0 to Admin in 52 Days


Review By: Zachary Sexton


Certified


Yes

Expiry Month


6

Expiry Year


2021

Time taken to Prepare


52 Days

Resources Used

  • Below are the resources used

Detailed Review Of Preparation

1. Went through the full Trailhead Admin curriculum May 1st - June 10th (free):

- bi-weekly study sessions with partners I found online

- Michael Wheeler’s video course for guided examples and context for the trailhead

2. Superbadges acquired May 11th (Security), June 2nd (Reports and Dashboards), and June 9th (Business Admin):

None of these were easy. They all took me two days and between 6 to 12 hours of focused work complete.   

3. Certification days June 1st and June 15th: 

Do this once you've completed 100% of the Trailhead. The June 1st Certification was not as helpful because the Workflow/Process Automation and other sections I was not familiar with went over my head. When I went on the second time I used Loom to record the webinar so I could pause, slowdown, and speed up the training to meet my study needs. 

4. Practice exams! June 11th - 21st ($30):

- Webassesor: simple exam to get used to the platform

- Trailhead: found at the end of the Admin trailmix. only a few questions, but helpful

- SalesforceBen: free one on website. Simple, but good.  

- Udemy (Mike Wheeler): Fine. They had a number of Classic questions on there that I wish he would remove.

- Focus on Force. The gold standard. Very difficult questions. Most similar to the test. Very well done answer explanations for every question. 6 full tests for $19. Totally worth the money.  

5. Trailhead live June 20th and 21st:

Every video I could find that said 'Preparing for Your Admin Certification.' These were very helpful. I'd recommend watching them and taking notes as a final review. 

Here are my results:

Organization Set-Up 50%

User Setup 100%

Security and Access 62%

Standard and Custom Objects 87%

Sales and Marketing Applications 75%

Service and Support Applications 75%

Activity Management and Collaboration 0%

Data Management 50%

Analytics - Reports and Dashboards 83%

Workflow/Process Automation 80%

Desktop and Mobile Administration 100%

AppExchange 0%

Based off the above percentages, I likely got 43 out of 60 correct. You need 39 correct to get a passing score of 65%. I could have easily seen 5 questions not going my way. They were super tricky. For example, Ursla Solar wants a report that groups both opportunity stages and opportunity sources. What type of report do they want?


a. Tabular

b. Summary

c. Matrix

d. Joined


I know it has to be either Summary or Matrix because those both have grouped categories. I also know that a Matrix report has at least one row and one column grouped while Summary reports only group rows. But I'm not sure if the stages and sources, if grouped, come from the row or the column. So it might be a Summary report with two grouped rows or a Matrix report with one row and one column grouped. Since I didn't get 100% on the Reports section, I'm still not sure of the answer. The exam is full of questions like this. It's easy to get close, but not 100% without a relatively deep understanding of the software. Fortunately there is a lot of good study material out there. And you only need a 65% to pass.  

What I did not do:

Quizlets:

- Started to. But I did not trust them. 

Exam dumps:

- That felt like cheating.


Benefits From Certification

  • Knowledge is Power