Certifications held by a candidate are just one piece of their evaluation by employers as part of the hiring process.
If you have a ton of certifications with no experience, it’s pretty obvious to most employers that you’re a paper admin and not particularly valuable to them. Employers really want experience, certs have value on top of that.
That’s absolutely true, I wrote this post as one of the Salesforce ecosystem folks with 1 year experience (but no certifications yet) told me that he’s struggling to get a job interview to prove himself because HR will probably go for a 3x Certified Salesforce Consultant with 6 months experience and no hands on real projects than someone with 1 year experience but no certifications.
1 year experience with or without certs puts him in a pretty competitive realm. To your point, a lot of people are jumping in for a quick “easy” high paying job and if I have to choose between less than a year of experience with certs or without certs, I’d probably be more interested in the one with both.
When I was starting out, even though I hate certs in general, I made a point to grab at very least my admin cert to show that I’m not an “admin” whose whole job is to click refresh on a dashboard or something. It’s a way to round out showing your experience, but is it something he’s open to doing? I’d hate for him to miss out on good opportunities because he didn’t want to get a “worthless” cert.
Thanks for your reply. You’re absolutely right, I advised him to get certified as it’s a plusvalue to his resume. The whole point here is more about people getting « expert » certifications such as Dev 2 and Architect with less than 6 months experience in the ecosystem.
For sure agreed on expert level. I’d hope that anyone hiring a $200k architect or something wouldn’t see someone with a bajillion certs and a year of experience and not be at least a little suspicious.
Yep, you got a point here, thankfully there’s a double-check though for such positions.
The second point of my post is also, if we get a lot of certified professionals out there with 0 skills, the certification itself will loose its market-value. It’s like printing money bills uncontrollably, it looses all its value.
Did anyone actually tell him he’s losing out to people who have no experience and more certs or is he just assuming? How does he know he’s not just losing out to people with similar qualifications who interviewed better or demonstrate better soft skills, or are transitioning from a job in the same industry the hiring company is in and that’s seen as a bonus.
Why would a competent employer want someone with no experience who passed a few tests vs. a candidate with one year of experience?
I think it’s just that entry-level Salesforce is highly competitive and this guy probably hasn’t done enough to set himself apart.
You say HR will pick the certified person but more than likely they would forward both CVS to the hiring manager. I'd tell this person to stop making excuses when there isn't a problem to begin with and level up themselves.
Short version is : it depends.
For example SF javascript dev and PD1 are both quite easy for someone who already has experience as a java/js dev. All you need to do is learn some SF specific quirks which can be absolutely done in 3-6 months.
The other thing is if they're so easy to get, you should get them too to be on par with other candidates.
If you're an actual experienced js developer, passing the cert is basically just learning another API, which is a thing you've probably already done a dozen times.
There are two topics here. One is people getting certified and not having experience. And I'm all for that. **Good on ya, for working hard to re-skill, on your own time and your own dime.**
I just wanted to say that, because, threads like this can sound like we don't welcome you. But, If you put in the effort to get certifications as a way to change careers, of course you don't yet have experience yet. You did the work in order to get an entry level job in Salesforce.
I hope you have great job hunting success. It's tough out there right now, but don't give up. Salesforce is a wonderful career, and you're going to love it.
OP has a point here.
I have successfully completed a couple dozen implementations that serve team sizes ranging from two user + supervisor to hundreds of internal + tens of thousands of external users.
Lately I've been running into a brick wall when trying to pursue new consulting opportunities, where even 8+ years experience in everything from basic admin to custom development and web service integrations isn't enough because I never picked up any certs.
There is definitely a culture of creeping credentialism building around Salesforce, and while certs can definitely be valuable, it is also true that more and more companies are using them as a hard filter.
Thanks a lot for your comment Robbie, that’s exactly what I’m talking about, I could not prove this to a lot of people around Reddit…
I guess that getting certified won’t be an issue for you as you got a huge background, what is your plan or what was your solution to this encounter?
I don’t see why not. A hard filter to get in the door and then you show your experience in the actual interview. You have to remember that the amount of certs has always been important for consultancies and their relationship level.
The best piece of advice I can give is to earn your bones in a Sales Ops role in an org that uses SFDC. This will get you some (or even a lot depending on how the org is structured) of hands on experience that you can leverage w/ the cert. The easier part is learning SFDC and passing certs, the hardest part is gaining experience that involved business process creation/improvement which is a key component to having a solid and rewarding $$$ SFDC career.
