When it comes to Salesforce certification exams, one word that you need to save in your mind is Trailhead. This term will revolve around you, not just revolve around it will be one the most beneficial and crucial things for your preparation for the Salesforce Administrator exam. Without making it sound more confusing, Trailhead is a free online learning platform from Salesforce that is the key to your Salesforce employment chances, enables you to strengthen your CV with the most in-demand skills, and helps you connect with Trailblazers from all around the world who can mentor you and expand your network to advance your career.
Talking about the Salesforce administrator, this can be your entry point to get into the world of Salesforce as it worked for me so it will definitely work for you. But, in order to get salesforce certification success, you need a high level of achieving goal determination, understanding where to begin, ways that you can use to prepare, knowing your time commitment, being confident that you will ace the exam, and always keep looking for resources.
Further, the Salesforce Administrator exam will verify your understanding of utilizing the CRM platform, working with stakeholders to establish system requirements and modifying the software for an organization, executing other administrative tasks, or simplifying a business’s usage of the Salesforce platform.
Let’s learn more about our Salesforce expert, Simone Trenta.
About Simone Trenta: Salesforce Certified Expert
Simone Trenta is a professional holder of five Salesforce Certifications and has 7+ years of experience working in the IT sector in various areas. His journey started as a graduate holding a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and Technology (2014-2018) from Sapienza University of Rome. During his graduation time, he worked as a Bibliotecario (Librarian) at the Sapienza University of Rome, giving a flag off for becoming a professional.
After graduating, he joined Qmatic (a global customer management solution provider company) as a Software Developer. Then, after 8 months of delivering success at Qmatic, Simone Trenta entered one of the top organizations in the world, Deloitte Digital as an IT Analyst. After giving his perfection in the information technology areas for 2 years, he got promoted to a full-time consultant in the company.
With gaining success in the job sector, side by side Simone Trenta also focused on earning the valuable Salesforce certification. And, with his dedication and commitment, he turned his knowledge into passion, as a result, named five salesforce certifications to himself which include:
- Salesforce Certified Platform Developer II
- Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder
- Salesforce Certified Javascript Developer I
- Salesforce Certified Administrator
- Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I
According to Simone Trenta, programming is the skill of using knowledge and imagination in the ideal proportions to create something that was previously just in your head by representing reality in a logical model.
To understand more about Simone Trenta's Salesforce journey and experience you can connect with him on LinkedIn.
A Meaningful Career Journey Discussion with Simone Trenta:
Ques. What was your first job?
Answer. My first job was an internship during my university career.
I was involved in web development for a small company, I didn’t have big responsibilities but I was able to learn a lot.
Ques. How will you describe your journey to becoming a successful Cloud professional?
Answer. I started working with the Cloud with my second and current job. The tool with which I mainly interfaced is Salesforce, to be able to conceive and propose solutions I had to thoroughly study everything that the cloud and in particular Salesforce have to offer to customers in the digital world. My study was guided by: courses, certifications, project analysis, and a lot of practice.
Ques. When did you decide to get into the field of Cloud Computing?
Answer. Working in cloud computing was not my choice initially. I found myself working on this type of technology because I was assigned to this role when I was hired by my company.
However, I was immediately fascinated by the potential that the cloud offers compared to other types of architectures and after 4 years I can say I am happy to have had the opportunity to explore this topic further.
Ques. Can you please walk us through your certification journey?
Answer. My certification journey began with the Admin and Developer I certifications. These are the two “bases” for having an overview of Salesforce and its tools. In fact, they allowed me to explore both the custom and standard parts. Mine has always been more of a developer profile than a configurator, which is why I decided to explore the customizable part of salesforce and continued my journey with 3 other certifications aimed at development: App Builder, Javascript I, and Developer II.
Ques. Do you think Cloud computing is the future?
Answer. I strongly believe that the cloud is the future and proof of this is the fact that many companies in the world of information technology and services are relying on cloud services and are abandoning more traditional approaches.
The real power of Cloud Computing lies in the fact that it allows you to process increasingly complex service delivery flows while keeping the infrastructure management complexity transparent. Virtualizing is the key.
Ques. What skill or technology are you currently learning in this field?
Answer. Right now I’m trying to expand my knowledge in the field of API integrations.
Working with Salesforce helped me understand how important it is to be able to integrate various systems with each other and one of the advantages of Salesforce is that it integrates easily into different software ecosystems.
Ques. What is the one quotation you live by in your life?
Answer. There is a thought that guides me in my working life and not and it is described very well in a phrase from Mother Teresa of Calcutta: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
The meaning for me is that the value of the things we do, whether they are many, few, large works, or small gestures, is measured on the basis of how much passion we put into it.
Ques. How did you prepare for the Salesforce Certified Administrator Exam?
Answer. I think the best way to prepare for a Salesforce certification is to go to the learning platform Trailhead.Salesforce.com and follow the proposed learning paths.
In particular, to prepare for the Admin certification exam, I did these three things:
- I have completed the Trailmix: Prepare for Your Salesforce Administrator Credential. This Learning Path has an estimated duration of around 60 hours but here you can learn everything you need to pass the exam. There are modules with quizzes and practice exercises, tasks, projects, and guides to study.
- Another suggested learning path that I completed is this: Study for the Administrator Certification Exam. It is very short, you can complete it in a couple of hours, and it helps you understand the exam structure, what topics to study, and the specific module in which to study for each one. If you have completed the Trailmix first you should already be prepared on all topics, so this path helps you to check if there are topics that you have skipped or not studied in depth. Furthermore, each topic has a different weight in the exam, so for some topics, there will be many more questions than for others and this section shows the weight of each one, so you can understand which topics to focus on.
- Last but not least, I did several exam simulations. You can also find these on the Trailhead platform, “Interactive Practice Test for the Salesforce Certified Administrator Exam” is the path you can find it. Here you can test your knowledge by answering questions similar to those you will find in the exam. You can simulate in time or not, and at the end of the simulation, you can see the result. For each wrong question, you will be suggested the module to study to fill your gaps on that topic.
Ques. How difficult is the Salesforce Certified Administrator Exam?
Answer. The Admin Certification is one of the simplest you can take, it is also considered basic to start any salesforce study path.
Whether is your job role, developer, architect, or salesforce administrator, this certification will be one of the first you’ll try to take.
The topics covered are not particularly complex and the study of Trailhead should be more than enough to prepare you properly for the exam. Sure having some experience working on Salesforce can be helpful, if you don’t have any, it could be more complicated. Salesforce recommends at least 6 months of experience on the platform before taking the exam, I personally had been working for a couple of months when I got certified, and I think that good study preparation, is enough.
Ques. Is the Microsoft Salesforce Certified Administrator exam worth it?
Answer. The admin certification is very useful because it helps you understand if your knowledge of the basic salesforce tools is really strong.
It is also essential if you want to take other more complex certifications such as Advanced Administrator, App Builder, etc.
For my work as a Salesforce developer, I use the skills I acquired while preparing for this exam on a daily basis, and it is important for me to have a certificate to confirm this.
