How to Pass the ITIL Foundations Certification Exam

I’ll take a break in the action of going through CobiT to tell you that I recently passed the ITIL v3 Foundation for Service Management Certification exam. I had received an offer through HDI for a course and exam package and decided it was time to go for it, both to force me to look deeper into ITIL but to also see how relevant this exam would be for my staff. I ended up passing with a 90% score. Since only 65% is required to pass I guess you could say I passed with flying colors. By the way, what is up with a passing score being 65%? That’s insulting. When I was in school that was at least a D.

If you are interested in taking this certification exam I thought it would be worthwhile to describe the process and tools I used for passing the ITIL Foundations Exam.

First, I purchased the Official Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle. You should get this book even if you are not planning to sit for the exam. It is the defacto introduction to ITIL. My first step in studying for the exam was to read through this book cover to cover, using a highlighter to mark passages that seemed important.

My second step was to go through the course that I purchased through HDI. You may find that something like the ITIL V3 Foundation Complete Certification Kit – Third Edition: Study Guide Book and Online Course works better and cheaper for you, but I was happy with the CBT from HDI. I went through the course once just going through it, no notes, no nothing. Just watching and learning.

The second time I went through the ITIL CBT Training I also opened the ITIL Intro book and read along with it and the course, and I started making flashcards on both the key points as highlighted in the CBT and the key points that I had previously highlighted in the book.

At this point I had a pretty good handle on the concepts. Now came the time to start practicing for taking the exam. For this I found some decent itil mock exams on the internet from CRM Help Desk Software.com.

The process I used for leveraging the mock exams was pretty standard I think. Each mock exam was 40 questions so I printed off a number of scoresheets that I could use. I started by taking mock exam #1 and as I was going through the questions I would mark the ones that I knew I was 100% correct on. After I was done I would grade myself, and then go through each question to see if I understood why the answer is what it is. I did this both for questions I got wrong but also questions I got right. I paid particular attention to those questions that I had marked as 100% sure but in fact I got wrong! I repeated this process for each of the 4 mock exams I had, until I was consistently getting everything correct.

Finally, on the day of the exam I showed up about 30 minutes early and did some cramming using the flashcards I had prepared. Since you can’t bring anything into the testing center I just sat in my car while going through them.

It would be nice to be able to see which 4 questions I missed but other than seeing what category they were in you can’t so I will have to be satisfied that my studying paid off. I’m still waiting for my certificate from HDI but I’m sure that will be coming soon.

I hope this helps you pass the ITIL v3 Foundation for Service Management Certification exam. If you use any of these tips to pass the exam why not come back here and let me know!

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