Autodesk Certifications: Take your Career to the Next Level

DANIA ETER: Hello, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Welcome to Autodesk Certification and how you can take your career to the next level. I'm super excited to be here with you today to talk about the certification program here at Autodesk and share with you all the ins and outs on how you can really engage with our certification program and, certainly, how you can help us grow this great program to even a world-class program.

This is our safe harbor statement. I will not read it to you. However, it's very important that I mention it. And certainly, it's included in the deck as you are reviewing it. Today's session, I really want to talk to you a little bit about the agenda and what we are trying to accomplish in this presentation. And hopefully, it will hit the spot for you and everything that you really have an objective to learn about what we're trying to offer you here.

So in today's session, I really would like you to know a little bit about me and what I'm doing here at Autodesk. I'll share with you our Autodesk Education Experience-- AEX-- who we are, what's our mission, and what we're trying to accomplish for the Autodesk community. Then we really dig deep into the certification program. We'll talk about the value of certification. We'll talk about the quality of our certification program and why you should choose it.

We'll also talk about the portfolio itself, what kind of exam certifications we have, the levels of certification, and how you can engage with it. But certainly, we will close it out by talking about what is Autodesk doing to really build the value of our certification so it can become a world-class certification and, really, how you can be involved in this. Also, I would like to mention in that body of the certification program and talk to you a little bit about how you can engage with us as a subject matter expert or as a professional who is interested in the certification program.

Then we'll close out the certification presentation here sharing with you how we're globally scaling and our involvement with our authorized training partners and how they can help you engage with us to buy bulk vouchers if you're interested in buying multiple vouchers for your team as opposed to one voucher or one exam from our website. Then I'm super excited to share-- although we don't have a certification lab this year at Autodesk University, we do have a special code that we want to share with you.

And what we're doing this year-- we're extending the time, meaning that this code will be available at AU. And it will be extended all the way to March 31, 2024, for you or anyone who is interested in our certification whether you're certified and you want to take another certification or, certainly, if you are not certified and you're interested in taking one of our certification. I would say that discount code is 50%, so it's definitely a good discount to have.

Then we'll close it up with takeaways, highlighting the most important things we talked about today and, really, sharing a little bit of the highlight of the handout. In this session, although I am sharing with you this conversation, we also have a handout for this presentation. And we certainly have more detailed information in the handout that could stay with you. And you can engage with it on your own time.

Of course, when we are at AU, we'll have a Q&A session to answer any of your questions and make sure that everything you need, in regard to the business of certification here at Autodesk. All right. Now that we talked about the agenda, let's talk a little bit about myself. I'm super excited. I'm so honored and humbled that, only after a year and few months here at Autodesk, here I am, presenting in front of you the business of certification.

What I bring to the table is over two decades of certification and training business, helping individuals with their career journey through learning and certification. It has been proven time and time over that certification helps you with the trajectory of your career, and it makes me so honored that we are here today at Autodesk taking our certification program from a great certification program to a world-class certification program.

Some of my experiences are in managing large IT programs like Cisco Systems, Palo Alto Networks, and Alteryx. And I'm, again, super honored to be here and share with you my expertise but also engage with you in how we can make this program amazing. Thank you for attending. All right. With that, let's start with Autodesk Education Experience, or AEX. Who is education experience, where do they sit, and what's our mission?

AEX-- and I'm going to use our short term-- assists in the COO organization. And our goal and our mission is to, really, build learning and certification program and offer it to individuals who are interested in our products and services so they can have the right toolset, mindset, and skillset to be able to advance their career with the changes of technology and automation. So we want to prepare you for the future and have the right skills for you.

We do know there's a challenge in the workforce. And we are part of the solution, and we want to try to help make that happen. Based on the World Economic Forum, one billion individuals are out there, needing to be educated on the next generation skills by 2030. This information has been validated again this year, in 2023, where our Design and Make report that found that 79% of our respondents that feels that the future growth will be determined by the digital tools and two out of three employers are saying that we are struggling to find the skilled employees.

