👈🏽 🙆🏼 🆒 Salesforce Certification Guide 🤟 👴🏿 🧗

This article will be useful for novice developers on the Salesforce platform. In it, I will try to summarize my own experience of passing Salesforce certification, and tell how to do it with the least expenses both in time and in finance.

In 2019, Salesforce was recognized as the leader in the global market for CRM systems over the past 6 years. Salesforce specializations are currently in high demand in the job market around the world. Therefore, if you are faced with tasks:

prove your knowledge in Salesforce,
stand out among candidates when looking for work,
deepen your theoretical knowledge in Salesforce,
to achieve an increase in salary.

In this case, you definitely need to go through Salesforce certification.

Salesforce certification is an exam in the form of a test, after passing which you receive a certificate. Then, your data is entered into the database of certified specialists, and now everyone (including a potential employer) will be able to check whether you have a certificate on the site.

I will conditionally divide the process into six main stages, which I could single out empirically:

Step 1. Choosing a Certificate
Stage 2. Preparation on the Trailhead platform
Stage 3. Third-party resources for preparation
Stage 4. Save $ 70
Step 5. Register for certification
Stage 6. Passing the Online Exam

Let's start in order.

Step 1. Choosing a Certificate

According to Salesforce, it is possible to get more than 30 certificates, the hierarchical representation perfectly allows you to understand the dependencies of directions, and in what order it is worth receiving certificates.

If there are difficulties when choosing a direction, then you can turn to the Certification-guide for help , which is hidden in the bowels of numerous pages and links of the official resource.

We open the guide, read the description of each certificate, find the most suitable one and get acquainted with the requirements.

~~We close the guide and leave for 6 months to prepare.~~

Recommendation - “6 months experience with Salesforce”? If you approach your preparation wisely, then the necessary time is reduced significantly.

When choosing a certificate, keep in mind the following points:

If the certificate is the first, then it makes no sense to mark the architect, because for this step there are requirements for passing the previous steps (see the pyramid).
I recommend developers to look at the directions Administrator \ App Builder \ Developer
Managers can look at Consultant \ Marketing Cloud \ CPQ

Decided on a certificate? Fine!

Stage 2. Preparation on the Trailhead platform

If you are already familiar with the Trailhead platform, the first thing I want to note is that you should not deal with the passage of modules using the brute-force method, do not focus on the number of Badges. To optimize time spent, the amount of Badges should be kept to the minimum required.

If you already have a Ranger rank, with over 100 Badges behind you, do not think that this is enough for certification, it will require, not the ability to do anything in practice, but deep theoretical knowledge of the system.

Therefore, in the certification section, we look at these happy, intellectually burdened faces, we hope that during the preparation we will experience the same emotions ...

... and open the recommended set of training modules, depending on the chosen direction.

As an example, consider the kit for App Builder:

66 hours to study the modules can be easily converted into 2 months of evening practices, which in the end will not lead to success, because will not provide sufficient theoretical knowledge for the exam.
We focus on links and PDF, as they contain really useful information.
If time allows, then the main modules can be passed for review, but to set a goal to go through them all for the sake of a certificate is not worth it.
It’s better not to waste time on Superbadge, as just understanding the task can take several days, as a result, the whole passage will be reduced to finding solutions on the Internet

Bonus: For those who are interested in Badges, I suggest passing two Superbadge, in Russian:

Security Specialist - introduces security settings, questions on which are found in almost every direction
App Customization Specialist - introduces the basic means of declarative development in Salesforce

Deal with Trailhead? Move on!

Stage 3. Third-party resources for preparation

The third stage is the key in preparing for certification, as from now on, it will be necessary to concentrate on passing tests close to real testing.
It is the repeated passing of tests in order to reach the level when the answers to the questions “fly off the teeth” are the key to success in passing certification.

At the moment, there are several third-party resources that can be used for preparation:

Resource	% Importance for preparation	Price policy
focusonforce.com	80%	Paid
t.me/SalesforceA	70%	Free
www.proprofs.com	60%	Free
quizlet.com	60%	Free
Udemy	10 %	Paid

focusonforce.com

- A decent, paid resource that is fully dedicated to preparing for Salesforce certification.

The resource is divided into two parts Study Guide and Practice Exams, each of which costs 19 USD (at the time of publication of the article).

The Study Guide is a squeeze of theoretical material from official documentation, with the addition of diagrams and various graphic elements, for ease of assimilation.

I want to note right away that I do not recommend purchasing the Study Guide , as the information in it is greatly shrunken, and there is simply not any material that appears on the exam.

You should pay attention to Practice Exams, which is presented in the form of a set of tests close to a real exam. Using Practice Exams, you can simulate real test conditions by answering questions on time. In total, the database contains about 400 questions for each certificate, which are regularly updated (according to the authors of the resource). After passing the test, you can get the result with% parsing by sections.

