14 March 2015

Salesforce Certified Administrator

That’s right. This morning I took my Salesforce Certified Administrator exam…and I passed! Obviously the best way to get certified is to take some instructor-led classes from Salesforce, or to join a Girlforce study group. But for those of us stuck with self-study, it’s still a VERY accomplishable task. Here are a few hints that I learned along my path.

  1. Sign up for an in-person exam: This is actually a two part tip. First (and obviously), if you don’t sign up for an exam you’ll never get your certificate! Once you have your exam date set, it’s a lot easier to set up study habits and motivate yourself. I gave myself one month from registration to exam to become someone worth giving a certificate to. And I do HIGHLY recommend that you test in-person at a testing center. I was supposed to take my exam a week earlier than I did, but ended up running into huge problems finding a webcam and getting WebAssessor to work. Even though I passed all the requirements and checks before the exam, on the day of, it didn’t work. I thankfully was able to get a credit to take the test in-person and it went very smoothly.
  2. Sign up for CertifiedOnDemand.com: The resources on CertifiedOnDemand are incredible and I found it well worth my $40.
  3. Work your way through Trailhead: Trailhead is Salesforce’s newest resource for training on the platform. It can be a little bit developer-centric at times, but it’s well worth the work it takes to complete. Not only is it very useful for you (as an administrator) to learn the basics of Apex and VF so that you know when they would be applied, Trailhead takes you head-first and hands-on into many admin concepts. If your org (like many non-profits) doesn’t do much in the way of record security or ownership, it’s very difficult to wrap your head around the nuances of groups, sharing, OWDs, and more. Doing challenges with security in an actual org really help you learn what the SFDC security model is all about.
  4. Memorize your report and dashboard component types: There’s not a ton on the exam that needs real memorization. That is not true about the analytics portion. I had several questions on my exam that asked me to name specific dashboard components or report types, and I’m pretty sure I got all of them wrong. These are easy points to get, and aren’t worth losing just because you can’t remember the difference between a redacted and a redacted (in compliance with the Certification Program Agreement, I won’t reveal what I actually couldn’t remember).
  5. Study a little bit every day: If you’re using the platform as an admin day-to-day, you know a lot of what’s on the exam already. Identify your weak points (as a non-profit admin, it’s probably Service Cloud) and read a little bit about them every day. Don’t stress yourself out with long hours, just get to the point where you feel proud of your knowledge!

It’s a lot of work, but it’s really not too much. You’ll be constantly learning as you go, and in no time at all you’ll find yourself answering questions on the HUB that you used to be asking. That’s a sign that you’re ready to certify!

And, once you pass that test, you’ll get an amazing feeling (in addition to that certificate)! Take that feeling right to your next performance review, and hope that your boss doesn’t bring up how much time you spent studying when you should have been working.

Good luck!