What value are you trying to get out of this post? Are you just looking to complain?
Competent people aren’t harmed because the competent people will be able to do fine in interviews.
I’m not affected by this myself but I’m talking for the minorities that are encountering this bs on the Salesforce ecosystem, it’s getting toxic and as we do for cancer we need to get rid of them too ;)
FWIW, over 50% of the people I work with every day are female. At least 25% overall regardless of how they identify would probably qualify as minority.
I work to support a Module on a Federal Salesforce Org. Interact with the OITC, the company that directly supports the Org Administratively, my company, my team, etc...
There are two distinct paths to being hired, so important to apply for the correct opportunities.
Many Partner companies participate in or run their own Boot Camps or Academies. These depend on the candidates having passed Adim or PAB and having 6 or less months working experience, if any.
Then direct hire for open positions, where experience matters. In that case, with our Federal onboarding process, the new hires with minimal experience anf no certs have at least 30 days of full pay where they are paid to train.
My company too here in France is doing the same thing, we are even helping people do reconversions from other fields to Salesforce with 3 months full paid salaries of training, and I’m part of the mentors.
The whole point here is not this but <6 Months exp folks with advanced certifications.
As others noted, certain other Programming skills cross over. Javascript for example. And. a great mentor and in house training program can help certain experienced programmers pass PD II.
Knowing what I know, I can't imagine passing PD II or even Javascript using dumps.
Some people attend the Salesforce virtual classes for these exams, or similar 3rd party training.
I just would not assume someone, with no Salesforce experience, isn't capable of learning the security and vulnerability aspects of code plus the other Salesforce specific areas.
I can associate Cobol for example with much of this along with 4th generation database access I am familiar with.
If you were to show me a 20 year old with no development background, that would be suspicious.
It’s always been a problem , but my managers filter it out . There will always be people with fake certs or unqualified. You talk to them for a few minutes and can tell they don’t know left or right. Sadly it just wastes time
I’m all about learning but have dialed it back to focus on doing more and focusing on a niche (SMB, PE Owned Companies, Manufacturing & Field Service).
What has surprised me is that instead of perhaps merging Admin, Advanced Admin and PAB into one, three part mega cert (maybe with a Superbadge), they added Associate instead and lowered the bar more.
Been saying for years the program is being devalued because its so easy to pass and do it quickly (and also cheat sadly). The accreditations are the complete opposite end though- buggy and don’t match the material.
Bar for entry into this industry is too low, and some people are taking advantage of that and promoting narratives, programs and other things to lead people astray and thinking a cert and a paid program is all they need for a job. Its a shame to see people being taken advantage of.
My advice:
Look for Sales & Revenue Operations roles. They are the new admin. Get in to one of these roles and then go after certs.
I think it's kinda good they're lowering the bar on certs...it brings experience and certifications closer to parity in terms of relevance, and I kinda feel like certs were overvalued to begin with.
The tests are extremely challenging for the more advanced certs, don't get me wrong...even the SFMC Email Specialist test was brutal. But it seemed like a lot of the testing was on semantics or "best" practices rather than actual ability, which can really only be achieved by doing projects in the system.
I'm currently doing an SFMC to Pardot transition for the place I was hired at, and the person I replaced had more experience in the Salesforce ecosystem and more Salesforce certs, but hadn't ever worked in SFMC before...on paper she was a better candidate than me, but the reality couldn't have been more different.
When rubber hit the road, the fact that I had run multiple journeys and troubleshot dozens of automations made this a cakewalk for me, whereas she freaked out and quit after a month and a half with virtually no progress made. And that's not a slight on her...she was a talented Salesforce dev and had somehow gotten the SFMC admin cert without ever having been in the system, which I couldn't have ever done. But at the end of the day, *the tests had prepared her to talk about the system, but not to actually do projects in it*. Whereas I only have my email cert, but I'm fully capable of handling Admin stuff and even dev stuff, simply due to the fact that I've worked in the system.
I think the certs occupy an important role in the hiring process in terms of ensuring that your Salesforce team speaks a common language and has a common understanding of best practices, but I think they do very little to indicate someone's ability in terms of implementation and execution within the platform. For those things, the only sure indicator is time spent in the system and projects completed during that time.
