In October 2023. Microsoft announced Microsoft applied skills, the new skill based assessments with which you can earn credentials which validate your technical skills in different areas by defined use case scenario. They are free to take and if you pass them you will receive verifiable credentials on your profile page which can be shared.
In my opinion this is a great addition to the certificates that already exist. You can test your knowledge in different areas and it can be useful if you are either preparing for the certification exam, if you already have it and want to test your hands on knowledge in the scenarios which are similar to the tasks that you will encounter in the day to day work or if you just want to showcase your knowledge is some area.
From my point of view you will need to have prior knowledge on the applied skill that you are aiming to pass since all of them are set at intermediate level. For instance if you want to pass “Develop an ASP.NET Core web app that consumes an API” applied skill it is expected from you that you have experience writing C# at an intermediate level, knowledge about RESTful services, HTML, HTTP etc. which are part of the mentioned applied skill. There is an overview for each applied skill page which gives a high level description of the things that you may expect as well as which tasks you will need to perform during the applied skill exam. To prepare for the applied skills assessment you can go through the learning path connected to the applied skill where you will get the general idea what to expect on the assessment. To pass the exam you will need to have 70% or more on the assessment.
As of the moment of writing this article, Microsoft offers 43 applied skills which cover a lot of different areas like security, ai, development etc. More information about the applied skills can be found on Microsoft official website:
Microsoft Applied skills
You can also check official announcement for Microsoft applied skills here:
Microsoft applied skills announcement
I will cover applied skills in future posts
