!)

With the release of this free exam, Neo has made it easier for companies to identify those individuals who can successfully help them to deliver solutions that leverage the power of Neo4j.

If you're wondering what the exam covers or have any questions about the exam itself, have a look at the exam sign-up form located here.

The real question, though, is how can you ensure that you are as prepared as you can possibly be?

Tips

Well, someone in the graph community was kind enough to post ten tips to help you prepare for and pass the 80-question test.  I strongly suggest reading the article as it offers some valuable insight.

One point that I would like to echo from the article linked above is that there are a fair number of questions dedicated to using the Enterprise Edition of Neo4j, which allows for HA, hot backups, and a number of other features.  I would definitely echo the recommendation of signing up for the 30-day trial of the Enterprise Edition to play with and get familiar with setting up Neo4j in a clustered environment (it's actually really easy to do, even on a single machine; have a look here!).

Also, given that the Neo4j documentation is so well laid out, I would also recommend clicking through said documentation for an hour or two.

One final point: Having the Neo4j Cypher refcard handy certainly does not hurt for those answers that are just on the tip of your tongue (brain?).  Expect to answer several Cypher-related questions!

My Experience

The exam is 80 questions to be taken over the course of 60 minutes.  It doesn't seem like a lot of time for an exam of this size, but, the questions are all multiple choice, and if you have a solid grasp of Neo4j and Cypher, you will find 60 minutes to be more than enough time.

I finished the exam well ahead of the time limit and found the questions to be fair.  Watch out for how some of the questions are worded: For a wordier question, it can be tempting to skip over anything after the first part of the question, but stay with it!  The extra few seconds will pay off.

If you're newer to Neo4j, I strongly suggest getting really comfortable with Cypher.  If you don't have the time or resources to install Neo4j locally, be sure to go over to the Neo4j console on Neo4j's site to get some immediate experience and feedback on using Cypher with an established data model.

Conclusion

If you have an interest in Neo4j and/or find yourself working with it a lot, it is most definitely worthwhile to take the exam.  Being able to credibly identify yourself as a Neo4j-Certified Professional can only help boost your graph career!

Good luck!