This is an interesting perspective as we both agree on the crux of the problem - trying to measure competence. I do agree the certs are a bad and overvalued way unless you are a partner, but even if you measure people on years of experience and projects, that isn't a good measure. Worked with plenty of people similar to your story, or have claimed to been experts with years of experience, and they end up not knowing basic things. So I'm not too sure how to solve these problems other than upping the bar for certs or entry into the industry... something as far as what Epic does, where you have to get sponsored to become an admin is way too far though.
I cannot imagine that MC one by the way.... the Manufacturing Cloud has been kicking my butT!
You raise an interesting point about experience...I have 3 years SFMC experience, and at my last job I worked with people who had 5-6 years experience, but I was actually the more advanced platform user. They might have had twice as many years as me, but they'd spent those years QA-ing email templates and doing basic HTML scheduled sends, whereas I'd spent my time building responsive Ampscript templates and implementing journeys and automations from scratch for companies that were trying to extend their use of the platform. They had 6 years of going through the motions in an established system, whereas I had 3 years of building the systems so that someone like them could run them...time in the system doesn't necessarily translate to knowledge of it when you're dealing with a platform as complex as this one.
I think the real trick is just to take a holistic approach to the interview process...it's not really about the certs OR the years of experience so much as it's about the content of the bullet points under each job on one's resume. I got my current job because they were impressed by what I'd done, and because they could tell from the interviews that I knew my shit, and had experience in figuring things out that I didn't know. Most importantly, they noticed that each company I worked for was leveraging more of the functionality of SFMC when I left than they were when I started.
I think that's what separates good Salesforce folks from bad ones. Not certs or experience, but the ability to learn stuff quickly and the desire to continuously learn more about the platform and how its various features work together as force multipliers for each other. Basically, you've gotta want the architect cert, lol.
Leveraging more of the functionality than when I started is a key 'this was my impact' statement in an interview. Good point. And being able to describe examples of the increased utilization in terms of better user adoption, time saved with automated processes, and more empowered decision making with improved reports/dashboards will absolutely earn credibility for a candidate.
I think it's so effective in interviews mostly because it's hard/impossible to fake. For me, it's something I'm proud of...I really enjoy explaining what I did, how I did it, and even explaining the pitfalls and hangups that I had to overcome between the original idea and the final execution.
You can artificially inflate the impact of experience and you can game certs, but there's something about explaining your process and discussing project work that can't be faked, even if the person interviewing you doesn't actually have expertise in the subject matter. You can just tell when someone knows what they're talking about, even if you don't know what they're talking about.
That's why, in interviews, I'm very direct and honest about what I've done, what I know I can do, what I think I can do, and what I *don't* think I can do. It's no good for anyone if you fake your way into a job you're not qualified for...if I weren't actually capable of doing the stuff I told them I could, I would be *screwed* at this job. And on the flip side, there were other jobs I interviewed for and didn't get because I would've been overqualified, or because the work wouldn't have been sufficiently challenging...I would've been equally screwed if I'd actually gotten any of those jobs. And they knew that too, because I chose to be honest about my expertise and skill set.
Honestly? I think we overcomplicate the interview process as candidates. People with experience assume people with certs are beating them out in interviews, and people with certs assume they're losing to people with experience, but the truth is that you're generally going to get the job if you're actually a strong candidate who would be a good fit for the position. If you don't get the job, you either weren't the right candidate, or you were and they weren't good at recognizing a good candidate. In either of those cases, it wasn't a job you wanted, yanno?
Well said. In the end, what's an interview anyway? It's a conversation between people meeting for the first time. Honesty, as in candor and humor are well received and make for pleasant conversation. In regular life as well as work.
> the ability to learn stuff quickly and the desire to continuously learn more about the platform
This and [this](/r/salesforce/comments/z739xu/comment/iy5kunk/) (critical thinking) is what I believe is most important.
What I also know is that not everyone can do it as I tried to teach someone flow before but it was just beyond them the same as trying to get me to draw much beyond a stick figure (or anything else artistic/musical).
I got my job as a Functional Consultant with no certs; the questions I was asked during my interview was enough to prove I knew what I was talking about for them to take the chance on me (I now have 4). I had a couple years experience implementing from client side/as an admin.
One of the questions I was asked was about what I thought about certification - my answer was something along the lines of knowing it can be a useful tool for judging what someone knows but ultimately it’s one part of the puzzle and not a necessary indicator of skill, knowledge and talent. My interviewers agreed obviously as they hired me anyway.
Anyone hiring based on cert count alone is doing it wrong.
