Agentforce Specialist

Salesforce is one of the fastest growing and most in-demand skills in IT right now, and to add that knowledge to your resume can have a payoff almost immediately. The Salesforce ecosystem extends far past its original cloud-based CRM platform, so Salesforce technical skills prove extremely useful and necessary in a wide range of areas, from system administrators, to product managers, developers, integration architects and beyond.

Becoming Salesforce Certified is not only a highly effective way to prove your skills are current and at the expected baseline level but more often than not a prerequisite for companies who seek Salesforce experts. Most Salesforce-related jobs will require a minimum of one certification, and the entry-level – but no less challenging – is the Salesforce Certified Administrator certification.

One thing I hear a lot from people with multiple Salesforce certifications is that passing the Certified Administrator exam was one of the hardest. Why? Well, because it’s the first one and the material covered is very comprehensive. So although this is a prerequisite exam to several other certification paths, it’s not one you can simply show up and take the test without preparation, even if you’ve worked with Salesforce for years.
Don’t let the difficulty level of the test put you off, though. The good news is that it doesn’t matter whether you’re already an experienced system administrator who wants to take the next step and get certified, or if you come from a completely different background and decided to learn a new set of skills from scratch. Getting that first certification can be achieved in a few months, even if this is the first time you’re reading the word “Salesforce”. You just need to devise a plan, prepare and practice.
I passed the Salesforce Certified Administrator exam exactly 3 months after I started studying for it. Before that, my Salesforce knowledge was very limited, to say the least. But with that goal in mind, I also wanted to pass the first time I took the test. Ambitious? Maybe, but very feasible as I later found out.

I found practicing my test-taking technique to be just as important as learning the contents of the exam. Understanding the format of this test will help you structure the way you study for it.

• There are 60 multiple-choice questions and 105 minutes to complete.
• 65% is the passing score, which means you need 39 correct answers.
• You may take the test at a test center, or remotely on your own computer. The second option is monitored through a webcam and you must submit your biometrics and follow strict guidelines beforehand, but may be worth it if you don’t have a test center near you or need more flexibility in terms of scheduling. You can find the information about scheduling your exam and the guidelines here.
• The fee to take the test is $200 and the retake fee is $100.
• Every question is worth 1 mark on the test. Some questions will ask you to pick more than one correct answer but you either get the whole point or nothing. There’s no partial marks for a multi-select question.
• The questions on the exam are scenario-based. Some questions are longer than others.
• You can mark questions for review on your screen during the test, and that’s a tool I highly recommend using so you can maximize your efficiency during the test.
• When taking the test, if you know the answer to a question right away, don’t dwell on it or second-guess yourself. Pick your answer and move on. Likewise, if you don’t know the answer, mark for review and come back to it later so you have time to answer the ones you know.
• Use all the allotted time given on the test and read each question carefully, while always being mindful of the clock. I recommend spending 80 minutes on the 60 questions, allowing yourself the remaining 25 minutes for questions marked for review. So if you see yourself spending over 1 minute per question, it may be time to move quicker.
• Some of the multiple choice options will have made-up names for things such as a “List” Report Format which doesn’t exist or is not one of the report formats in
• Salesforce. You can eliminate those options easily right off the bat.
• None of the exams are open book so you may not bring any notes, hard copy material or take notes with you during the exam.