11 Tips for Your Salesforce Architect Certifications

What brings you here?

Chances are that you are reading this article because you fall into one of these categories:

• You haven’t taken tests in a while and are overwhelmed at the prospect of taking a dozen or so Salesforce certification exams.
• Your manager is on your tail as you have fallen behind on an agreed-upon schedule to clear certifications by a specific date.
• You are stuck on a certification, having failed it multiple times, and are low on confidence. You are put-off with taking exams and need help.

I went through all of the above during my fourteen-month-long journey at Salesforce to get certified as an Application Architect and then as a System Architect. As part of my preparation, I spent a lot of time reading and building practical experience to grasp the material at the level needed to perform well on the exam. The journey, however, does not have to be grueling and frustrating. I was able to make mine fairly interesting and stimulating. In this post, I share a few (OK, eleven) exam-taking strategies that worked really well for me.

Common misconceptions

Before jumping into the strategies, I want to take a moment to dispel some common misconceptions:

• Many first-time exam takers think that their results will be broadcast to the world and failure is not an option. The truth is that you can take a Salesforce exam multiple times. It’s OK to fail. No one besides you will ever know how many attempts it took to clear a particular certification. With each attempt, you’ll learn more and will be better prepared to work with clients. Learning of your shortcomings during test-taking (and resolving them) is a far better alternative to making mistakes on the job.
• Many people also think that rescheduling an exam is costly and that they’ll have to pay twice. You’ll be happy to know that there is no financial penalty for rescheduling an exam. During the pandemic, the rules have been relaxed.
• There’s a common misconception that taking the exams online is arduous, with proctors constantly interrupting to ask you to adjust the camera angles so they can see everything you’re doing. That may have been true at one time but online exam proctoring rules have been relaxed making it more convenient. For example, you no longer need a separate webcam device. The built-in camera of your laptop is good enough for the proctor to observe your work. I love the new process, so much so that I will never use the in-person examination setup as my first option.

In many ways, taking a certification exam is as much art as science. You have to know just enough about a lot of topics, but you do not need to be an expert on all of them. Having a personal or societal expectation of consistently passing the certifications can take its toll and be a huge mental block. I’m much stronger now after having gone through this rigorous process. Looking back, I think differently. With that, here’s what I have learned on my journey.

1. Salesforce exams teach you important life skills

Regardless of your testing outcome, every new thing you learn will make you more marketable than before.

• Preparing for a Salesforce Certification exam is a bit like a technical consultation gig with a client. Lots of information and problems are thrown at you in a very short time. You are expected to quickly assess those problems and propose pragmatic solutions. You don’t have time to learn it all. You focus on the most important parts and work backward from the deadline.
• See it as a game with a set of well-documented rules. What you bring is technical knowledge, tenacity, sustained mental effort, a can-do attitude, and positive thinking.
• This journey will test your core. It’s a test of your methodical thinking. It’s about being gutsy, taking chances, hustling, playing mind games with yourself. It can even be entertainment if you want to think of it as such.

The process can be an unpleasant experience if you:

• Perceive it as a zero-sum game, like a win/lose encounter
• Overthink the responses, believing the examiner is attempting to outsmart you with curveball questions
• Think that only a certain percentage of people can clear the test at any given time
• Neglect to sleep or eat well in the days leading to the test due to the stress looming over your head

Instead of getting into analysis-paralysis of going super deep into one subject, getting overwhelmed, failing, or giving up, just keep moving forward at a good pace every day.

2. Avoid long gaps between certifications

There are two good reasons to avoid lengthy gaps between your certifications:

• The technology is mature and elaborate. As a result, there is a lot to read and absorb. Sometimes it’s hard to remember the concepts past a few days, without ready access to the online documentation. Take some time to review the exam retake policies.
• Some of us (myself included) are petrified of appearing for written exams. I am also quite competitive and I don’t take losing very well. The greater the gap after a loss, the more I sulk. So my strategy was to get them done as quickly as I could. As a side benefit, I was learning many practical concepts in preparing for the exams that were directly relevant to my job.

3. Make a plan and work backward

I signed up, pre-paid for seven certifications all at once. I planned the study time according to my anticipated workload in the coming months. I had a buffer planned in case I had to retake any of the exams. My plan was either to adjust the next one’s dates or double my efforts in the coming days and retake the exam within a few days. But if I failed two attempts, I’d punt and only come back to retake the test in the end. Two weeks working two hours each weekday and six to eight hours each weekend is approximately how long I took to study for each certification. That does not include the study work for the Platform Developer I certification, which is considerably more difficult. For that exam, I took an entire week off from work and studied for nine straight days.