And this is where we come into play, and this is where AEX has a big challenge to be able to help educate you, certify you so you can have the skills that you need to be able to perform and to get the right job. I just mentioned that, and I will reiterate it. Our role is to, really, upskill and reskill the population that is the generation for our industry to be able to utilize our products and services through learning and quality certification.

We want to help the transformation. We want to help the changes in automation and technology by upskilling you and reskilling you. I would say it's very important to know that we do have a certification at any level in our industry for anyone. I also want to mention to you that, during COVID, a lot of folks have lost their jobs and some folks have made the choice to change their career from one career to another. And that is where reskilling comes into play.

So we want to prepare and upskill individuals who are already in our industry. But certainly, we want to reskill individuals who are coming into our industry with the right learning and the right certification. If you are interested-- and I will mention that multiple times-- in learning further about our certification program, you can go to autodesk.com/certifications. All right. Now that you know who is AEX, what our mission is, and what we're out to do, let's talk about the value of certification.

It is very important that you engage and understand what is it that you're trying to earn and what difference is it making in your life and your career journey. Time and time again, our testing vendor, Pearson VUE, over the last two decades have, yearly, performed a survey. That's a global survey across industries in the IT space with certified individuals who just got certified, asking them why are you certified.

Of course, I can sit here and talk about how important for employers to hire certified individuals-- because they can perform on day one and that they have validated their knowledge, skills, and ability. But let's talk about what's in it for you as an individual to really earn a certification. It has been proven that a person who earns a certification performs better in a team environment and is more productive in their job role.

It also has proven that a certified individual gains a competitive edge and is more marketable in the market while they have that certification. They have the credibility they need from their peers and from employers to be able to attain a promotion, an increase in salary, a change in jobs, or, definitely, a brand-new job. We do offer, every time a person takes a certification exam, a digital badge. I will speak at a later slide the importance of earning that digital badge and also accepting the digital badge.

Because you can use it on your digital resume and your social media accounts, allowing recruiters and employers to look for you through the skills needed by that digital badge because it has a lot of metadata that speaks about what you have learned. I can't speak enough about the importance of re-certifying our individuals through our technology. Just because you get certified, that does not mean that you don't need to re-certify.

Every two to three years, depending on the certification you have earned-- and that's what makes us a world-class certification-- we require our certified individual to stay active. And by doing so, they have to re-certify. This guarantees to employers and to individuals that they are being recertified on the most up-to-date technology that Autodesk has to offer. I want to close my talking on this slide about this amazing quote that we have from an expert elite here at Autodesk.

Our expert elite member mentions in this quote how he has been, for years, a software engineer and that he never earned a certification. And then, by earning one, things have changed. It earned its credibility. It allows others to understand what he has to offer. And definitely, if you're not certified, encourages you to get certified. So I am very excited to share that earning a certification can make a difference in your career journey at whatever level you are and wherever you are in the world.

So we talked about the momentum, and we talked about taking this program from good to great I do want to mention with you some data points here from earning a value of certification and sharing with you that, just as of today, we have delivered over 100,000 Autodesk certifications in each of our industries, as you can see, with AEC taking over a little bit over our half. I also want to mention that we deliver our certification exams in multiple formats, trying to accommodate your needs.

If you're a person who doesn't like to go to a testing center, or you're traveling, or you're on vacation and that's when you want to take your certification exam, you can certainly take it from the privacy of your home or your office through an online proctored exam. At Autodesk, what we're seeing is a little bit over 50% of our population is more interested in online proctored exam, as opposed to taking it in a testing center. This data is in 2023, and, of course, it varies.

During the time of COVID, we had almost 100% of the people not going to a testing center and actually taking the certification exam as an online proctored exam. So there's a strong momentum, and this is where we need your help. Get certified or help us get others certified so we can grow our population of certified Autodesk professionals. Let's talk about the portfolio itself. What are the offers?

When I say there's a certification for everyone, let's talk about the certification portfolio. Let's talk about what we have to offer, how they are delivered, and how you can attain those certifications. Autodesk certification, as I mentioned, has a certification at each level. You can be a student, you can be a professional, you can be in vocational school, or you can be an expert. We start our certification at the lowest level with a certified user. That certification is software certification and is testing for knowledge.