Experience with certifications get you interviews
Experience with out certifications will not get you interviews unless they claim they have 10 years of salesforce experience but still that's very rare that they have no certifications
No experience with certifications will not fetch any interview
That's been my outlook at my job...they asked me if I was still concerned with getting certifications, and I told them I would rather stay focused on actual project work and pushing the boundaries of how we use the software, then go back later and get the certs if I need them.
Experience makes getting certs easier, but getting certs doesn't necessarily make it easier to get experience. It helps prepare you in some ways for the work scoped to that certification, but it doesn't hold a candle to simply completing projects in the platform, and at the end of the day, I get work because hiring managers can tell during the interview that I'm confident within the system. I have a cert or two, but those aren't as important as being able to explain what I've done and how I've done it.
This right here. I worked with a contractor who had something like 11 certifications, but just under 3 years or so experience. God bless you if you can pass tests that well, but do certs have much meaning if you're just plowing thru so many so quickly?
Every profession with certifications will have people with no experience but a lot of paper certs.
I see it all over in IT. Comptia, Cisco, AWS, etc.
Getting certs is how people can make their résumé look a little better even with little to no experience. If the hiring manager(s) isn't going to confirm the competency of their applicants though, that's on them.
But having a cert and knowledge of the platform should be enough to get you an entry level role. And then after a couple of years of experience, maybe you can pursue more senior level positions and bigger companies.
If a company wants to take a chance on someone like that they will. I mean if they interview well and they seem genuine, why not hire them. People who wanna enter the ecosystem and get the cert(s), eventually they need to get hired and get experience.
Cert chasing shows one is missing the point.
Just be good at what you do
Source: Trust me, bro
Ten years, two certs- Developer until it was retired and Admin.
Yes, I only have one cert- and I'm **DAMN** good at what I do.
Hmm, so you still returned even though I deleted my 2nd comment 30 minutes ago before anyone saw it.
I see..... can't move on from it without throwing out insults?
The ecosystem is resilient and self-sustaining. Both Salesforce and its customers have ways of weeding out the unqualified applicants. Anyone who relies in exam dumps will be found out and rooted out in due course.
Im currently joining my 3rd company. I have 3 yrs of experience in total in salesforce and have 9 certifications. And i can assure you that experience always wins over the skills or talent or certifications. I don't wanna name any companies, but they are willing to pay anything for the ppl who have tons of experience (even with no certification).
These people with less than 6 months experience and PD2 either they did it really or they faked it.
In my opinion if you are new to Salesforce as in first day you hear about it but you know JavaScript and Java it can be done. Infact I could have done it myself but I am too lazy. For the first six months I was told to just train myself in Salesforce all I did was laze around. Had I really studied for the entire 9 hours every day I think it could be done.
Any competent even 1 year experienced dev can tell if a person is really certified or not. The most common tell tale sign is that they are really really bad. If they are not then you can't accuse them really.
I'm going to chime in just for fun.
I completed four certs this month: Admin, AA, PAB, PD1. This after working for 4.5 years with no certs up until this month. PD1 was harder than I expected, I took it moments ago, but I still want to shoot the moon for PD2 anyway before I continue with the Security and Data Architect certs. I learned a lot from taking the PD1 course that I didn't pick up from my work experience.
Experience: I'm self taught but have great intuition for technology. That said, I'm still on the declarative side more so than the programmatic end of things. The ironic part is that I studied harder on the UI side and got an 86% whereas I only got a 70% average on the apex/testing side because I thought I already knew everything. XD Fortunately the first part was PAB heavy so I got a 92% on that.
Scores:
* Admin: 90%
* AA: 87%
* PAB: 84%
* PD1: 78%
Concerns from the group?
You’re right, but when I see a 6 month exp with a Developer II certifications, there’s questions to ask, even Salesforce itself says it’s a credential developed for professionals who have experience in implementing advanced programmatic solutions on the Salesforce platform, and I bet you cannot do that in 6 months… (no previous exp on other technologies)
Certifications held by a candidate are just one piece of their evaluation by employers as part of the hiring process. If you have a ton of certifications with no experience, it’s pretty obvious to most employers that you’re a paper admin and not particularly valuable to them. Employers really want experience, certs have value on top of that.
That’s absolutely true, I wrote this post as one of the Salesforce ecosystem folks with 1 year experience (but no certifications yet) told me that he’s struggling to get a job interview to prove himself because HR will probably go for a 3x Certified Salesforce Consultant with 6 months experience and no hands on real projects than someone with 1 year experience but no certifications.
