The Salesforce Associate Certification is one of the newest Salesforce certs on the market! It is a fantastic beginner certification!
This certification is often known as the ‘super user’ certification where someone who understands the concepts test on, is someone who is pretty comfortable on the user end of salesforce.
Similarly, if you watch frequently watch youtube, you could label yourself as a ‘super user’ of youtube!
Personally, I got this certification pretty close to when it was released and I wanted to share my experience with those who are preparing to take it!
I will list out my experience and the resources that have really helped me to pass!
Feel free to save this post and bounce around to the different sections!
Youtube Video
Before we jump too far into the post I want to mention that there is a corresponding youtube video on the Salesforce Emily youtube channel.
I will embed that here but keep scrolling to get to the good stuff!
Overview of the Associate Certification
So let’s first start off by talking a little bit about the certification to get your feet wet!
Like I said earlier this is a beginner certification to salesforce and is for the ‘superuser’ archetype. This is great for someone who is looking into becoming a Salesforce admin in the future!
It gives you a chance to understand and show that you know the basics of salesforce before making a larger financial commitment to your studies.
Some quick stats on the Salesforce Associate Certification:
- $75 to take the exam; retakes are free
- online or in person proctoring
- 40 total questions
- Multiple Choice – choose 1 answer from 3
- 70 Minutes to complete
- Passing Score 62%
This exam covers a few different sections.
Salesforce Ecosystem 32%. This section covers a lot of the general salesforce community features. Things like how to use Trailhead, the different features of Trailhead, the basics of Customer 360, and the different jobs you can have in the salesforce ecosystem.
Navigation 28%. This section covers mostly what the different pieces of navigation are called and how to get around to each section. So things like the navigation bar, the app launcher, and the quick find.
Data Model 25%. This section covers the data model in general, nothing too deep in the weeds or complex! This will be things like objects, permissions sets, profiles, and record types.
Reports & Dashboards 15%. This section covers some of the basics when it comes to report types and dashboard components. In my opinion, this will be the most immediately beneficial section to you if you already use Salesforce in your daily job!
My Background When Taking the Associate Certification
One thing that I’ve always found beneficial when looking at these types of blog posts or youtube videos is understanding where the person giving the advice was at in their understanding when taking the exam.
A person with decades of work experience in the field will see this exam very differently from someone who is just at the beginning of their career!
This way you can understand where my advice is coming from and gauge where you are in comparison to my experience!
At the time of taking the exam, I had been working on the salesforce platform for 7ish years. The first 4 years of that experience was as a receptionist not really knowing what salesforce was or did.
The next 3 years were of either full-time or part-time salesforce admin work. Getting my hands in orgs every day.
Things other than experience that helped:
After studying the resources I had, I found this exam fairly easy to take. Although it wasn’t just my experience that I felt more equipped to take this exam.
Typically salesforce exams are 60-65 questions total and are a choose 1 out of 4 or 2 out of 5. So there were less questions and the structure of the questions was slightly easier than I was used to in an exam.
The structure of the questions also made it easier to both pick the correct answer or use the process of elimination to determine which answer I was going to pick.
Another piece of the puzzle on why I found it easier other than the experience was that this exam was a lot more vocabulary focused than it was on the intricacies of how certain features worked in VERY niche scenarios.
The admin and app builder exams, to me, were difficult because they asked some questions that were both extremely rare and specific to a quirk of a feature.
I was able to pass on the first try of the exam with about 30 minutes to spare. I did mark a few questions to come back to and was easily able to do that.
Finally, I took this exam and studied for it in my native language so that was not a contributing factor to the difficulty.
Resources I used for the Associate Certification
Next, let’s move onto the resources section! I will try and mark these as either free or paid resources.
Unfortunately, when I took this exam there weren’t too many resources out there to help in my preparation. So the few resources I used, while good, weren’t comprehensive and bounced topics a lot!
First I used the Exam Guide (free) to help me understand a little bit on the sections I would come across on the exam.
Then I moved over to the official trailmix (free) for the exam to understand a little more in-depth which topics would be covered on the exam.
Note: It took me only 2 days to get through this exam trailmix because I used the natural reader (I used the free option but they do have paid) chrome extension to read the modules to me and speed up the learning process.
Those were the resources I personally used to help me prepare! It took two maybe three days to prepare and pass with a close-to-perfect score.
Additional Resources for the Associate Certification
Now that some time has passed, more resources have been created to help you pass as quickly as possible!
First I have created a mini-course (free) on youtube that covers some of the main points that you should know when stepping into the exam. I’ve had multiple people pass with just this, but they do have some prior experience.
I also have created a full-length course (paid) that has a glossary, video lectures, and a practice exam. Everyone who has completed the course has passed on the first try!
If you need some extra practice exams Salesforce Ben (free) has some practice exams that would be worth checking out.
Also, another blogger has some practice exams and notes (both free) that are worth looking at in preparation for the Salesforce Associate Certification Exam!
My Thoughts on the Salesforce Associate Certification
Finally, there has been a lot of stir-up in the community over this exam and what it means for the greater salesforce community. A lot of professionals think this exam is too easy or is just crowding the certification arena.
Personally, I think this is a great certification and should be pursued if that is something that you want!
Because of the lower financial barrier to entry this is great for someone on a budget who wants or could use a slower ladder climb into the world of salesforce.
For example, if you are working a minimum-wage job you could work to get this certification to leverage yourself into an operations role. Making more money and able to get further certifications. Eventually working your way into whatever role you want, be that admin, developer, etc.
Will this certification land me a salesforce job?
I get this question a lot! And this answer is it depends…
Will this give you an admin job? Probably not. You may get lucky and be able to land a job with just this certification but usually employers are looking for those with the admin certification.
However, this certification could help you land a salesforce adjacent job. This is a job that is not directly doing admin stuff, but has admin functionalities in the job sometimes.
These admin-adjacent jobs are going to be jobs like IT support (where I got my salesforce start), sales operations, revenue operations, etc. If you are able to land a job like this then you can start claiming salesforce experience on your resume even if it’s not in the title.
Don’t be afraid to jump into one of these roles to eventually land yourself where you want to be. It’s a stepping stone and you’ll learn so much about the system, other systems, how users operate, and so much more!
You’ve got this! And happy learning!
Conclusion
A big congrats to you for making it through this blog post! We hope you found it useful!
Check out the Salesforce Emily youtube channel here.
You can read more about us here
And check out our courses here
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