The Salesforce associate certification is the newest certification released by salesforce! It is really exciting for a multitude of reasons.
One of the biggest reasons is that it bridges the gap between being brand new to salesforce and the administrator certification.
The beginners in salesforce can now prove their knowledge and get a foot in the door to the salesforce world!
This certification is a great one to first get started in salesforce before going on to the admin certification.
A quick plug for our course. We just released a course that covers the material you will be tested on during the associate exam.
You can check it out on udemy click here!
The Salesforce Associate Exam
Now let’s take a minute to talk about the exam itself!
On the exam, there are a total of 40 questions covering four different knowledge areas. The time allotted to complete the exam is 70 minutes.
This exam is shorter than the typical salesforce exam which is normally 60-65 questions and is 105 minutes long.
You will also see the structure of the questions be a little easier than in your typical salesforce exam. Most exams have a question with choose one out of four or choose two out of five.
The salesforce associate exam asks you to choose one out of three for each question!
Another great point of this exam is the price. It sits at $75 for your first try and is free for any subsequent attempts!
The Associate Exam Sections
Next, let’s talk about the sections that are covered on the exam.
First, you’ll see the sections ‘Salesforce Ecosytem’ at 32%. This section mainly covers the different clouds you’ll find on the salesforce platform, different roles you might see in working in salesforce, as well as how some companies may use salesforce!
The next section you will come across is ‘Navigation’ at 28%. This section deals with many of the tools and sections of salesforce and how to get to them. It will be common to see things like setup or personal settings mentioned in this section.
Third is the ‘Data Model’ section of the exam at 25% of the exam. This included multiple fascets of the security model as well as the data model. Personally, I believe that this section on the exam covers the widest array of topics.
Finally, the ‘Reports and Dashboards’ section at 15% of the exam. This covers most of the main topics in creating a report and dashboard, as well as some of the indepth tools you can use when creating reports and dashboards.
Studying for the Certification
So this certification requires very little studying to be able to pass.
Most certifications I have taken require a lot of studying and practice testing. However, this certification could be taken with around 7-10 hours of dedicated studying.
While it usually isn’t recommended that you take the exam the same day that you start studying for it. It is completely possible for this certification, to study for a day and take it that night.
While this certification doesn’t have too many study resources for obtaining it there are two I would love to mention.
This first is the trailmix from salesforce (click here) it provides a wide array of knowledge over the topics covered on the exam. Although I did find that it has a lot of fluff and missed a few topics that are tested.
Then, I want to mention our course that we released to help prepare for the certified associate exam. We created it because of the lack of resources for this exam as well as a lack of quality resources in preparing for this exam.
We noticed there wasn’t any resource out there that provided a no-nonsense, no-fluff look at the material covered on the exam.
If you would like to check out the course, I will link it here.
What this means to the community
Finally, I want to touch on what this certification means to the community.
This certification is new and also catters towards a need on the ecosystem that wasn’t previously thought about. It sits somewhere in between being brand new and getting to that first salesforce admin certification.
This means a few things.
One you can show that you have a basic understanding of salesforce. This is great if you are looking to have a salesforce adjacent career. This could be in testing, being a business analyst, or even a sales operations analyst.
Although, it isn’t known yet how this certification will do as far as helping you get a job.
Where as it can be easy to get a job in salesforce with an admin certification, it will be a little more difficult to get a job with just the associate certification.
Personally, I beleive this certification can help you get an admin adjacent job as well as serve as motiviation towards getting your admin certification!
Conclusion
A big congrats to you for making it through this post! We hope you found it useful!
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