Preparation Strategy to Crack Google Associate Android Developer With Kotlin Certification

Puneet Grover
5 min readFeb 12, 2022

Tips to Crack Google Associate Android Developer with Kotlin Certification | My Personal Experience

Here I’ll be sharing my Personal Experience about Google Associate Android Developer with Kotlin Certification, Most Important concepts to cover, Exit Interview Questions etc.

“Google Certification” The day I heard about this Certification, It always blows my mind. I had hunger to Crack it and the day (Oct. 2021) came when I started preparing for it. It took me around 10–12 days to prepare and cover the most imp. topics.

Firstly let me tell you about it, and the value it brings to the table.

What is Google Associate Android Developer Certification and Perks

It’s a performance-based exam focused on demonstrating competency and skill in the tasks Android developers most frequently perform.

On the top of that It’s officially provided by Google Developers after going through a project-based evaluation process and an online interview

Yes! It’s not a Theoretical Exam

Just Imagine, You’ll get an official certificate from Google which gives you more authenticity of being an Android app developer, how good it will be. It creates an impact and will help to grow your Career in the android development field.

Post that you can show Associate Android Developer Google Certified Badge in your resume, LinkedIn Network, social media profiles, and anywhere 🤩 Basically It Stands you out in the Crowd!

Okie This was all about Perks of getting it. Now Let’s quickly talk about a few important queries we always have in mind before digging into like Certification Fee, Time, No. of Attempts etc.

Process:-

Firstly Complete the registration process (Submit your Identity Document), Pay the fee, Take your exam and submit it

You can choose any language of your choice i.e Java or Kotlin during registration

Now you’ll have to appear for Exit Interview which will be Robotic / Automation, here at your convenient time you’ll have to start and Record your answers for the exit interview.

Upon completing the exit interview, your submission will be graded which may take up to 45 days for grading and If your submission meets the criteria for a passing attempt, you will be awarded your Associate Android Developer Certification.

Certification Fee:-

The Associate Android Developer Certification is $149 USD, which includes one exam attempt. Local pricing may vary based on your country of origin.

The exam price is 6500 INR in you are living in India

Time:-

You have 8 hours to complete the exam, and if you finish early, you can manually submit the exam. When the 8 hours has elapsed, the exam will auto-submit. Having the exam auto-submit will not in itself cause you to fail the exam.

No. of Attempts:-

You must register and pay for each exam attempt. Our exam retake policy is as follows:

  • If you don’t pass on your first attempt, you must wait 14 days before you take the exam again.
  • If you don’t pass on your second attempt, you must wait two months before you take the exam again.
  • If after three attempts you still have not passed the exam, you must wait one year before you take the exam again.

Important Note:-

You’ll get a partially completed project and you’ll have to complete that Project fully i.e you’ll have to complete the tasks given to certify. We have to install a Plugin asked by Google to start the Exam.

Now Let’s talk about the Preparation Strategy

Preparation Strategy and Topics to Focus on!

I personally created a new project from scratch which included all those concepts which were required and that gave me more confidence on those concepts.

I’ll go more specific so that you mainly focus on those for Certification:-

  1. UI — Constraint Layout
  2. RecyclerView, Pagination Library
  3. Notifications (In-App)
  4. Activity, Fragment Transactions
  5. MVVM Architecture
  6. Room DB, Sorting
  7. Alarm Manager and Work Manager
  8. Unit Test Cases and UI Test Cases (Espresso)
  9. No DI library like Dagger or Koin, No JetPack Compose
  10. Background thread — It should already be integrated (The time when I was giving exam there was no Coroutines or RxJava). Thread / ThreadPoolExecutors, AsyncTask — Can be anything which was already present. So Don’t worry

So, Mainly these are the topics you must focus on before appearing for the exam. It will definitely help you and You’ll Crack it for sure.

Exit Interview:-

Exit Interview will be aRobotic / Automation Interview which you can post submitting your Exam at your convenient time. Here you’ll have to give Answers of a few questions and It will be Record Automatically

  1. Most of the questions will be from the Project /Exam you just completed.
  2. Be Confident when giving the Exit Interview

A Few points you should be aware of:-

  1. Code gets deleted post submission
  2. Candidate can browse internet during this duration
  3. Do not delete the files which was already given in project

Tips During Exam:-

  1. To get more brownie points — use java docs , code and proper Naming Convention / formatting
  2. Create functions for most of the tasks and reuse wherever possible
  3. Try to complete all tasks given for exam, Best is to do 1–2 Extra to get Brownie Points (I Personally did)
  4. Test it twice, thrice — Crash shouldn’t be there in App. Please take good care of this
  5. Don’t miss Code Review. You code should be Self Explanatory
  6. First priority is to Complete all the tasks, Second is to Add 1–2 Extra tasks, 3rd should be to optimize your code as much as possible

Here are a few Resources which will help you.

Study Guide:-

Where to Apply for Certification?

About Certification:-

Thats it! You’re So so Close to Crack the Certification, Now Just Go, Crack the Exam, Have your Badge and Flaunt 😍

Here’s Mine:-

My Best Wishes are with you. If Still any queries, you can directly ping me on on Linkedin or Twitter

Subscribe to My Youtube Channel “CodingWithPuneet” for more such Interesting Videos! 🤩

Android Apk Optimization by CodingWithPuneet

Share this blog to spread the knowledge | Do Follow and CLAP if you Liked it! Happy Coding!

--

--

Puneet Grover

Android Team Lead (Senior Consultant) @Deloitte USI | Google Certified Android Dev | Java | Kotlin | Blogger | Sometimes Youtuber