Happy Thursday! Welcome back to HOW TO // AI.
Search for an AI certification and you'll find dozens, at every price, for every job. You don't need dozens. You need the one that fits the work you do.
After 25+ years in enterprise IT across virtualization, cloud, and networking, here's the one I'd pick for each job, a five-minute prompt that shows what you actually know about anything, and a brand-new exam for anyone building AI agents.
🧭 One certification for each job
Not sure where to start? Start with the AWS Certified AI Practitioner. It's $100 for 90 minutes, it needs no coding, and it's the one I passed on my first try.
These six, and every other major AI exam, are in my free AI Certification Index: price, length, passing score and renewal rules, checked against each vendor's own pages.
🎯 The 5-minute prompt that shows what you actually know
Before you study anything, find out where you stand. Paste the material into ChatGPT or Claude: a training doc, a new policy, product notes, or the task list from an official exam guide.
Then ask: "Quiz me with five questions on this, one at a time, and explain each answer."
Five minutes later, you'll know whether you're close or just getting started, and which parts to go back over.
Studying for a cert? Start with the exam guide's biggest domain. On the AWS AI Practitioner, that's Applications of Foundation Models, at 28% of the scored content.
🔌 New: an official MCP certification
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the open standard that lets AI assistants connect to your tools and data. On September 14, the Linux Foundation and the Agentic AI Foundation launched the Model Context Protocol Associate (MCPA), a vendor-neutral exam built around the latest MCP spec.
$250 for a 90-minute, multiple-choice exam, online and proctored, with one retake included. It's valid for two years, and there are no prerequisites.
📝 Practice before you pay for the exam
Four of those six picks are in HOW TO // AI CERT: 5,245 original practice questions across 15 AI and cloud certifications, with study guides, flashcards and timed mock exams.
Every exam starts with 5 free questions, no sign-up, and 15 more unlock with your email.
🎁 Share HOW TO // AI, get free rewards
Forward this to the coworker who keeps asking which AI certification to get. 1 referral gets you the Complete Kit Vault, and 10 get you my book, Amplified, free.
📬 In case you missed it
Is there an OpenAI certification?
What OpenAI offers today, and what to take in the meantime.
Agentic AI certifications, grouped by role
16 options, from a free AWS badge to Google's new agentic architect exam.
🤔 Got questions?
Which certification are you working toward, or stuck choosing between? Reply to any issue and tell me, and you just might be featured in an upcoming issue!
Stay curious, stick with it, and watch your skills grow week by week!
Until next time :)
-David
P.S. If your day job is enterprise IT - VMware, cloud, storage, infrastructure - I write a second newsletter that decodes that world in ten minutes a week: Subscribe to Enterprise Techie →
P.P.S. Some links in this newsletter may be affiliate links. If you sign up or purchase through them, we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. It helps keep this newsletter free and we only ever recommend tools we'd genuinely tell a friend about. Thank you for your support!