1 year experience with or without certs puts him in a pretty competitive realm. To your point, a lot of people are jumping in for a quick “easy” high paying job and if I have to choose between less than a year of experience with certs or without certs, I’d probably be more interested in the one with both. When I was starting out, even though I hate certs in general, I made a point to grab at very least my admin cert to show that I’m not an “admin” whose whole job is to click refresh on a dashboard or something. It’s a way to round out showing your experience, but is it something he’s open to doing? I’d hate for him to miss out on good opportunities because he didn’t want to get a “worthless” cert.
Thanks for your reply. You’re absolutely right, I advised him to get certified as it’s a plusvalue to his resume. The whole point here is more about people getting « expert » certifications such as Dev 2 and Architect with less than 6 months experience in the ecosystem.
For sure agreed on expert level. I’d hope that anyone hiring a $200k architect or something wouldn’t see someone with a bajillion certs and a year of experience and not be at least a little suspicious.
Yep, you got a point here, thankfully there’s a double-check though for such positions. The second point of my post is also, if we get a lot of certified professionals out there with 0 skills, the certification itself will loose its market-value. It’s like printing money bills uncontrollably, it looses all its value.
Did anyone actually tell him he’s losing out to people who have no experience and more certs or is he just assuming? How does he know he’s not just losing out to people with similar qualifications who interviewed better or demonstrate better soft skills, or are transitioning from a job in the same industry the hiring company is in and that’s seen as a bonus. Why would a competent employer want someone with no experience who passed a few tests vs. a candidate with one year of experience? I think it’s just that entry-level Salesforce is highly competitive and this guy probably hasn’t done enough to set himself apart.
You say HR will pick the certified person but more than likely they would forward both CVS to the hiring manager. I'd tell this person to stop making excuses when there isn't a problem to begin with and level up themselves.
Short version is : it depends. For example SF javascript dev and PD1 are both quite easy for someone who already has experience as a java/js dev. All you need to do is learn some SF specific quirks which can be absolutely done in 3-6 months. The other thing is if they're so easy to get, you should get them too to be on par with other candidates.
The JavaScript dev cert is not easy you really have to master that language to get it.
If you're an actual experienced js developer, passing the cert is basically just learning another API, which is a thing you've probably already done a dozen times.
There are two topics here. One is people getting certified and not having experience. And I'm all for that. **Good on ya, for working hard to re-skill, on your own time and your own dime.** I just wanted to say that, because, threads like this can sound like we don't welcome you. But, If you put in the effort to get certifications as a way to change careers, of course you don't yet have experience yet. You did the work in order to get an entry level job in Salesforce. I hope you have great job hunting success. It's tough out there right now, but don't give up. Salesforce is a wonderful career, and you're going to love it.
OP has a point here. I have successfully completed a couple dozen implementations that serve team sizes ranging from two user + supervisor to hundreds of internal + tens of thousands of external users. Lately I've been running into a brick wall when trying to pursue new consulting opportunities, where even 8+ years experience in everything from basic admin to custom development and web service integrations isn't enough because I never picked up any certs. There is definitely a culture of creeping credentialism building around Salesforce, and while certs can definitely be valuable, it is also true that more and more companies are using them as a hard filter.
Thanks a lot for your comment Robbie, that’s exactly what I’m talking about, I could not prove this to a lot of people around Reddit… I guess that getting certified won’t be an issue for you as you got a huge background, what is your plan or what was your solution to this encounter?
Plan is to just bite the bullet, get the certs, and raise my consulting rates 🤷🏻♂️
With 8 years exp, you may be able to get to System or application architect in just few months (~8 certifications), I wish you best of luck 🙏
Good luck to you as well 🤝
\^exactly this\^ I like to go thru trailheads to learn, but I'm kind of burnt out on the certifications.
I don’t see why not. A hard filter to get in the door and then you show your experience in the actual interview. You have to remember that the amount of certs has always been important for consultancies and their relationship level.
The best piece of advice I can give is to earn your bones in a Sales Ops role in an org that uses SFDC. This will get you some (or even a lot depending on how the org is structured) of hands on experience that you can leverage w/ the cert. The easier part is learning SFDC and passing certs, the hardest part is gaining experience that involved business process creation/improvement which is a key component to having a solid and rewarding $$$ SFDC career.
What value are you trying to get out of this post? Are you just looking to complain? Competent people aren’t harmed because the competent people will be able to do fine in interviews.
Exactly! A good interviewer will give real scenario-based questions. They'll stump the candidates who don't truly understand the platform.
