Passing the Salesforce Certified Administrator Exam

Last week I passed the Salesforce Certified Administrator Exam and I thought I’d share with you what I did to pass on the first try quickly and without spending much money.

As my friend Troy said it is “an inch deep and a mile wide!” It is important to have basic comprehension of the vast possibility of the Salesforce Platform as it is nearly impossible to memorize everything that could be on the exam.

I’ve worked on the Salesforce platform for 2 years in a few capacities: part Admin, part Developer and part Partner (in the Salesforce Parter Program as a Software Vendor). I knew my way around Sales Cloud specifically but didn’t have comprehensive understanding of the platform before studying for the exam.

I studied for a total of 7 weeks. Around 3-4 hours/week for the first 6 weeks and really crammed the last week with practice exams and Trailhead.

1. First step is to create a Trailhead account if you haven’t already
2. Review the overview of Admin certification
3. Review the study guide and you’ll see that the exam is broken down by the following Section
   1. Standard & Custom Objects 15%
   2. Sales & Marketing Cloud 15%
   3. Security & Access 14%
   4. Service & Support Applications 12%
   5. Workflow/Process Automation 12%
   6. Analytics – Reports & Dashboards 10%
   7. Data Management 8%
   8. User Setup 6%
   9. Organization Setup 3%
   10. Activity Management and Collaboration 3%
   11. Desktop & Mobile Applications 1%
   12. AppExchange 1%
4. I started by working on the Trailmix that relates to Admin Certification and took extensive notes along the way for each module. I ended up doing about 40% of this Trailmix based on areas where I needed more focus
5. I also signed for Salesforce Certification Day free training for the Admin exam taught by Eileen Kingsley-Hamm which helped SO MUCH! To find out when the next Certification Days occurs you’ll need to join the Certification Days Group on Success Communities (which requires a different account than Trailhead) After taking a Certification Day training you are also allowed to buy Exam Vouchers for $130 each instead of the standard $200 price.
6. I signed up for the excellent practice exams provided by FocusonForce.com. It’s only $19 for 6 practice exams as well as Topic exams based on the section breakouts listed above.
7. I took the first practice exam cold with very little studying and just barely missed passing. I only had a week before the exam so I decided to be more focused in my studying by accessing the areas I needed the most attention by following this process:
   1. Take the FocusonForce Topic Exam for each Section listed above, I started with the highest % sections and worked my way to the lowest
   2. Review the exam and take notes for every question missed
   3. Create more detailed notes based on the missed questions and go back to the Trailhead Trailmix for further training
8. I created my own Study Guide (30+ pages) combining all my notes from the Topic Exams, Trailhead Trailmix notes, and Eileen’s Certification Day teaching notes/slides.
9. After taking all the Topic Exams I started on the actual Practice Exams which I treated like the actual timed exam, giving myself the 105 minutes to finish
10. I would take each practice exam, review missed questions, supplement any misunderstandings with Trailhead Trailmix and help articles, and add additional notes to my study guide. I repeated this process for 4 practice exams until I was passing around 80% for each exam giving me the confidence to pass!