I am completely fine that I did not pass the Administrator, Service Cloud Consultant, or the Pardot exams the first time I took them. Instead of allowing the exam to define me and my knowledge of Salesforce, I was able to learn from the experience, focus my studying on new topics I breezed over or didn’t fully understand, and then use this new knowledge to pass the exams. In fact, as you can see on the previous page, it took me three tries to pass the Pardot exam (although the major issue with Pardot is that I had never used the application prior to any of the exams).
I mention this to let you know that while these strategies will greatly help you pass your exams, you may not pass them on the first try, or even the second try. It is important to remember that the end goal is to become certified. You are the only person who knows which exams and maintenance exams you’ve failed. What you see in your Webassessor account is not exposed to the public.
In my eight years of working with clients, I have never had a prospect or client as me “so, did you pass your Salesforce exam the first time?” The only things that are visible in the Partner Community or what you post on LinkedIn is the actual certifications. You are not putting your career at risk in any way by failing and retaking exams. It is up to you to disclose to others if it took you more than one time to pass any of the exams.
Take my advice and spend the least amount of time studying possible for your certification exams. Choose what author Tim Ferriss calls the “Minimum Effective Dose” in the Four-Hour body. The basic premise is if water boils at 212 degrees, why would it heat it to 250 degrees? For Salesforce.com certification, if 5 hours of studying is enough to pass the exam, why spend a minute more studying? Again, I believe the best way to develop mastery in Salesforce is doing actual, billable work for clients and not memorizing facts.
I would more liken this strategy to when I took elective classes in college for pass-fail, instead of a grade. I knew that if I ever went to graduate school, my major GPA would be more important that what I got in Biology my sophomore year. So I took the maximum number of pass-fail courses I could as an undergrad (36 units). It felt like a way to learn new subjects, but focus my studying and performance on my business classes. When I was applying for jobs as a senior the topic of my pass-fail classes NEVER came up and putting my major GPA was all anyone asked about.
In the same way, I believe that taking an exam when you are 80% prepared with only a $100 retake fee is a good gamble. In fact, it is more than a gamble—it is a good strategy. As consultants or full-time workers, most of us have full time jobs where we can take non-billable time to study for these exams. And my guess is that most of us aren’t single with open weekend to spend creating test orgs and pouring over flash cards.
Most people feel they need to study for 5-15 hours to feel “barely” prepared for the exam and so they significantly delay taking the certification exams. And trying to schedule in 15 hours into an already busy schedule feels overwhelming. By putting into practice the strategy in this e-book, we can cut the number in half or by a third to be prepared for these exams.
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