6 Questions To Accelerate Your Path Towards Getting Salesforce Admin Certified

Salesforce Administrators are the productivity champions who keep their company’s instances of Salesforce running at peak efficiency. They help ensure business processes are automated, create essential reports and dashboards, and train users on how everything operates. Admins help their teams work more effectively.

Being the one with all that knowledge and skill pays off. Admins are in high demand, and getting certified can put your career in high gear. Our research shows 148% job growth for admins in the past 5 years (U.S. data) and a median U.S. salary of $86,000.

So, how do you set yourself up for Salesforce Certification success? Here are the answers to six questions that will put you on the path to becoming a Certified Salesforce Admin.

1. What’s my starting point?

Trailhead! Salesforce’s free online learning platform helps you enhance your resume with the most in-demand skills to prepare you for future Salesforce career opportunities. Within Trailhead, the Trailblazer Community also helps you make great connections with Salesforce users from anywhere who can mentor and help grow your network to boost your career.

Trailhead allows you to:

• Learn at your own pace: What learning schedule works best for you? Mornings before work? Evenings after work? Weekends? Any and all options are open because you decide what modules to complete at a pace and time that works for you. Every time you return, you can pick up exactly where you left off, so you never miss a beat.
• Learn anywhere: With the free Trailhead GO mobile apps for iOS and Android, you can do your studying on the go from almost anywhere! Have a few minutes on your commute? Waiting at the airport, or on a long-haul flight? If you’ve got a few minutes to spare, you can learn something new.
• Follow a curated guide for role-specific learning: We’ve got guided learning paths called trails and custom learning paths called trailmixes designed especially for admins, and you can follow that preset path to make sure you’re exam-ready.

You can also check out the Salesforce Associate certification exam. This exam is for those with up to 6 months of Salesforce user experience and who want to demonstrate skills in the following areas:

• How the CRM platform solves the challenge of connecting departments and customer data
• Key Salesforce Platform terms
• Fundamental functionality in the current version of Salesforce at a foundational level, such as requirements gathering, reporting, security, sharing, customization, and data management

You can prepare for your Salesforce Associate certification exam with the exam guide and by completing the Salesforce Associate certification preparation trailmix.

2. How can I get prepared?

We’ve got the tools to help you prepare for your exam, no matter your learning style. We’ve covered all the bases, with exam guides, interactive study tools, videos, trailmixes, and more.

Prepare for Your Salesforce Administrator Credential trailmix

This curated exam prep trailmix includes all the modules, projects, and tasks that will guide you through your preparation for the admin cert exam.

Salesforce Certified Administrator exam guide

This Salesforce Certified Administrator exam guide supplies all the critical details you’ll need, including a full content overview, information about how much time is allotted for the exam, the score required to pass, all associated fees, retake options, and more.

There’s a handy exam outline included that details every topic covered in the exam and the relative weight of that topic. It also includes a list of all other recommended training, reference, and study materials to get you on the path to success!

Administrator Certification exam trail

You’ll know if you’re exam-ready after you’ve completed the Study for the Administrator Certification Exam trail. The trail guides you through earning four badges, each of which covers a separate section of the exam. It includes interactive content such as flashcards, embedded practice questions, and downloadable materials — all specially designed to get you prepped and ready for the actual exam.

The interactive Administrator practice test gives you the opportunity to experience the format and questions you may see on the Salesforce Administrator Certification exam. The results upon submission are your guide to strengths and weaknesses to help you focus on areas needed for additional learning.

For a more interactive, face-to-face learning approach, we also offer an array of Trailhead Academy courses taught by Salesforce experts to help you prepare for your admin certification exam.

Courses led by experts

• Certification Preparation for Administrator (CRT 101)
• Administrative Essentials for New Admins in Lightning Experience (ADX 201)

3. Can Superbadges and Super Sets help me?

The design of a Trailhead module offers step-by-step instruction and bite-sized learning with interactive challenges so you can test your newly developed skills.

That’s where Salesforce superbadges and Super Sets come in to play. Superbadges take the skills you’ve learned in a specific domain (think: process automation or app customization) and challenge you to put them to work to solve a complex, realistic business problem. You’ll get a specific business scenario with relevant information scattered throughout the story.

