Introducing Red Hat Preliminary Exams: Skills validation your way, on your time

Red Hat now offers Preliminary Exams to validate in-demand, foundational skills and knowledge in some of today’s most important technologies. 

Last year, I had an enlightening conversation with an instructor from a Red Hat Academy university where he suggested the need to offer certifications at a more foundational level to help students at institutions like his better gauge their progress and learning.   I responded that earning a Red Hat certification means that the individual is ready for the responsibilities associated with using one or more Red Hat technologies in production and that I didn’t think industry was interested in verifying that someone needs more training.  “Oh yeah they do,” he corrected, “they come to us all the time asking for them!”

And there, in a nutshell, was the skills gap we hear and read so much about.  

A new way to validate technical skills

As organizations and whole industries undergo digital transformation, the appetite for skilled talent just keeps growing -- enough so that industry is seeking people who are en route in their journey to acquire production-level skills with a technology even if they haven’t fully ‘arrived’ or achieved a solid mastery of the technology .

In that spirit, we are pleased to introduce Red Hat Preliminary Exams which are a new kind of assessment to help organizations find, validate, and develop the skills they need.  Preliminary Exams are hands-on exams that test foundational skills with a technology. Passing a Preliminary Exam means someone has shown they are on the road towards production-level proficiency within a specific technology.  Being on the road is not the same as having arrived, however: passing a Preliminary Exam does not confer a certification. Red Hat Certification will continue to mean what it has always meant: readiness for production-level responsibilities.  Passing a Preliminary Exam gives people something to put on their resume to show progress and gives recruiters and managers eagerly looking for talent something to look for.

Modern testing built around modern technologies

In addition to helping industry find people with the skills they need, Preliminary Exams are a great tool for helping individuals who aspire towards Red Hat Certifications measure their progress in understanding technologies.  We provide Preliminary Exams in a format that makes them especially convenient and accessible. Take a Preliminary Exam from your own device by accessing remote cloud instances at the date and time of your choosing. These flexible, affordable exams are also available with your standard Red Hat Learning Subscription.

 Our first Preliminary Exam is the PE180 Red Hat Preliminary Exam in Containers, Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift.  

PE180: Red Hat Preliminary Exam on Containers, Kubernetes, and Red Hat OpenShift

This exam is based on Podman and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 and provides individuals a way to test and demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and abilities required to: 

• Implement new container images by extending existing images.
• Manage images, including pulling and pushing images from a private registry. 
• Manually run and link containers in a development environment. 

As with our certification exams, anyone can take any Preliminary Exam.  However, we highly recommend our OpenShift training course, DO180 Introduction to containers, Kubernetes, and Red Hat OpenShift as preparation for this exam. In the future, we plan to expand similar preliminary examinations to our Linux portfolio as well. 

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