Become a Notion Certified Consultant: a Practical Guide

Notion is a popular productivity software used by millions of teams and individuals worldwide.

With the Notion certification program, you could obtain badges and eventually become a Notion Certified Consultant, landing into Notion Consulting Partners registry.

Notion certifications are free – but, while there are no exam fees, there are a few caveats to obtaining the badges, and there are some strings attached if you decide to pursue the status of a Notion Consulting Partner.

In this article, I’ll describe my experience with the certification exams and give some tips, so you could decide which level of certification is right for you.

How to earn Notion Essentials, Settings, and Advanced badges — photo by @ds-stories on Pexels

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Notion Certification exam prerequisites

There are no prerequisites to obtain the Notion Essentials, Settings & Sharing, and Advanced badges. You could just fill a form and get a link to your free exam.
To earn the Notion Consulting Partner badge and enter the registry, you need to have successfully passed all three exams, as well as demonstrate the depth of your expertise.

Are Notion certifications worth it?

Certifications enhance your professional profile, but the biggest benefit of getting certified is the knowledge and insights you get as you prepare for the exam.

Notion certification exams are mostly about the familiarity with the specific piece of software. While it’s nice to have a good idea of what a specific tool could offer, it’s something you can get familiar with after looking through the main feature walkthrough and some experimentation. Notion-related materials only briefly touch on the principles of efficient workflow organization.

Should I get Notion certified as a project manager?

If you’re looking into a general improvement of your workflow practices, I think the most rewarding would be to prepare and pass the Professional Scrum with Kanban certification by Scrum.org.

But getting to know the software is worth it to see if it’s a good fit for your organization and for your clients.

A certification badge that doesn’t expire also won’t hurt your profile.

You could study to get the Notion Essentials badge, and see if you want to go deeper. And if you’re using Notion in your work already, you might as well get the badge to make your relationship official.

Becoming a Notion Consulting Partner

But the pinnacle of Notion certification journey is becoming a Consulting Partner.

Based on the application form for potential consultants, Notion Consulting Partner program is geared towards companies or, at the very least, individuals with well-established project management consultancy practice.

Requirements to become a Notion Consulting Partner

This is fairly straightforward. As long as you don’t have any technical issues, have some experience using Notion and brushed up on the docs, you could pass all three exams within a day.

2. Be on a Notion Business or Enterprise plan

It’s a required point you need to check off at the end of your Consulting Partner application. You’ll need to complete a workspace-building project, and this would require you to have access to some features only available on paid plans.

I’d assume that Business gives you access to some features you need to complete the tasks, and you could switch to a lower tier after completing the process. However, there aren’t many differences in features (database automations are available on the Plus plan, too). So I suspect you’ll be required to stay on at least a Business plan to maintain your status in the consultant registry.

3. Demonstrate the depth of your professional expertise

Showing three Notion case studies and client testimonials used to be a prerequisite for becoming a Consultant. At the moment, case studies are mentioned in the badge description on Credly, but aren’t officially highlighted on the Notion Partnership page.

But it is stated that Notion will estimate your expertise and capabilities, so more than likely you’ll need to demonstrate a solid track record of implementing Notion setup for clients.

You’ll need to come up with an efficient solution to a hypothetical client case and implement it in Notion.

Community engagement used to be listed as a prerequisite – it’s not explicitly mentioned on the page any more, but it could serve to your advantage.

Become a Notion Certified professional by following demonstrating your Notion expertise — photo by @georgemorina on Pexels

Notion certification steps

Applying for the Notion exam. Application forms for Notion Essentials, Settings & Sharing, and Advanced exams are exactly the same, so save your answers to fill them in the other forms.
Receiving the exam link. Within a few minutes, you’ll get a link to your exam and your unique ID. You need to attempt the exam within 1 week. Notion Certification exams are free and not proctored.
Writing the exam. You have 60-70 questions per Notion Certification exam, and 90 minutes to answer them.
Getting the results and your Credly badge. If you score over 70% on the exam, you pass and should get an email and receive the certification badge. You might get some technical issues with this step – see the troubleshooting section below.

Notion Certification exam preparation

You could prepare by reading the articles in the Notion Help Center, starting with the 101 course in Notion Academy. The exams assume you’ve been using Notion for a while and know the nuances of the settings that aren’t used everyday.

Notion Essentials exam tips

Most questions are multiple-choice with a single correct answer. The topics covered are related to various details of Notion workspace, from page elements to sharing settings and even database formulas.

Questions were very software-specific – to answer, you need to really know your way around Notion as if you were an admin on a paid plan.

This exam is more focused on a single subject, so if you thoroughly read the Notion Help articles related to settings and sharing, you should be good to pass it.

Notion Advanced exam: what to expect?

The main challenge here is that there are many multiple-select questions, with no indication of how many correct answers there are.

Here are the knowledge areas listed in the post-exam results breakdown:

Project management (Agile, Waterfall, best practices)
Automations
Formulas
Migrations
Pages, Databases and Wikis
Workspaces & Team spaces

Notion is a task management and documentation software that you need to learn well to pass the exams — photo by @olia-danilevich on Pexels

Notion Certification questions and troubleshooting

What if I fail a Notion certification exam?

If you fail your exam attempt, you could apply again in 30 days. An email might be sent prompting you to retry, but I recommend marking the re-application date in your calendar. Make sure to save your application form answers to expedite the process.

Can I lose my status as a Notion Consulting Partner?

Yes, if you’re not compliant with the Certified Consultant Terms.

You must continue to meet all requirements, including maintaining acceptable customer satisfaction, to maintain your Certification in good standing.

It doesn’t explicitly say what happens if you just become inactive as a consultant – the registry does contain a few consultants marked as “Not accepting new clients”. But I suspect that if you’re unresponsive or inactive for a while, it might trigger a check to re-evaluate your partnership status.

Do I need to renew my Notion certification?

At the moment, Notion Essentials, Settings & Sharing, and Advanced Badges don’t have an expiration date. But as a Certified Consultant, you might be asked to renew your status and take the exam again.

I passed a Notion exam but didn’t get any results

So, you answered all the questions, got the “wait for the results in your inbox” message, and got nothing.

After successfully passing the Essentials exam and obtaining a badge, I encountered this technical issue with the Notion Settings & Sharing exam, along with a few others:

For Notion Settings & Sharing, the on-screen message instructed to wait for the results in the email, but they never came.
For Notion Advanced, there was an on-screen message with the exam results breakdown, but no email communication, and no badge was awarded.
For all 3 exams, I could still use the link and the unique ID to launch the exam after trying it once.

Notion uses third-party software for their exams, but the software provider support replied that any issues should be taken up with the Notion team.

Notion support replied that there were notification issues that they now solved, so the exam could be attempted again. I attempted Notions Settings & Sharing using the the exam ID received earlier, and the system allowed me to answer and submit the questions - but in the follow-up email, I was notified that the exam ID was already used.

After submitting the application again to get a new exam ID, I received a message from Notion team, saying that I already earned the Notion Settings & Sharing Badge, so they’re closing the recent application. Looks like my very first attempt was recorded. I explained the situation and asked to issue the Credly badge, which they did.

For the Advanced badge, I’d have to wait 30 days to apply again, as my first attempt with the exam ID has failed.

Bottomline: If you passed a Notion Certification exam and didn’t get any results in an email, contact Notion support. Trying to reapply for the same exam will prompt the Notion Certification team to either confirm that you already received it and award you a badge, or you’ll learn that you need to try again later.