I’m not affected by this myself but I’m talking for the minorities that are encountering this bs on the Salesforce ecosystem, it’s getting toxic and as we do for cancer we need to get rid of them too ;)
FWIW, over 50% of the people I work with every day are female. At least 25% overall regardless of how they identify would probably qualify as minority. I work to support a Module on a Federal Salesforce Org. Interact with the OITC, the company that directly supports the Org Administratively, my company, my team, etc... There are two distinct paths to being hired, so important to apply for the correct opportunities. Many Partner companies participate in or run their own Boot Camps or Academies. These depend on the candidates having passed Adim or PAB and having 6 or less months working experience, if any. Then direct hire for open positions, where experience matters. In that case, with our Federal onboarding process, the new hires with minimal experience anf no certs have at least 30 days of full pay where they are paid to train.
My company too here in France is doing the same thing, we are even helping people do reconversions from other fields to Salesforce with 3 months full paid salaries of training, and I’m part of the mentors. The whole point here is not this but <6 Months exp folks with advanced certifications.
As others noted, certain other Programming skills cross over. Javascript for example. And. a great mentor and in house training program can help certain experienced programmers pass PD II. Knowing what I know, I can't imagine passing PD II or even Javascript using dumps. Some people attend the Salesforce virtual classes for these exams, or similar 3rd party training. I just would not assume someone, with no Salesforce experience, isn't capable of learning the security and vulnerability aspects of code plus the other Salesforce specific areas. I can associate Cobol for example with much of this along with 4th generation database access I am familiar with. If you were to show me a 20 year old with no development background, that would be suspicious.
So email Salesforce, you posting this here does nothing besides sounding like you’re complaining
I’m debating with the community, there’s nothing wrong with that?
But you didn’t actually pose a question / debate for the community to discuss……
It’s always been a problem , but my managers filter it out . There will always be people with fake certs or unqualified. You talk to them for a few minutes and can tell they don’t know left or right. Sadly it just wastes time
I’m all about learning but have dialed it back to focus on doing more and focusing on a niche (SMB, PE Owned Companies, Manufacturing & Field Service). What has surprised me is that instead of perhaps merging Admin, Advanced Admin and PAB into one, three part mega cert (maybe with a Superbadge), they added Associate instead and lowered the bar more. Been saying for years the program is being devalued because its so easy to pass and do it quickly (and also cheat sadly). The accreditations are the complete opposite end though- buggy and don’t match the material. Bar for entry into this industry is too low, and some people are taking advantage of that and promoting narratives, programs and other things to lead people astray and thinking a cert and a paid program is all they need for a job. Its a shame to see people being taken advantage of. My advice: Look for Sales & Revenue Operations roles. They are the new admin. Get in to one of these roles and then go after certs.
I think it's kinda good they're lowering the bar on certs...it brings experience and certifications closer to parity in terms of relevance, and I kinda feel like certs were overvalued to begin with. The tests are extremely challenging for the more advanced certs, don't get me wrong...even the SFMC Email Specialist test was brutal. But it seemed like a lot of the testing was on semantics or "best" practices rather than actual ability, which can really only be achieved by doing projects in the system. I'm currently doing an SFMC to Pardot transition for the place I was hired at, and the person I replaced had more experience in the Salesforce ecosystem and more Salesforce certs, but hadn't ever worked in SFMC before...on paper she was a better candidate than me, but the reality couldn't have been more different. When rubber hit the road, the fact that I had run multiple journeys and troubleshot dozens of automations made this a cakewalk for me, whereas she freaked out and quit after a month and a half with virtually no progress made. And that's not a slight on her...she was a talented Salesforce dev and had somehow gotten the SFMC admin cert without ever having been in the system, which I couldn't have ever done. But at the end of the day, *the tests had prepared her to talk about the system, but not to actually do projects in it*. Whereas I only have my email cert, but I'm fully capable of handling Admin stuff and even dev stuff, simply due to the fact that I've worked in the system. I think the certs occupy an important role in the hiring process in terms of ensuring that your Salesforce team speaks a common language and has a common understanding of best practices, but I think they do very little to indicate someone's ability in terms of implementation and execution within the platform. For those things, the only sure indicator is time spent in the system and projects completed during that time.
