The 3 Most Important Skills Tested by CompTIA’s New A+

Employers don’t want robots, they want clever problem solvers who can think creatively in a number of different settings. But how do you prove that you’re a person like that? One approach to consider is the A+ certification from CompTIA. The A+ captures a lot of those hard-to-define soft skills, and earning it can prove to an employer that you’re a safe bet.

Build a Strong Foundation With CompTIA Training

If you’re new to IT or need to diversify your existing skillset, CompTIA is a great starting point. Because CompTIA certifications are vendor-neutral, you can broadly apply the knowledge and skills they validate regardless of what products or services your organization uses. 

CBT Nuggets online CompTIA training can help you learn the fundamentals of areas such as networking, security, and the cloud. Once you’ve got the basics down, you can branch out to more specific vendors or specialized career paths. CBT Nuggets training will help you build the foundation for a successful IT career.

Not a CBT Nuggets subscriber? Sign up for a 7-day free trial to get a feel of what it’s like to learn IT with us. Explore all of our CompTIA training and start learning skills that can boost your career, no matter what stage you’re at!

What is CompTIA?

CompTIA is a non-profit organization that maintains vendor-agnostic certifications for people in the IT industry to help them prove that they’ve reached a certain level of proficiency and skill. CompTIA has been around long enough (‘born’ in 1982, CompTIA is older than many IT professionals working today!) that they’re trusted not just by employers, but experts in the field who have turned around and joined up with CompTIA to help create tests and guidelines for what makes an IT employee valuable.

CompTIA offers about 14 different certifications, ranging from very basic to very advanced. For example, their introductory certification, IT Fundamentals+, tests you at a very basic level on all the different areas of IT to see if the career field would be a good fit. Meanwhile, the Cloud+ is a vendor-agnostic benchmark for cloud implementation and administration skills. And the CASP+ is an advanced cybersecurity certification that covers professional skills in administering cybersecurity in vendor-agnostic, complex environments.

What Does Vendor-Agnostic Mean for Certifications?

CompTIA’s teams of hundreds of contributors focus on making their tests and certifications vendor-agnostic. That emphasis on vendor-agnostic skills and knowledge is a huge difference between CompTIA and almost all other certification vendors. Most certifications come from companies like Microsoft, Cisco, or AWS – they’re created and issued to people who can prove mastery over one specific piece of technology or technology stack.

The logic behind that is obvious: if a company relies on the AWS cloud, they want their staff to be trained and certified by AWS so they know there’s no part of its operation that can’t be implemented or fixed if it breaks. But what happens when that AWS-dependent company suddenly needs to use the Google Cloud, or implement an Azure solution?

CompTIA focuses on vendor-agnostic skills and knowledge because the alternative can be too restrictive. If someone spends four months and a hundred hours earning a specialized AWS certification, they’d barely be any better at working with an Azure tool than a brand-new hire. CompTIA focuses on the skills and knowledge that apply to someone who works in a certain position (like network administrator or junior security practitioner) and tries to include as many different technologies as possible.

What is the New A+ Certification from CompTIA?

CompTIA’s A+ certification covers nine core domains across two core exams. They are: 

Core 1: Mobile Devices 13%, Networking 23%, Hardware 25%, Virtualization and Cloud Computing 11%, Hardware and Network Troubleshooting 28%; 

Core 2: Operating Systems 28%, Security 25%, Software Troubleshooting 26%, Operational Procedures 21%

The A+ is usually earned by IT professionals early in their careers to prove that they have a mastery of all the basics of working in IT. Whether you’re planning on moving your career into cybersecurity, networking, systems administration, data center planning, or something else, the A+ proves to an employer that you’ve got all your bases covered.

Earning the A+ requires passing two exams, and in March 2025, CompTIA issued new versions of both. On September 25, 2025, they will be retiring the older versions (220-1101 and 220-1102), and on December 19, 2025, for non-English languages. In their place are the latest versions: 220-1201 (Core 1) and 220-1202 (Core 2). These will be the only valid exams for earning the A+. To pass, you’ll need 675 for Core 1 and 700 for Core 2.

What Did CompTIA Change on the New A+?

The fundamentals of the A+ haven’t changed very much. The exams still focus on core skills, with managing and administering everything from mobile devices to software troubleshooting. But the new A+ exams (220-1201 and 220-1202) are looking to the future and are focusing on emerging technologies that you’ll face in the workplace.

CompTIA updated the A+ to focus on security, and they also go into more detail regarding cloud services like Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and other cloud services like Platform as a Service (PaaS).. 

The Core 2 exam drills into operating systems. It covers working with Windows admin tools like Task Manager and Device Manager, Linux command-line operations, and macOS system settings. Operational procedures make up 21% of Core 2, and it covers workplace skills like documentation practices, change management procedures, and safety protocols that every IT professional should know.

Practical Certifications Like the A+ Can Help You Land Your First Role in IT

The job market is full of opportunities for IT pros. According to Cengage Group's 2025 Graduate Employability Report, employers are focusing on job-specific technical abilities, looking for candidates who can show off practical skills and not just academic credentials.

71% of employers require a two- or four-year degree for entry-level positions (up from 55% the previous year), which sounds scary at first, but it actually creates a big opportunity for people with professional certifications that require practical skills to complete. This is because it helps you stand out from candidates fresh out of college with a degree who don’t have practical experience yet. 

Nearly half of recent graduates (48%) feel unprepared to apply for entry-level positions, and only 30% of 2025 graduates secure full-time jobs in their field. This shows the skills gap that certifications like CompTIA A+ are designed to fix. 

The A+ Covers Three of the Most Important Skills Employers Want

As you progress through the course material, some of the most important skills that you will learn with CompTIA’s A+ are:

• Critical Thinking: The ability to think through a problem and plan for an outcome - and then react accordingly is a superpower in IT roles. Critical thinking is really important for diagnosing intermittent issues like network performance drops that seem to happen at random- is it hardware, software, or a network cabling issue? You need critical thinking skills in the exam, especially the PBQs (performance-based questions), because they simulate real-world scenarios that you’ll have to work through. Some examples where you’ll need critical thinking skills are Hardware and Network Troubleshooting (28% of Core 1) and Software Troubleshooting (26% of Core 2)

• Troubleshooting: Being able to trace a fault back to its source is really gratifying, and it's a skill that you can practice, either with PBQs that simulate a real issue where you need to diagnose something like a network issue or an OS error after following troubleshooting steps

• Professional Operational Procedures: These are fundamentals like being able to create user “how to” guides, how to escalate an incident to a security engineer or incident response team, or how to document damage to company equipment

The A+ tests these by running you through real-world scenarios that don't always have obvious answers. You are forced to think systematically and communicate clearly under pressure, which is exactly what employers need - technicians who can solve unexpected problems and explain solutions in ways that make sense to everyone.

Final Thoughts

The A+ is one of the IT industry’s most trusted certifications because it focuses on skills and knowledge that apply in as many situations as possible. IT employees who earn the A+ are technically proficient but also able to think outside the box and solve problems they never could have prepared for.

Those soft skills that exist on the edges of technical proficiency are what more and more employers are seeking, and the A+ is how you can prove that you’ve got what it takes. If you’re ready to get started with earning the A+, online training from CBT Nuggets prepares you for the A+ with short videos and lots of opportunities to practice skills in real-world settings