My experience becoming a Laravel Certified Developer

I've been working with Laravel for some time already. Personally I'm of course sure of my skill, but I thought that the certificate would be a nice addition to my resume. It might also just push clients over the edge when comparing me with other potential candidates (I'm a freelancer).

The most important Laravel certification is the Official Laravel Certification program. This program is run by a Dutch company and (as far as I know) in partnership with Taylor Otwell.

I'm still studying, so I got a nice education discount.

1. Buying & redeeming a voucher

The first step is to buy a voucher for a certification. On the official website, you make a purchase for one or multiple vouchers.

A few minutes after completing the purchase, I got an e-mail saying that I could now redeem my voucher.

You can decide not to redeem your voucher or you can decide to redeem it immediately. After redeeming a voucher, you are required to take the exam within three months after redeeming. Otherwise the redeemed voucher expires.

When you redeemed the voucher, you get an email with the examination instructions. Again, the website said that this could take up to three days, but for me it took only a few minutes.

In that email is a link to an online environment where you can take the exam.

As soon as you have this email, you can take the exam at any time (within three months of redeeming).

Redeeming a voucher is not the same as taking the exam.

2. Preparing for the Laravel Certification exam

Now that I had redeemed my voucher and a link to start the exam, I did some preparation for the exam. I must admit that I didn't study for hours or something. I use Laravel on a daily basis as my job, so it didn't make sense to be very 'scared' for the exam.

The Laravel Certification provides you with a list of the topics covered by the Laravel exam.

In the end, most of my preparation consisted of reading almost every page in the docs.

There is always something you didn't use or something that you always overlooked. For example, to my surprise I discovered two unknown and incredibly helpful helper-functions called rescue() and retry().

It it is also handy if you read the page about the request lifecycle.

3. Taking the exam

A few days after purchasing the exam voucher, I had some time and felt that I was ready to take the exam. Actually, I was kind of itching to take it and see whether my skills are 'on par' :)

The exam takes 50 minutes and consists of 45 multiple choice questions.

After redeeming the voucher, you should have gotten a link to start the exam. When you click that link, you are redirected to a secure page to take the exam. You must be alone in the room.

Here, you are first instructed to test your webcam, microphone, etc.

Next, you are required to take an image of your head with your webcam. After taking the image, you should also show your ID (passport/driver's license) and take an image of it (hide your government identification number).

After completing the setup, you are redirected to a page where you can take the exam. After taking the exam, you should go back and finish the exam.

The exam contains of 45 questions. If you don't know a question, you also have the option to skip the question. I'm not exactly sure what they do with it then, but it looks like they disregard the question entirely, as if it never existed.

4. After taking the exam

On the website they say that it takes 3-5 business days to process the results of the exam. For me, it took exactly 3 days to get an email with the results. I was now a Laravel Certified Developer! 🎉

They don't share how many questions you had correct. They only share that you passed the exam (or not 🙃). There's also a nice PDF certificate included.

Conclusion

Taking everything into account, my experience with the exam was very positive. It took me exactly 10 days from purchasing the exam to getting the results in my inbox. I could have done it faster, but I wanted not to rush.