Salesforce.com is not a new term any longer. It is Customer Relationship Management or CRM software. Meant with the intent of bringing customers and companies together, it provides an integrated CRM platform. It integrates all your departments to give a single, shared view of customers, from marketing, commerce, sales, and services.
Today, most of the companies, irrespective of their sizes, use Salesforce for CRM. Salesforce offers cloud solutions for sales, services, analytics, communities, marketing, platform, apps, IoT (Internet of Things) and artificial intelligence.
Salesforce is one of the hottest CRM today. Salesforce was ranked #1 CRM by IDC, in May 2018. The Salesforce economy is going to create 3.3 million jobs by 2022, as expected.
Salesforce Certifications are a great way of making a career move by proving your skills on the best CRM platform. Salesforce has job roles for everyone, from beginners to experienced ones. From software developers, to project managers, to solution architects and marketing professionals, Salesforce can prove to be favorable.
Benefits of Salesforce Certification
Salesforce certification is the benchmark that validates your knowledge and skills in using Salesforce CRM. Salesforce has so many functionalities, getting certified helps you in organizing your learning efforts, which could have become tedious without a structure.
The three main benefits of getting Salesforce certified are:
- Marketability: it lets you become a subject matter expert by increasing your marketability in the IT job scenario.
- Flexibility: there are no conditions applied to when and how long you take to get certified. You can take hours, days or even months to get certified. You can learn at your own pace and at your convenience.
- Number of Certifications: you can add as many certifications to your credit as you want. You can get just one certification or a bunch of certifications. The more certifications you gain, the more is your demand in the job market, and more is the salary you get offered.
Salesforce Certifications Overview
There are a number of certifications offered by Salesforce at different levels, focussing on different areas of solutions. There are no hierarchies within the Salesforce certifications and are meant for the job roles among common Salesforce professionals such as:
- Administrators
- Developers
- App Builders
- Specialists
- Architects
- Marketers
- Consultants
- Pardot Experts
The exam format at every level varies according to the certifications you choose. The image below shows the basic level certifications, though there are other certifications too. The exam format and the fees to be paid are also mentioned in the image.
Most of the Salesforce certification exams consist of 60 multiple-choice questions. The duration allowed may vary for different certifications and may vary from 90 to 120 minutes.
The best part is that you can take the exams onsite or online. Candidates need to sign up for a certification exam via Webassessor through Kryterion Global Testing Solutions.
Let us now have a brief look at some of the certifications.
- Salesforce Administration:
There are two levels under this category.
- Salesforce Certified Administrator.- this is meant for experienced Salesforce professionals who are responsible for building reports and dashboards, security, data, users, workflow, and maintenance of Salesforce applications.
- Salesforce Certified Advanced Administrator. – this is meant for Salesforce administrators who have extensive knowledge of Salesforce applications and finding ways to leverage features for appropriate productivity. Candidates are required to be highly proficient in creating advanced reports, dashboards and automation processes.
- Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification
There is a single certification offered by Salesforce for the candidates who build apps, and that is Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification. This is meant for professionals who build, design, deploy and customize apps in Force.com platform. You need to have extensive knowledge of declarative development and customizing tools available on the platform. This certification requires more programming and engineering skills than any other certification.
- Salesforce Developer Certifications: – this certification is designed for professionals with experience building custom declarative and programmatic applications on the Force.com platform. Three certifications available are Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I and II, and Salesforce Certified Commerce Cloud Digital Developer.
- Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I- to achieve this certification, a candidate is required to know how to design the data model, business logic, user interface, and security for custom applications, along with the development of custom applications using Apex and Visualforce.
- Salesforce Certified Platform Developer II – candidates are required to be capable of advanced programming of Force.com platform and building data models in order to develop complex business logic and interfaces on the platform. Candidates are also required to know how to design, develop, test, and deploy reusable and robust programmatic solutions that are easily manageable.
- Salesforce Certified Technical Architect – To achieve this elite architect certification, candidates need to have extensive experience, in-depth technical knowledge, presentation capabilities and create Salesforce solutions that span the platform. This credential recognizes that professionals can create and implement custom solutions on the Force.com platform.
- Salesforce Certified Sales Cloud Consultant – this certification validates that the candidate is able to design and implement Sales Cloud Solutions that include application and interface design, along with managing and designing analytics for tracking purposes.
Job Opportunities
As we know that Salesforce is no.1 CRM company in the world, Salesforce professionals are in high demand. When you search for Salesforce professionals’ requirements on Glassdoor, it shows that there are 7900 professionals required for positions of administrators, engineers that may include software, hardware, platform, IoT, integration, analytics, developers and technical architects.
There are job opportunities for project managers and program directors too. That means the job roles are not limited to technical fields only. Even the salary prospects are good for Salesforce employees. For instance, the average salary of a Salesforce Administrator in 2019 (in the US) was $112,031, as stated by Indeed.com.
Conclusion
Looking at the excellent salaries and scope of Salesforce certified professionals, you would surely wish to make a career in the same. There are training providers that help you come up with all the study materials and learning sessions. You don’t need to worry about the confusion as they are made clear in the interactive sessions and allow you to learn at your own pace.
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