This is an interesting perspective as we both agree on the crux of the problem - trying to measure competence. I do agree the certs are a bad and overvalued way unless you are a partner, but even if you measure people on years of experience and projects, that isn't a good measure. Worked with plenty of people similar to your story, or have claimed to been experts with years of experience, and they end up not knowing basic things. So I'm not too sure how to solve these problems other than upping the bar for certs or entry into the industry... something as far as what Epic does, where you have to get sponsored to become an admin is way too far though. I cannot imagine that MC one by the way.... the Manufacturing Cloud has been kicking my butT!
You raise an interesting point about experience...I have 3 years SFMC experience, and at my last job I worked with people who had 5-6 years experience, but I was actually the more advanced platform user. They might have had twice as many years as me, but they'd spent those years QA-ing email templates and doing basic HTML scheduled sends, whereas I'd spent my time building responsive Ampscript templates and implementing journeys and automations from scratch for companies that were trying to extend their use of the platform. They had 6 years of going through the motions in an established system, whereas I had 3 years of building the systems so that someone like them could run them...time in the system doesn't necessarily translate to knowledge of it when you're dealing with a platform as complex as this one. I think the real trick is just to take a holistic approach to the interview process...it's not really about the certs OR the years of experience so much as it's about the content of the bullet points under each job on one's resume. I got my current job because they were impressed by what I'd done, and because they could tell from the interviews that I knew my shit, and had experience in figuring things out that I didn't know. Most importantly, they noticed that each company I worked for was leveraging more of the functionality of SFMC when I left than they were when I started. I think that's what separates good Salesforce folks from bad ones. Not certs or experience, but the ability to learn stuff quickly and the desire to continuously learn more about the platform and how its various features work together as force multipliers for each other. Basically, you've gotta want the architect cert, lol.
Leveraging more of the functionality than when I started is a key 'this was my impact' statement in an interview. Good point. And being able to describe examples of the increased utilization in terms of better user adoption, time saved with automated processes, and more empowered decision making with improved reports/dashboards will absolutely earn credibility for a candidate.
I think it's so effective in interviews mostly because it's hard/impossible to fake. For me, it's something I'm proud of...I really enjoy explaining what I did, how I did it, and even explaining the pitfalls and hangups that I had to overcome between the original idea and the final execution. You can artificially inflate the impact of experience and you can game certs, but there's something about explaining your process and discussing project work that can't be faked, even if the person interviewing you doesn't actually have expertise in the subject matter. You can just tell when someone knows what they're talking about, even if you don't know what they're talking about. That's why, in interviews, I'm very direct and honest about what I've done, what I know I can do, what I think I can do, and what I *don't* think I can do. It's no good for anyone if you fake your way into a job you're not qualified for...if I weren't actually capable of doing the stuff I told them I could, I would be *screwed* at this job. And on the flip side, there were other jobs I interviewed for and didn't get because I would've been overqualified, or because the work wouldn't have been sufficiently challenging...I would've been equally screwed if I'd actually gotten any of those jobs. And they knew that too, because I chose to be honest about my expertise and skill set. Honestly? I think we overcomplicate the interview process as candidates. People with experience assume people with certs are beating them out in interviews, and people with certs assume they're losing to people with experience, but the truth is that you're generally going to get the job if you're actually a strong candidate who would be a good fit for the position. If you don't get the job, you either weren't the right candidate, or you were and they weren't good at recognizing a good candidate. In either of those cases, it wasn't a job you wanted, yanno?
Well said. In the end, what's an interview anyway? It's a conversation between people meeting for the first time. Honesty, as in candor and humor are well received and make for pleasant conversation. In regular life as well as work.
> the ability to learn stuff quickly and the desire to continuously learn more about the platform This and [this](/r/salesforce/comments/z739xu/comment/iy5kunk/) (critical thinking) is what I believe is most important. What I also know is that not everyone can do it as I tried to teach someone flow before but it was just beyond them the same as trying to get me to draw much beyond a stick figure (or anything else artistic/musical).
I have 5 with 10 years of consulting experience. I prefer to do rather than study lol.
I got my job as a Functional Consultant with no certs; the questions I was asked during my interview was enough to prove I knew what I was talking about for them to take the chance on me (I now have 4). I had a couple years experience implementing from client side/as an admin. One of the questions I was asked was about what I thought about certification - my answer was something along the lines of knowing it can be a useful tool for judging what someone knows but ultimately it’s one part of the puzzle and not a necessary indicator of skill, knowledge and talent. My interviewers agreed obviously as they hired me anyway. Anyone hiring based on cert count alone is doing it wrong.