It is our lowest-level certification. However, you can grow your career with us and take an associate professional- or expert-level certification. Those certifications are actually role-based certification. Let me explain. As you can see, this slide is pretty busy, but it's super exciting. You can see that we do have a large framework of offering when it comes to certification in each of our specialty and our sectors.

You can see that we have anything from certified user certification-- as I mentioned, the lowest level-- all the way to expert. Certified users, our ideal candidate for that certification are secondary students. And also, associate professional and expert is really tailoring to either vocational, early in their career, or higher education students, all the way to expert, who has been practicing and interacting with our products for quite some time.

I will mention that our certified user certifications are delivered in multiple languages across the globe. Our associate, professional, and expert certifications are delivered only in English but also across the globe in online proctored or in a testing center. We deliver our certified user certification through Certiport, and we deliver our associate, professional, and expert certification through Pearson VUE.

One last thing to mention before I dig deeper into each of the certifications is the fact that we do have a heavy presence in the Fusion certification because that has been our strategy to prepare you for the technology and with the changes. Additionally, I do want to mention that it's important to have experience in utilizing the certification, at each of the levels, with some experience interacting with the product itself.

All right. So let's talk about the certified user certification. That certification is a certification. That's a 50-minute certification, and it has around 40 questions. The associate-, professional-, and expert-level certifications are a certification that are 90 to 120 minutes, and they're around 45 to 60 questions. Those questions varies between multiple choice, drag and drop, hotspot, and many other type of questions.

Our exam is a pass/fail examination, so we don't give you a certain record. We just say you have passed or you have failed based on the cut score and the minimally qualified candidate decision. All right. With that, let's move to really share with you how we can prepare for a certification exam. We certainly don't want to leave you hanging. We want to have the right training and material for you to prepare for a certification exam.

We do have, on our website-- and I mentioned that earlier-- autodesk.com/certification, multiple freely available certification prep classes that are self-paced. And they are free of charge. Those are learnings and modules that allow you to interact with the certification and interacts with learning that allow you to prep for the certification. Practice exams are exams that gives you an insight on how the certification is set up, the type of question that you might get, and some insights on the certification exam, as well.

The most important piece that I always mention to someone is the exam objective. It is a blueprint, or it is a high-level domain that, really, allows you to focus your study on what are the areas that the certification exam that you are studying for could be focused on. I do want to mention-- and I get that escalation quite some time, that, hey, I took the practice exam. I did the cer prep. I looked at the exam objective. But I didn't pass the exam.

It is not a one-to-one relationship. Our certification exams are knowledge, skills, and ability, and I'll speak at a later slide about this. Please note that different people have different abilities and engage with the learning differently-- meaning that, although we can put in front of you multiple types of learning and training, that does not guarantee you that, if you took that, you're going to pass the certification exam. As I mentioned, you need to have enough interactions, depending on the certification level, with experiences with the product.

Those are really good training and learning that's available for you that gives you more guidance and more preparations, but it does not guarantee you passing the certification exam. So use that as a tool, but not necessarily the only tool. All right. So I do want to focus a little bit about the learning that we just talked about. The learning that's available on autodesk.com/learning, as I mentioned, is free. You can utilize it 24/7 and access it, and it allows you to engage with content that will prepare you for a certification exam.

Our professional and structural designers work very closely with subject matter experts to make sure that our learning is most up to date with the roadmap of Autodesk that what you are learning is the most up to date with the product itself. We also use subject matter experts who are in the field and who are interacting with the product itself so you are engaging with the learning as if you are a professional yourself. I also want to mention that the learning that's available is a self-paced learning, and it's free of charge.

But if you're a person that really would like to be in a classroom setting and have an instructor-led training, we do work very closely with our authorized learning partners, which I'll mention also at a later slide, and you can engage with them, for a fee, to sit in a classroom to actually take the right training for a certification and to really be able to upskill and reskill, depending on what we're trying to accomplish, to sit for a certification exam.

