Okay so I've been putting off writing this post but I feel like I owe it to this community because honestly the threads here got me through a really frustrating few months. I failed the DES exam in October and again in January — both times I was sitting around 68% and needed a 75 to pass. I was studying maybe 2-3 hours a week which, looking back, was nowhere near enough for the volume of material they cover.
What finally clicked for me was switching up my study approach around week 6 of my third attempt. I stopped just reading through the SHRM materials and started doing timed DES practice test questions every single day, even if it was just 20-30 questions on my lunch break. The immediate feedback on what I was getting wrong was way more useful than any study guide I'd bought. Digital and emerging skills compensation topics and workforce analytics were my weakest areas — if those are yours too, spend extra time there.
Passed with an 81% last week. Genuinely shocked. Anyone else currently in the middle of studying? Happy to share more specifics about my timeline and what resources I leaned on.