Analyzing Salesforce exams

We will cover the Salesforce exam topic more deeply in Chapter 12. Here, I will only highlight the most important topics related to the Salesforce exams in general:

• There are more than 20 Salesforce-related certificate types on the market now

  Yes, some people have them all. No, more does not mean better.

• The exams are multiselect tests

  The exception is the Salesforce Associate Certification, which is currently not multiselect.

• The passing score may differ but is generally around 65%

  You should know that some topics require a higher score than others as their wages are higher.

• You may do the test online at home or offline in one of the exam centers

  As the exam centers may not be available in your area, you may always take the online exam. The online exams are proctored, so this means that you will be assisted and monitored by a proctor through a webcam.

• There are official test questions provided by Salesforce

  Currently, test questions are available only for Admin and Email Specialists. You can buy these official test questions to prepare yourself for those exams.

• If your native language is not English, you may ask Salesforce to increase the time you will need to deal with the exam

  You will get additional time if you are taking an exam in English and your native language is not English. To get additional time, you need to contact Salesforce support before the exam.

• To get some certificates, you may need to achieve other certs as some are prerequisites for other exams

  For example, you need to be a Certified Administrator to be able to get an Advance Administrator certificate.

• There is a clear path that you can follow to become a Salesforce Certified Technical Architect, the top of the top roles in the Salesforce ecosystem

  Some Salesforce certs are bound together and passing them all will ultimately give you the title of Application Architect and/or System Architect, which opens the door to becoming a Salesforce CTA – a Certified Technical Architect. The paths are known. Just follow the steps.

As I mentioned already, the Salesforce Certified Administrator exam will be covered in detail in another part of this book, so I would like to mention only that the Admin exam was, up until some time ago, the first exam that opened the doors to the Salesforce cert world. But as the exam scope is quite big and it’s better to be at least a Salesforce user on a daily basis to pass this exam, Salesforce some time ago introduced an easier exam called the Salesforce Certified Associate. Salesforce just recognized that it’s hard for Salesforce newbies to prepare for the Admin exam and start their careers without having at least a few months experience on the platform using Salesforce in the current work. The Salesforce Certified Associate is dedicated to Salesforce beginners with around three months’ experience on the platform, while the Admin cert is recommended to people with around six months’ Salesforce experience. The first three exams we recommend doing to jumpstart your Salesforce career are as follows:

• Salesforce Certified Associate
• Salesforce Certified Administrator
• Salesforce Platform App Builder

You may ask, do I really need to do the Salesforce Certified Associate exam before trying to pass the Admin exam? The answer is simple: yes but no. Just joking. Yes, you may skip the Associate exam and go straight to the Admin exam. This is recommended especially if any of the following apply:

• You are starting an SF-related job soon – let’s be brutally honest, the Salesforce Associate exam is a good start but when you have already got a Salesforce job, in 99% of cases that means you know some Salesforce and you would need more skills than are needed from Associate. Rather, you would need at least Admin skills. This is because the Associate is rather one repair wrench and when you start a Salesforce-related job (especially in consulting), you need the whole toolbox already.
• You are already a Salesforce user/superuser/Admin – if you are already in one of these roles, the Associate exam could be tempting as you will pass it without needing to learn it, but it will add almost nothing of value to your career. Of course, you will be “more” certified and will be able to make the “huge” change on LinkedIn, which will be changing “1x Certified” to “2x Certified” on your profile summary, but mostly, that’s it.
• You learn fast or you’ve worked before with other IT tools such as CRM, ERP systems, and so on.
• You have limited funds – Salesforce Associate is not free on a daily basis. Sometimes, Salesforce gives some random discounts that can limit the price to zero or cut the cost, but usually, you need to pay for the exam. If your funds are limited, you may consider skipping the Associate exam as the Admin certificate is much more recognizable and valued than the Associate cert.

Tip

You may already know that there is also another popular Salesforce certificate that is dedicated to programmers. It’s called Platform Developer 1. Some may say that you don’t need to do certs such as Admin or App Builder if you just want to be a programmer. They would be wrong. Salesforce is a platform where one of the most important rules is to try to not use Visualforce…Just kidding. The real rule is “try to configure before starting to code.” As Salesforce gives you a lot of customization possibilities, code-based automation options the starting point should always be declarative customization, click no code aka low code. For this reason, I recommend starting your Salesforce certificate journey with Admin, then App Builder as a prerequisite before jumping to Dev 1, even if you don’t want to be an Admin and do not know what App Builder really is.

Now that you have some basic context about Salesforce exams and being Salesforce certified, let’s see how to make the very first step toward your future Salesforce career and learn how to create your Salesforce test account.