"Congratulations, you are now a Google Certified Mobile Web Specialist!"
My experience getting the Google Mobile Web Specialist certification.
Originally published on Medium↗
Today I got an email with the same title as this post. Let me explain why I took the exam, how does it work and what can you expect from it.
Why?
A couple of months ago a friend of mine had an interview for a front end role. In the course of the discussion, the interviewer asked if he has it and recommended it. Normally I don’t pay attention to “papers”, but since:
a) it came from an interviewer
b) it’s Google
c) I was sick, lying in bed bored as hell…
I compulsively bought a pass (it costs 99$).
What (can you expect)?
The certification itself covers quite a lot of ground:
- Basic Website Layout and Styling
- Front End Networking
- Accessibility
- Progressive Web Apps
- Performance Optimization and Caching
- Testing and Debugging
- ES2015 Concepts and Syntax
- Mobile Web Forms
You have 4 hours to complete a set of hands-on tasks. No theory, just practice.
I was kind of surprised how each of those mini assignments was grounded in real-world use cases. “Terms and conditions” are preventing me to disclose details but if you go through official study guide nothing will catch you off guard.
How (does it work)?
You are given 4 hours to complete the whole thing. It sounds like a lot, but in fact, I nearly managed to finish in time.
One reason is that there a quite a few exercises and just a fact that you have to switch between them (physically and mentally) takes some time off the clock.
Another reason is that you are working inside VM, via browser, you don’t have your editor of choice (unless you are Atom user), without your normal setup, etc. I don’t even know how many times I tried to close a browser tab inside the VM (ctrl + w) and accidentally closed the tab that was running an exam on my host browser…
All that makes those 4 hours run really quickly. There is very little time to search for solutions online unless you really know what you looking for.
Once you’re done, there is an exit interview, i.e. you record (audio + video) answers to questions about the exam, some details of your solution. The purpose of it is to prove that you really took the test yourself.
It can take up to 45 days to receive a grade (I got it after 40 days) and up to 7 to receive actual certification.