My GitHub Actions Certification experience

Introduction

The GitHub Actions Certification is a newly available cert, as of January 2024 from GitHub. It’s designed to test your proficiency in workflows: from CI/CD, customisations, efficiency, task automation and more.

I took and passed the GitHub Actions exam on 26th Jan 2024 and thought I’d detail my experience and learning material that helped me on the study path.

You can checkout all the available GitHub certifications here: Highlight your expertise with GitHub Certifications – GitHub Resources.

Additionally, you can register for exams by logging into examregistration.github.com with your GitHub account.

The FAQ section is very comprehensive in answering any questions (e.g. how to link your personal GitHub to an organisation, for example.).

What to expect for GitHub Actions Certification?

The GitHub Actions Certification exam is currently 75 questions with a pass threshold of 70%, of which you have two hours to complete the exam. As with a lot of Microsoft related certifications, it is multiple choice and currently didn’t have any case studies unlike some other Microsoft exams. You also get to request up to 3 breaks in the exam if you require them.

If you’re familiar with other Microsoft certifications then taking a GitHub certification will feel extremely familiar in every way. With the only major difference in process around the proctoring service as it is not PearsonVue as these are covered by PSI.

The launching of the exam software on my machine was similar to my previous experiences and went smoothly. There is also a pre-exam system test which you can run to verify you’ll be able to launch the exam on the day.

The exam is valid for 3 years.

Study material for GitHub Actions Certification

Being a new certification there are not too many study materials in the wild yet.

However, I don’t feel this was a negative thing in anyway as I found existing learn and study paths more than enough to cover the topics.

Here is a list of study material I used which I found very helpful for the GitHub Actions Certification:

Microsoft Learn – GitHub Actions study path: Collections | Microsoft Learn

GitHub Certified Practice Test (Free): Github Actions Practice Test :: GitHub Certified (ghcertified.com)

Practice Exam(s) on udemy by Benjamin Muschko GitHub Actions Certification Practice Exam | Udemy

References found on the official GitHub documentation GitHub Actions documentation – GitHub Docs

Conclusion

I enjoyed the exam experience, and thrilled to have passed this one. I found the exam quite challenging as I don’t use GitHub Actions anywhere near as much as I do Azure DevOps pipelines but a lot of concepts are similar and it was good to learn more about GitHub Actions.

Whether you’re new to GitHub or experienced in GitHub Actions I feel there is a lot to learn by taking this.

It covers a great breadth and depth of action functionality, security, automations, etc. I definitely learnt a lot by studying the learning path and labing scenarios from Microsoft Learn which I was not so familiar with.

If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or comment below.