Today, for no other reason than to do it, I took the CompTIA IT Fundamentals (ITF+) certification exam. In my version of the exam, I was given 60 minutes to answer 65 questions. I passed, but not with a score I really liked. Passing requires a 650 and the maximum you can get is 900. I passed with a score of 727, which is on the low end. Even though I have more than 20 years of working professionally in the Information Technology field, I did indeed prepare for this exam. I watched a Learning Path on LinkedIn Learning for the exam and took all the practice questions. I didn’t have any trouble at all with the content. Additionally, at some point or another, I’ve passed nearly all of CompTIA’s certification exams, including those that aren’t even offered anymore. I’ve literally worked as a contractor for CompTIA writing exam questions for the A+ exam. I know how this process works intimately, and I feel like I should have done better on the ITF+ exam than I did.
What was the problem, you ask? I think the ITF+ certification exam is too vague. There were quite a few questions that, in my humble opinion, could have multiple legitimate answers based on the context given. When questions aren’t specific, it’s a lot easier to justify answers that the author didn’t intend to be correct. Given the process that CompTIA uses to generate questions, I’m truly shocked at how many questions were so poorly worded. Granted, I’m not the correct audience for the ITF+, and maybe I have the burden of knowing more than the average IT person, but even with that said, I feel like this exam is too difficult and/or incomplete for a non-IT person to understand much less pass. If this is someone’s introduction to the world of Information Technology, this experience would leave me discouraged about being able to have a career in the field.
CompTIA, if you’re reading, this one needs another exam writing workshop. I think the exam objectives are great, but the questions are stale. More context is needed for many of the questions, and there needs to be less focus on the rote memorization of technical terms and more focus on real-world problems and scenarios.