So you have an option of taking learning at your own pace. Or you can sit in a classroom setting and in instructor-led training across the globe with one of our learning partners. Or you can choose to do both, which-- in my career, I've noticed that this is the way to go. It gives you some insight on a self-paced-- on your own and some interacting with a teacher and an instructor and other professionals who are around the room who are experiencing the same challenges that you are experiencing.

All right. So this is, really, very dear to my heart's screen. And I really want to spend some time talking about it. We talked about the value of certification and how it's important to earn a certification and what difference it makes for you. I also shared with you the portfolio of certification that we have here at Autodesk, allowing you to engage at any level with any of the industry certification to really attain one.

What I want to talk to you about here is the importance of a highly qualified, high-level, high-stakes certification that we are preparing you to engage with. The market is very vague about the difference between certificate and certification. Certificate is an end-of-course assessment. You take some learning, whether you're sitting in a classroom setting or online, and you get four or five questions that really validates on what you just learned.

Certification, on the other hand, follows an industry-standard processes that you see on the right-hand corner-- anywhere from defining the certification and its level all the way to delivering the certification in a proctored environment that validates your knowledge, skills, and ability-- which means that you are going to be tested above and beyond a course or a knowledge. And that exam is being built to be a valid, reliable, and legally defensible exam that employers seek when they hire professionals.

One very important note to mention-- while following an industry standard process, we utilize subject matter experts in every aspect of this process from the minute we define the certification level to the minute we determine the performance standard. So professionals actually sit in a meeting, defining the exam, building a job task analysis that allows us to create an outline for the exam.

We create the items. We review the items. We create the form of the exam. But also, they make a decision-- at what level we have a cut score that allows the person to pass the certification or not. So having subject matter expertise follow that process with us to build that exam creates a rigor that makes it a certification exam, as opposed to a certificate program.

I really, really would love for you, having been in this industry for over two decades, to really investigate the quality of a high-stakes certification that you are taking. Because it's important to earn a certification, but it's more important to earn a certification that has been developed with the right rigor following the industry of certification standard that's valid, reliable, and legally defensible.

I did mention I'll share with you a little bit about the badge. When you pass a certification exam-- and I truly hope, if you have not done so, to actually sit for a certification exam-- you'll receive an email from Credly. Credly is our partner, and they are the top layer of badging in the industry of IT. And you receive an email to say you need to accept that badge. I encourage you to accept the badge and create an account with Credly so you can take that badge and actually position yourself in your digital resume-- add that badge-- or on your LinkedIn account or any social media account.

And that would allow, as I mentioned, employers and recruiters to look for you based on the badge and the skills that you have attained. Our badge is on the left-hand corner. You can see a sample of the Fusion 360. It gives you the certification product, the delineation of the product, the certification domain. And it speaks to the level of certification you have acquired. The most important piece in this badge that-- it's an interactive badge, meaning that if an employer or a friend or a recruiter clicks on that digital badge that you have on your resume or LinkedIn, it actually contains metadata that allows them to verify that you actually earned that badge and the content of that certification.

It gives them when you took the exam, when your certification expires, and the content at a high level of the Fusion 360 certification or the situation of the expert-level certification. So they don't need to come to Autodesk and say, hey, is Dania certified? All they have to do is click on that badge and they have all the metadata they need to know that you have earned that certification from the source and get all the metadata they need to be able to hire you or to engage in recruiting.

So please, engage in accepting the badge. Just because you took the certification doesn't mean you're going to get the badge immediately. You need to actually accept the badge. We do have a high interest in the acceptance of the badge, especially on the professional level because they do see the value of, specifically, utilizing it on the LinkedIn. So in order to grow a program from good to great, we need to be able to speak about the program.

So let me share with you what is Autodesk doing currently in how you can help us build the value of the certification program here at Autodesk so we can engage with other professionals to, really, earn our certification and speak to it. This program of growing the value of certification is still in its infancy. Our goal is multiple prompt. Our goal is to grow our population, is to educate populations and employers about the importance of earning Autodesk certification. And last but not least, it is very important for us to actually engage with professionals that can speak about our program.

