Yes and no. We want to set expectations below:
A certification alone will not get you a job.
Imagine a scenario where you are hiring a professional driver and a 16 year old applies and states that they have a drivers license.
Is that enough?
The answer is probably no. It's nice that they got one, and sometimes it's a requirement, but you're going to want a bit more before you decide to hand them the keys.
Not correct.
Getting the certifications won't secure the position, but studying for them will be an invaluable experience and that's why it's so important to find quality course materials and don't just try to pass.
TL;DR AWS exams don't cover everything you should know in order to get hired.
For a longer explanation, check out this post.
CCP is essentially a brochure for AWS Services. They're for non-technical people like salespeople or people that are really new to tech. There is no return on investment for it. You can put it on your resume but an employer isn't going to be impressed in the least bit.
If you're really new to tech or just like collecting certifications, then by all means, go for it.
If you're looking for that first stepping stone, go for AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate. This test gives a broad overview over all the AWS services and provides a good starting point for your AWS career. There's about 60% overlap over each of the other two associate exams, which go a little deeper on their respective titles.
The community only recommends one course consistently because of the professionalism, the quality, the consistency on staying up to date, and the repeated success in passing exams.
- courses.datacumulus.com - (Stephane Maarek - on Udemy)
Verify the course you are looking at is for the exam version you are going to take.
There are several practice exams out there but their quality is often subpar. Ranging from incorrect answers that take a long time to correct to others getting reference material from actual exam dumps (Read below on why this is unhelpful).
- Tutorial Dojo - (Jon Bonso) This is the most recommended practice quiz by the community (and course work creators) in that the exams are often a bit harder than the test itself. It offers explanations on why the answer was correct/incorrect and source material to verify. Test takers have reported multiple times, by a wide margin, that these quizzes prepared them more sufficiently for the exam itself than anything else.
Why You Should Avoid Exams Dumps
TL;DR Amazon is fully aware of dumps and purposely makes small changes to their test questions to trip up people who just memorized the answer and not the details. They've been pretty effective at finding cheaters as a result. Even if Amazon doesn't catch you, this field requires so much technical knowledge that employers will likely figure it out too.
There's tons of write-ups from people who took the exam and wanted to write about their experiences. Your best bet is to google the exam you're taking and look through blogs, or add Reddit to the search query and search through that. Do be careful of spam accounts looking to sell bad courses or exam dumps.
Hop on over to our discord and ask! Most people on there like to help and teach. Do keep in mind that you should aim for asking thoughtful questions and not low effort questions. You're more likely to get assistance with what you need if you can show that you've put some effort into figuring it out.
If you're new to interacting with professional tech workers online then peruse this to get a better understanding on what the community expects from you.
Yes, here's some notes and cheat sheets below. You can peruse and see if they're useful.
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Tutorial Dojo - (Jon Bonso)
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Digital Cloud Training - (Neil Davis)
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Curated list of AWS resources for the certification