4. Practice deliberate, active reading

The certifications material is not rocket science to crack. Salesforce certification authors want more hardworking and deserving candidates to clear the exam, and to be valued part of the growing Salesforce ecosystem. You need to believe that. All the material needed to know a topic is provided upfront in the certification Trailmixes. Practice active reading of the study material. Every 20–30 minutes, take a break, and proactively think about what questions a client would ask that would involve what you just read. Look for what could be an exam trap, and you’ll see the writing on the wall many times.

5. Peer pressure is your friend

Establish a timeline, and let everybody who matters to your success know of it. Plan confidence-building milestones as part of the learning. Schedule an educational lunch-and-learn session on the certification topic with your manager, or the larger project team. At Salesforce we believe in the community service element of our job. Write your strategy and your progress in a shared document. From my experience, I had difficulties with the Sharing and Visibility Designer certification. As I struggled week after week to give the reading any meaningful time, I chronicled my struggles in a document that was shared with a mentor, who then proactively put 45-mins on my calendar. He shared his knowledge and patiently answered all my questions. Armed with that confidence I passed the certification in two weeks.

6. Gauge progress often by attempting practice exams

The material provided in Trailhead modules can take a long time to read and grasp. I tended to zone out quite often. So my strategy was to spend three days or so skimming through the study material and then start taking practice tests. I used the practice tests on FocusOnForce.com. If that strategy is workable for you, start with making a commitment to yourself to not get stuck with trying to understand each and every detail about a topic. Do a quick read of the material, and avoid going down tangents or related threads in the support documentation. With Focus on Force, for example, you can take a test after every topic you finish. Plan to work in two-hour sessions and have a clear goal in the end to ace an exam topic. Get to a point with methodical planning where you are confident of all topic dimensions of the test.

7. Stick to one study source

You can find a ton of content and test quizlets online. The problem is they aren’t comprehensive or credible with their answers. That can be a waste of time unless you have the time to validate their answers in the help and training sections of the Salesforce documentation. I used Focus On Force for all of my tests, as they have earned the credibility of the community. I find their content too deep in some study areas, but they balance knowledge and test-taking strategies well. Your other source could be the Salesforce prescribed Trailmixes but those are long and I often found myself losing focus. To get further challenged, I would drill into the support documentation links especially when the Focus on Force study material guided me to specific topics.

8. Your diet and sleep matter

Put in the effort to eliminate your bad habits, if only for a bit. Check out this article I wrote during my stressful study period on how I changed my habits. Salesforce test-taking isn’t anything like taking college classes where I studied long hours, barely sleeping in the days leading to the tests. Certification testing is about smart work and agile thinking, which comes with good sleep and diet. During my three months of binge testing, I significantly reduced my alcohol consumption, increased protein in my diet, and reduced my carbs (and yes we Indians love our roti and naan). I also added an extra hour to my sleep, while going to bed and waking up at the same time every day.

9. Take the exam early in the day

I took exams early in the day because that’s when it was quiet in the house and I had my best focus even if I had slept little the night before. There were days I took the exam in the afternoon and once in the evening. I failed some, finding it difficult to maximize clear thinking later in the day. Also, I was doing these while on a client assignment so early mornings were easiest to block off on my calendar. Once I took an exam at 4 a.m. because that was the first open slot available, but most exams I took at 6 a.m.

10. Use a standing desk

It may just be me being quirky, but whenever I need to do a time-sensitive project that needs my full attention I move using my standing desk. It keeps me agile and it facilitates the best posture while studying or taking the exams. The equipment I invested in included:

• Adjustable sit to stand-up computer desk
• Monitor desk mount
• Adjustable height standing stool

11. Watch certification videos to better set the context

Some of us learn better by starting with videos and then referencing the written material to cement the concepts. Try understanding the high-level concepts of a topic with tutorials before you hit the study guides. This helps build interest in the subject in an easy way. I used to make this a lullaby for my sleep. I recommend the following YouTube channels:

1. Ladies Be Architects. This channel includes videos on the experience and what to expect for all advanced certifications.
2. Salesforce Hulk. This channel has good, short videos by Shrey Sharma.

Conclusion

There are many different journeys to becoming a certified Salesforce Architect, and with the right planning, your journey can be fun and stimulating. The learning experiences were life-changing for me and opened several new opportunities for me. My journey made me mentally, emotionally, and even physically stronger. I hope you have a similar experience in your quest.

About the Author

Harpal Kochar is a Sr. Program Architect, part of the Customer Success Advisory services team at Salesforce. You can connect with him over LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/harpalkochar. Harpal works with leading healthcare companies on their business transformation initiatives. He has over 20 years of technical and sales consulting experience under his belt. Harpal routinely mentors newer Salesforce architects, business analysts, and citizen developers on planning and making prudent design decisions. You can read more about it from his personal website.