So we're doing thought leadership. We have multiple whitepapers that we are working on that we post on our website and engage with. We recently have created a hashtag, #autodeskcertification. Please follow us. Repost. You can also use the hashtag to post your own post about your experience in the certification. That allows us to really engage with the generation that is out there on social media.

Additionally, we are on the road. We attend conferences. We do presentations, just like I'm doing right now. I will be at AU, presenting this same session. And also, we are planning, in the near future, to have a webinar where we're utilizing subject matter experts in our expert elite population to help us present the value of certification, our portfolio, and engage in conversation from professionals who have earned it and who really think that it made a difference in their career.

I did mention you can help us. And I think this is a great place for you to actually engage in our certification exam. You can either utilize social media to promote the certification. You can be a presenter in a webinar or at a conference, in conjunction with many of us here who work at AEX, to really position the certification. And then, last but not least, you can become a subject matter expert.

Continuously, our team is on the top of their game to make sure that our learning and our certification resources are the most up to date based on the product roadmap here at Autodesk. Which means that whatever learning you're taking, whatever training you're taking, the certification that you are taking is the most up to date based on the latest of our product line. As I mentioned, to have a rigorous certification, we need subject matter experts in every aspect of the way. And you can certainly be one of those if you're interested.

So I hope that you can engage with us, because this is an initiative that we just started recently, to really go out there, earn the certifications, speak to it, and definitely help us grow our base to really have the adoption and the recognition from a value perspective of the brand. So, so far, what we have talked about is the value of earning a certification, what are the offerings that Autodesk have from a certification portfolio, how to look for the most rigored certification and the difference between certificate and certification, how to earn a badge and what the badge can do for you, and how we can all build the value across the globe for Autodesk certification.

Let's talk about the global distribution channel and our authorized learning partners. And they can help us scale globally to access professionals who are interested-- or educators or students-- to access our certification and learning. Our Autodesk Learning Partners have very similar interests in making sure that the learner or the professional has the-- and is equipped with the latest learning to be able to stand out and has the right skills to be able to be recruited.

They follow the same mission and vision as Autodesk. They are out there to support our industries, from design and manufacturing, media and entertainment, architecture, engineering, and construction. They create learning, which is digital. They create training, which is instructor-led training. And they also provide support to distribution for our certification portfolio. And I'll speak to that. Because if you are interested to buy, in bulk, certification vouchers for your team at a reduced cost, you would engage with one of our learning partners or distributors to be able to buy in bulk.

Today, you can certainly go to autodesk.com/certification and register for an exam and pay for it. But that will be a one-to-one relationship. If you're a leader of a department and you want all your team to be certified or you are an educator and you want your whole student to be certified, your best bet is to engage with our learning partner to get the best pricing and also purchase in bulk.

Also, I did mention that, if self-paced learning that we have available online is great but you need instructor-led or you need further training, you can engage with our learning partner. We have them to support our scale globally and, definitely, service our market. This is our presence globally. As you can see, we have quite a bit of a distribution across the globe with a heavy interest in the US. However, in every market, we have a distributor that can support you.

I will definitely not go into those details. But at this point, we have five large distributors-- TD Synnex, ThinkEDU, ETC, KnowledgePoint, and NWH-- across the globe. So wherever you are, you can engage at any level with any of our certification with one of our learning partners to support you with your learning, training, or certification purchase in bulk. If you need further support, you can always reach out to me. And you'll have my email address at a later slide here in the presentation.

This is the contact information for each of the territories and the support for each of the program. And I'm not going to read each one of this, but we wanted to make sure that you know and you have access to what are the offerings for each of the distributors, how you can access them, what's their name, and where is the region that they service. So again, we have US and Canada, EMEA, Asia Pac. We also have South America. And we represent the whole globe with their support.

So wherever you are, please use those links to access them be able to connect with them and either sign up for a class or ask for our vouchers in bulk or definitely engage with them for group training for your team if you need to be. Again, they are authorized for a reason. They support us 100%, and we do approve what they have to offer. All right. So we're getting close to the end of this presentation, but that is the exciting time. Many of you and many other folks who might not be attending this session have really asked why are we not, at Autodesk, delivering a certification.