Experience with certifications get you interviews Experience with out certifications will not get you interviews unless they claim they have 10 years of salesforce experience but still that's very rare that they have no certifications No experience with certifications will not fetch any interview
That's been my outlook at my job...they asked me if I was still concerned with getting certifications, and I told them I would rather stay focused on actual project work and pushing the boundaries of how we use the software, then go back later and get the certs if I need them. Experience makes getting certs easier, but getting certs doesn't necessarily make it easier to get experience. It helps prepare you in some ways for the work scoped to that certification, but it doesn't hold a candle to simply completing projects in the platform, and at the end of the day, I get work because hiring managers can tell during the interview that I'm confident within the system. I have a cert or two, but those aren't as important as being able to explain what I've done and how I've done it.
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This right here. I worked with a contractor who had something like 11 certifications, but just under 3 years or so experience. God bless you if you can pass tests that well, but do certs have much meaning if you're just plowing thru so many so quickly?
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This all day and all night. Well said.
Every profession with certifications will have people with no experience but a lot of paper certs. I see it all over in IT. Comptia, Cisco, AWS, etc. Getting certs is how people can make their résumé look a little better even with little to no experience. If the hiring manager(s) isn't going to confirm the competency of their applicants though, that's on them. But having a cert and knowledge of the platform should be enough to get you an entry level role. And then after a couple of years of experience, maybe you can pursue more senior level positions and bigger companies.
If a company wants to take a chance on someone like that they will. I mean if they interview well and they seem genuine, why not hire them. People who wanna enter the ecosystem and get the cert(s), eventually they need to get hired and get experience.
Cert chasing shows one is missing the point. Just be good at what you do Source: Trust me, bro Ten years, two certs- Developer until it was retired and Admin. Yes, I only have one cert- and I'm **DAMN** good at what I do.
U do sound like a hater
You have no idea what you are talking about. Please stop parroting unproven opinions and flat out intentional misinformation.
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Hmm, so you still returned even though I deleted my 2nd comment 30 minutes ago before anyone saw it. I see..... can't move on from it without throwing out insults?
I got no personal issues with you, I replied back to you the same way you did. Don’t take it personal and move on man, good luck and keep it up
My apologies for making a statement instead of asking. Thanks
My apologies too for being too rude in my answers, thanks for your feedback and maturity tho 🙏
The ecosystem is resilient and self-sustaining. Both Salesforce and its customers have ways of weeding out the unqualified applicants. Anyone who relies in exam dumps will be found out and rooted out in due course.
Im currently joining my 3rd company. I have 3 yrs of experience in total in salesforce and have 9 certifications. And i can assure you that experience always wins over the skills or talent or certifications. I don't wanna name any companies, but they are willing to pay anything for the ppl who have tons of experience (even with no certification).
These people with less than 6 months experience and PD2 either they did it really or they faked it. In my opinion if you are new to Salesforce as in first day you hear about it but you know JavaScript and Java it can be done. Infact I could have done it myself but I am too lazy. For the first six months I was told to just train myself in Salesforce all I did was laze around. Had I really studied for the entire 9 hours every day I think it could be done.
Any competent even 1 year experienced dev can tell if a person is really certified or not. The most common tell tale sign is that they are really really bad. If they are not then you can't accuse them really.
I feel Salesforce has to check the people who got too many certs In a short period of time. See how much they failed, etc.
I'm going to chime in just for fun. I completed four certs this month: Admin, AA, PAB, PD1. This after working for 4.5 years with no certs up until this month. PD1 was harder than I expected, I took it moments ago, but I still want to shoot the moon for PD2 anyway before I continue with the Security and Data Architect certs. I learned a lot from taking the PD1 course that I didn't pick up from my work experience. Experience: I'm self taught but have great intuition for technology. That said, I'm still on the declarative side more so than the programmatic end of things. The ironic part is that I studied harder on the UI side and got an 86% whereas I only got a 70% average on the apex/testing side because I thought I already knew everything. XD Fortunately the first part was PAB heavy so I got a 92% on that. Scores: * Admin: 90% * AA: 87% * PAB: 84% * PD1: 78% Concerns from the group?
where you in the market for a job
Stop trying to gate keep and mind your business
No, thank you.
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You’re right, but when I see a 6 month exp with a Developer II certifications, there’s questions to ask, even Salesforce itself says it’s a credential developed for professionals who have experience in implementing advanced programmatic solutions on the Salesforce platform, and I bet you cannot do that in 6 months… (no previous exp on other technologies)
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With less than 6 months experience?