Your job is to uncover the business need and design a solution through a series of interactive challenges in a Trailhead Playground. Those challenges are validated in real time as you complete them.

Then, you can add on Super Sets, a series of superbadges that cover specific roles. Super Sets allow you to prove your expertise in specific areas and are a powerful cert prep tool. In fact, we surveyed Trailblazers and found that 95% said that completing superbadges made them better prepared for their certifications.

Check out the Admin Super Set, which highlights the superbadges designed to help you get ready for your admin certification. And superbadges are a great addition to your resume, profile, and social channels, as they show the world just how much of an Awesome Admin you are.

4. What’s my time commitment?

“How long is this going to take?” Don’t worry, that’s everyone’s top question! The answer is that it really depends on you. You’re the best judge of your current schedule and how much time you can commit to studying.

The great thing about Trailhead is that your learning really is up to you. How does studying fit into your schedule? Can you carve out a few minutes in between meetings or during your commute? Our on-the-go tools and “pick up where you left off” modules mean that no matter how much time you have, you can probably squeeze in a little learning.

And keep in mind that there’s no hurry to get certified. You’re working toward a goal here, which is to make sure you’ve really grasped all the key concepts in a certain module — because these are concepts you need to build on for the next module. So, take your time and learn at a pace that works for you.

If you’re nervous about making a time commitment or you’ve been putting off the exam because you’re afraid to fail, don’t let that hold you back! Learning is a process, and failing is just one small part of that process.

5. How do I ace the exam?

Test-taking is stressful for lots of people. Even if you think you’ve got all the concepts for the Salesforce Certification down, you might dread the actual exam just because test-taking isn’t your thing. But you can manage your state of mind and put a success strategy in place to help you breeze right through exam day!

• Stay calm and learn to manage your expectations. Not everyone passes the exam the first time around, and the internal pressure to pass at any cost may cause unnecessary stress. To be clear — if you don’t pass, it’s okay! There’s no failing on this learning journey. There’s only a new opportunity to do better on your next attempt. Your exam results include section-level feedback, which will help you identify exactly what to focus on to come back even stronger for any certification retake.
• During the exam, it’s important to manage your time. Exams can last anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes depending on the topic, so you should be able to figure out approximately how much time you should give each question before you move on. You’ll always know the total amount of time you have remaining, and you can easily mark a question to come back to later — so don’t let any single question take up too much of your time. Simply mark it for review and revisit it.
• Take advantage of available resources. If you’re taking the exam in person, the testing center will allow you three sheets of paper, which you can use to jot down notes, keywords, and important concepts that you’re afraid of forgetting. Have one concept you continually forget? Memorized an acronym or mnemonic device that helps you remember it? Jot that down as soon as you get to your station. Your testing time doesn’t start until you hit the start button, so take a few moments in the beginning to get prepared.

6. Are there more resources?

Yes, of course! Bookmark the Salesforce Admin Skills Kit page where you can find all of the resources designed to help you grow your Salesforce Admin career.

• Check out the Admin blog— This is the place to find best practices, tips and tricks, insights, and career advice for Salesforce Admins.
• Subscribe to the Admin podcast — We’ve got interesting guest speakers who are ready to share their career insights on a variety of topics, all designed to help you maximize your leadership skills and career potential.
• Join Admin events in your area — In-person and virtual events let you make great connections with other Trailblazers in your area.
• Get involved with the Trailblazer Community — This is the place to connect, learn, have fun, and give back with Awesome Admins around the world. You can even connect with a user group close to you, or a study group that will help you get exam-ready!

You’re doing a great job — celebrate your progress

All of these strategies have one thing in common: to help make preparing for your exam more fun! Enjoy the learning process, and remember, you’re an expert in your field. Getting Salesforce-certified is proof to yourself and your employer that you’ve worked hard to gain the knowledge and skills you need to succeed as a Salesforce Admin.

So, it’s not a matter of whether or not you’ll get certified — it’s just a matter of when. You’ve got this!

And when you do earn your certification, you can pay it forward by taking part in the Trailblazer Community and helping other aspiring admins get ready for their exams.