This year-- and I'm not going to speak to future years-- we have made the choice not to sit and deliver certification at Autodesk University. However, I am very pleased to share with you that we have a 50% off for the associate-, professional-, and expert-level certification that you can utilize. All you have to do as an individual-- or if you have an employee or a friend who are interested in the associate-, professional-, and expert-level certification for any of our industry-- you can actually go to autodesk.com/certification, choose a certification, fill out an account, and then go to the payment method and put AU23.

That gives you, immediately, 50% off the certification exam. The associate-level certification is $150. The professional is $200. The expert is $250. So that gives you 50% from $150, from $200, or from $250. So your exam will become $75, $100, or $125. What else we're doing this year is making sure that we extend the time frame. Last year, we gave a code at AU, but it was over a one-month period. And we realized it's the holiday season-- specifically across the globe, but also here in the US.

So this year, we're extending the expiration of the AU23 code of 50% to March 31, 2024. And that is to schedule and actually sit for the exam. So please know you can schedule the exam. But if you don't sit for it, you will not be able to use the AU 2023 code. That code is available for you to take the exam in a testing center or online proctored, as I mentioned before, in the privacy of your own home or office or wherever you decide to take it.

We do have-- and we provided on the bottom of the screen here-- our connecting to the customer service. I do want to make sure that you have everything that you need to be successful. So while you're registering or if you have any glitches, please make sure to click on this link and email our customer service. We have a person by the name of Greg who is sitting and waiting for any of your questions to be able to answer you to make sure that your experience is seamless and that you engage in one of our certification or multiple.

So I encourage you. If you already have one, take another one. If you want to take two or three, feel free to do so. It is definitely very rewarding, and we definitely would love to gain you as a certified individual but also as a subject matter expert, where you can engage with us and give us feedback on our learning and certification. All right. So let's close this presentation and really talk about what are the main takeaways from the presentation and mention the handout.

The handout will be posted online, as well. And that is a takeaway-- or a take at home-- multiple pages that allow you to dig deeper into some of the content that we've talked about today but also additional information. So what have we covered today? We talked about Autodesk AEX. We talked about the value of earning a certification. We shared with you our portfolio that's available from a student all the way to a professional at an expert level. And by the way, we're realizing more and more that students are more interested in an early age to take certification, as they see it as a value for them.

We also shared with you some preparation that you can engage with to help you prepare for the certification exam, and we talked about our distribution channel and our engagement with authorized training partners across the globe so we can scale and grow our portfolio. At the end, we shared with you the AU23, which is a 50% off any of our certification available up to March 31, 2024. And also, I want to share with you my email address.

If you have any questions, feedback, I really, really would love to hear from you-- and the survey format or directly emailing me-- because this is the first time we're actually presenting at AU about the value of certification for Autodesk. We'd love to make this better. We'd love to engage with you at a deeper level. But we wouldn't be able to know what to do unless you give us feedback.

So my email address is Dania-- D-A-N-I-A dot E-T-E-R at autodesk.com. Email me at any time. I am prompt, and I promise you that I will respond. I do want to mention that we have a handout that is going to be posted on the website for Autodesk University where you can access not only this recording, but also the handout itself. The handout will have the most important points of what we've discussed today at a deeper level.

But most importantly, there's an addition that I was not able to speak to today at a detail, and that is test-taking tips. We have two or three pages of test-taking tips that allow you to strategically plan on how you're going to engage in taking a certification. What is your learning? How are you going to engage with it? What's the time frame? How you can focus on the areas of your expertise or lack of to be able to prepare for the certification exam.

It has been a pleasure being here with you today, and I'm super excited that I was able to share with you a lot about our Autodesk certification at AU. However, I'm looking forward to any of your questions and feedback through the survey. And most importantly, I am definitely grateful for your time today. Again, this is Dania Eter from AEX at Autodesk, and we are looking forward for you to take our certification and become one of our subject matter experts. Thank you.