Overview of the Certification
According to a 2019 salesforce survey, about 77% of professionals who have varying involvement with salesforce had at least one salesforce certification. Out of all the respondents, about 39% claimed their salaries had increased after they obtained Salesforce Admin certification. This makes it clear the competitiveness that this field has. This is also proof that the resources you put in for this certification yield a considerable reward – that, this certification is useful for a great career with Salesforce
Salesforce keeps updating its certifications to ensure it keeps abreast of the changes and to ensure it adapts to the everchanging salesforce system.
About Salesforce Admin Certification
Salesforce admin certification represents the highest certification salesforce has to offer an individual. This certification is useful for a professional who has some experience performing in the administrator role but is by no means an expert in the duties of the position.
Salesforce certified administrator certification tests individuals by 60 questions that an individual has to sit for 90 minutes. It has a high pass percentage at 65%. That means, for an individual to clear the exam, he must answer 39 questions correctly. This exam is conducted in a closed book format
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About Salesforce Certified Advanced Administrator
This certification is useful for professionals who have considerable experience working in the administrator role. Much like admin certification, this exam has 60 questions that need to be answered in 90 minutes too. And just like admin certification, the pass percentage is 65%, which means that individuals have to answer 39 questions correctly.
Given the importance of this certification in validating the experience of the professional, the amount of knowledge required and the experience that would help preparing for the certification is a lot. The amount of difficulty the same 39 questions required is higher than for admin certification
Benefits of Salesforce Certification
- They help you to increase your marketability in a tight IT job market and allow you to become a subject matter expert.
- Thet offers flexible training sessions according to your convenience. You can get certified in just a few hours, days or months and can control your career path.
- They offer one or more certifications, and more certifications you add can demand a higher salary.
- A Salesforce certification provides you a broad platform understanding besides increasing your sales and customer relations expertise.
- The Salesforce certification programs provide work efficiency with hands-on- experience. The modules packaged with case studies and live projects including real-life examples. A standard certification from Salesforce comprises a significant amount of time allotted for in-class Lab Practice and an average of hours training time dedicated exclusively to live industry projects
- The job descriptions related to Salesforce indicates that Salesforce Certification is necessary
- Acquiring a Salesforce Certification enables you to navigate quickly through the application and handle customer requests in a rapid-pace with high precision rate.
- If you are Salesforce-certified with a credential you are in a position to help your company optimize their Salesforce and customize it according to specific requirements. Salesforce certifications help you enhance skills to configure Salesforce and become a star performer.
- Salesforce certification proves your current and potential employers as well as your competitors that you are capable of handling the tasks
- According to the recent report from revealed that annual salary of Salesforce Administrator Salary in Denver, CO, US is $72,295/yr which is 16% above national average. The same group surveyed in 2013, revealed that A Salesforce expert who did not have any certification was $69,600 annually on an average, while the one having certification jumped to $86,850. according to Indeed.com
How to Sit for the Exam?
There are two ways that you can attempt the exam
Onsite Exam
In this case, individuals can sit for the exam at a place and time that is convenient for the professional. Salesforce has partnered with Kryterion. Kryterion has testing centers across the world. You can choose the center and the timing for your exam out of the centers that are available closest to you. Selecting the exam center and the date at least one week in advance can help in ensuring you get the dates you want for the exam. Kryterion aims to make the salesforce certification process simpler for all candidates
Online Proctored Exam
In this case, professionals have the option of taking the test from their homes only. For a proctored exam, the proctor will be monitoring your exam through access of a webcam. The exam provider will require you to download a software that gives the proctor access to your screen when you’re writing the exam. This way, you get the best of convenience and proctored exam. For this exam, you can register and take the exam on the same day.
Salesforce Administrator Study Guide
Salesforce recommends a mixture of training, hands-on experience, and study materials to prepare for the exam. Salesforce has a comprehensive website for training called Trailhead. This has access to several instructor-led and online courses to access while preparing for the exam. The website has access to more than 35 hours of training that can be access online on the trailhead website.
All classes can be accessed from the portal and depending on the individual preference, different modes of training could be chosen. The exam is designed to test the candidate’s practical experience and application of the training more than subject knowledge. The weightage for each topic in the exam is
| Topic | Weighting | Topic | Weighting |
| Organization setup | 2% | User setup | 7% |
| Security and access | 14% | Standard and custom objects | 15% |
| Sales and marketing applications | 15% | Service and support applications | 12% |
| Activity management and collaboration | 3% | Data management | 8% |
| Analytics | 10% | Workflow/process automation | 12% |
| Desktop and mobile administration | 1% | AppExchange | 1% |
The exam costs $200 to take and if you can’t clear them, then you need to pay $100 for each retake of the exam. You can get access to practice exams if you pay $20. There are free alternatives out there, but none of them are recognized by salesforce, and hence, can’t be vetted for how accurate they are. This is important because Salesforce administrators earn an average salary of $92000 – about the same as salesforce app builders.