Such a report gives a visual representation in which section there are problems with knowledge, and then this section can be worked out by passing tests on it many times.

In addition, an answer is provided for each question, and a comment is why this answer is correct, with reference to the official documentation.

The resource has a live forum, on it you can discuss all incomprehensible moments. The administration answers all questions daily (from experience).

Forum

If after preparation, you regularly gain 90% on all tests, you can assume that the certificate is in your pocket!
Cons: Resource paid.

t.me/SalesforceA

- Telegram channel in which preparations for certification are discussed, and tests are published. It can be taken as a basis as a free resource.

The audience is English-speaking and very active, you can safely ask questions, and hope that the answer you were given is correct.

Cons: Errors are found in the tests, the audience consists of those who are preparing for certification, and these people are not always knowledgeable at Salersforce.

proprofs.com and quizlet.com

- A collection of various tests, contains a huge number of tests on Salesforce.
Cons: A lot of tests with incorrect answers. A lot of incorrectly composed questions, some tests are outdated or incorrectly formatted.

Udemy

- The resource is paid, but the courses laid out on it leave much to be desired, most of them are outdated, because certification questions are updated every season.

Stage 4. Save $ 70

Certification is paid from $ 200, which cannot be called a “pleasant” price, but there is an opportunity to save $ 70.

Salesforce regularly holds free, one-day online training courses for certification, after which you can get a coupon for a discount of $ 70, for any certificate worth $ 200. That's just about it is not advertised anywhere, and I found this information by chance, walking in groups in the Trailblazer Community.

We go to the official website of Salesforce Trailblazer Community in the Certification Days group in it we find information on courses or ask a question.

By clicking on the link, it will be possible to find out for which certificates training is being carried out, on which days, and also register for the selected course.

After completing the course, which actually consists in connecting to the Online platform at a certain time, and listening to a two-hour lecture, after that, in a few days the promised coupon will arrive in the mail.

Step 5. Register for certification

The official certification platform is www.webassessor.com , after registration on which, the opportunity to choose an exam will be available.

Salesforce offers 2 exam options - Online and Onsite.

“Onsite” means going to specialized centers. Their location can be viewed at the link .

In the “Online” option, you can choose any day of the week (including Saturday and Sunday) and the most favorable time for you to pass certification. For me it was Sunday, 13:00.

If this is the first exam, then the exam will cost 200 USD for the areas Administrator \ App Builder \ Developer \ Accreditation, etc., except for the direction Architect. If you received a coupon, you can use it during registration, therefore, the cost of the exam will be reduced to 130 USD.

If after the first attempt to pass the test failed, the exam can be retaken. The cost of each retake is 100 USD. You can retake the test on the same day, if there is a free entry. For the third retake, you have to wait 14 days.

Stage 6. Passing the Online Exam

For the passage of Online certain requirements are set, which can be found from the source.

I will briefly list the main ones:

Must have an external USB webcam! Yes, a camera from a laptop will not work.
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The webcam must be installed appropriately, using this link you can see the video recommendation for installing the camera.

On the day the exam is scheduled, 20 minutes before the time, you will need to go to the platform www.webassessor.com and run the exam from your account.

After the start, the verification of biometrics will start, and if from the time you sent the biometric data, you have not had plastic surgery on your face, then the exam itself will start.

The exam is as follows:

The application window opens on the whole screen, which displays questions and answers, time is limited, and depends on the certificate selected, but this time is enough to read each question 3 times. A question can contain from 1 to 3 correct answers, you will be warned about this in the question itself - “Choose 2 answers”.

The exam is held in English, but if your level of English is poor, then anyway, there is no problem, because during the preparation and multiple reading of questions and answers, all the necessary words will already be learned.

Also, you can independently check the exam for the complexity of English, for example, you can use any Online resource where there is a check for duplicate words, as an option (https://advego.com/text/seo/).

After checking several exam options (in my case it was App Builder), we get a set of the most common words.

We find unfamiliar words and define their translation in the context of Salesforce.

And of course, after successful certification, you will need to connect your account www.webassessor.com and Trailhead, after which you can find your certificate on the verification page , thereby providing iron arguments to the employer about your competencies, you can also attach it to LinkedIn page.

Certificate Verification

And finally

In order for your training not to turn into ineffective cramming, you need to analyze the results of each training test - why in these questions, precisely those, and not the other answers, are correct. So gradually you will begin to absorb the material, and most importantly, you will come to understand quite important things that you would miss or not pay attention to them, going through Trailhead or practicing in Developer Org. Preparation for certification can be an excellent opportunity to deepen your theoretical knowledge in the chosen direction. And your certificate will be a worthy reward for your efforts.

Wish you luck!

Salesforce Certification Guide