I Failed a Cert Exam … Again!!!
My Personal Learning from Failing Multiple Salesforce Cert Exams
This past Monday I sat my Platform App Builder exam … I decided to take this exam after passing my Admin 201 exam in June. In my first attempt in taking the exam I failed … this was also the case for Admin as I failed that on the first attempt as well. The thing I found interesting was that in both cases, I was only 2% away from passing the exam. Now, I’m not an expert in the exams at all, but coming that close to passing suggests to me that I was one or two questions away from a pass, it’s even plausible in my head that I simply got some of the multi-select options wrong in those kinds of questions.
Now, I don’t want to make excuses for myself, I didn’t pass the exam after all. However, there are a couple of things I’m learning after failing both certs on the first try. I say that because I’m relatively confident that with coming that close to passing that the next time I take the time exam I will indeed pass it.
So, for this post what I want to do is share those things that are brewing around my head right now (as I’m actually drafting it one the same day that I sat the exam). As usual, I’m not saying that I’m correct here, nor am I saying this is the case for everyone. These are just the thoughts that are going around in my head at the time of writing. So feel free to agree or disagree with me. We’re all entitled to our opinions, and honestly, I’d love to hear yours.
So, here are my learning’s from failing both cert exams on the first go-around:
1: Coming So Close Is Not That Much of a Failure
OK, so let’s just get this one out of the way extremely quickly. This point here I believe is valid for sure, however, I also understand that this point also can easily sound like (or even become) an excuse if my attitude isn’t kept in check. So as I mentioned at the beginning of my post, for both this exam and the 201 Admin exam, when I put my scores through a score checker I saw that I was 2% away from passing on both of my first tries. Coming so close to a pass is as close to a pass as your going to get without actually passing, well technically 1% would be as close as you can get, but 2% away from the passing grade is nothing to be upset about. Reflecting honestly, in both of the exams I failed there were a number of questions about things I don’t do in Salesforce due to my role, and some of the things in there had not come up in my practices using the FocusonForce practice exams for that cert. So with those two caveats in mind, it’s completely OK in my mind to not beat myself up for not passing these certs on the first go-around. However, what would not be OK is to not pay attention to the areas that I didn’t do so well in and put in some extra study into those areas. But that’s a point for a little later on in this post.
2: Failing Gives More Opportunities To Learn
In both of my instances of failure with cert exams, the reality is that I didn’t pass those exams, and while like I say coming so close to passing is nothing to be ashamed of, the truth is that in a cert exam there is only a pass and a fail, and I failed. The positive to take away from failing, is that Salesforce always send you an email with your scores for each section. So what you can do to help you pass the next cert is to work on those areas you didn’t do so well in. Put in some extra time studying those sections, and get yourself as prepared as you can for the next time you take the cert. I have seen on occasion times where people have opted not to something try again after failing. In my view this can be a bit of a defeatist mindset, failure is honestly just a part of life. What makes the real difference in this area of life is the mentality of trying again when at first you don’t succeed … I think there’s a cliche about that.
One quote I came across which I thought was really on this point comes from Denis Waitley … check out what he said.
“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end.”
We can all be afraid to fail, but the truth of failure is that it gives an further opportunity to grow. This is true of any area in life, however, here in regards to an exam, failure gives you the opportunity to review where your weaknesses are, and to then turn them into strengths. Here with a Salesforce cert exam, the beauty is you can easily look at the scores you got in each area of the exam, put some extra study time into them and then pass next time.
3: Everybody Passing Exams Is an Unhelpful Myth
All the time on LinkedIn and Twitter we see posts of people passing their exams, and it’s great to celebrate the community and the achievement of the Trailblazers in it for sure. However, on the other side of the coin, these tend to be the only stories we see, we don’t see anywhere near as many stories from those who have failed their cert exams. This abundance of pass stories on Social Media can very easily lead to people questioning their abilities, and their place in the community, possibly leading to bouts of imposter syndrome. After all, if I’m the only one who fails an exam, maybe I’m not good enough to be a Salesforce professional, maybe I’m just a fraud and don’t fit the bill. The truth is, the kinds of questions I’ve just asked are not good questions to ask at all, but people in the community do ask them, I’ve seen it before and I really don’t like seeing it. In my opinion, failing an exam doesn’t make you any less valuable as a Salesforce professional, all it means is that you didn’t pass the exam, and bear in mind that in the exam you’re trying to provide the best answers according to Salesforce, you might actually do things in a slightly different way, and sometimes that’s actually OK.
I honestly think we need to see more of the fail stories out on social media. The reason I think this is because it can serve as an encouragement to those who are in that same boat. We also need to be able to say that it is OK to fail, while also saying what isn’t OK is to let that failure become you. I’ve already said it, but everybody fails at times. Many people actually sit their exam 2, 3, 4 even 5 times (sometimes more) before they eventually pass the exam. So it’s OK to fail, but don’t hold on that and allow it to prevent you from trying again. The only time you truly fail, is when you give in and give up.
Closing Remarks
So that’s my thoughts on what I’m learning through failing my two cert exams on the first go-around. I’d love to hear your views on the topic though. Do you think I’m wrong here? Do you think there’s something that I missed. I did note it at the beginning of this post, but this is based on my experiences, so this is the conclusions I’m forming based on that. I don’t have any data on how many people fail their exams on the first try or what the average score is for those people. Basically, I have no data to back up what I’m saying here in this post.
But what do you think? I’d love to hear what you think about this in the responses here or on social media where I share this post.
