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In this competitive world, earning certification badges has become ten times easier. You don’t have to read out too much to clear your exams. Similarly, competition is too high in the market of Salesforce; passing the developer certification exam is not a cakewalk.
Salesforce Developers are highly sought after in the Salesforce ecosystem. In the past five years, the number of developer positions has increased by 165% on an average of every year. So, if you are preparing for Salesforce certification, then Salesforce Developer Certification is the right choice to kickstart your career journey. It demonstrates your expertise in building custom applications on the Salesforce platform.
So to prepare and ace the Salesforce Developer Certification exam, you need to keep a few things in mind.
In this blog, we will provide valuable insights, study tips, and resources, ensuring you’re well-prepared for this exciting challenge. So, what are you waiting for?
Steps to Pass Salesforce Developer Certification
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to pass developer certification successfully:
1. Establish a Strong Foundation
Before diving into exam-specific preparation, ensure you have a solid understanding of Salesforce fundamentals. Familiarize yourself with topics like standard and custom objects, data relationships, and the Salesforce data model.
This foundational knowledge will be crucial as you progress. It will help you during your learning journey for advanced topics. You can follow these steps to get a good foundation:
- Give 1-2 hours daily practicing code. Learn the basic algorithms and Pseudocode.
- You can always look up algorithms and sample code in Salesforce-provided documents. But learning them will expand your mindset and how to tackle any problems.
- In case you feel overwhelmed with information, it may be time to take a step back and refocus your attention on learning Apex code directly.
2. Official Salesforce Documentation
Salesforce offers comprehensive documentation for all its features and technologies. Start your preparation by exploring the Salesforce Developer Documentation. Pay particular attention to topics related to Apex, Visualforce, and Lightning web components.
This documentation will serve as your primary reference source throughout your preparation journey. Developer guides provided by Salesforce can be used to give special attention to topics covered in the exam outline.
3. Enroll in Salesforce Developer Training
Salesforce offers official training courses tailored to the developer certification. Consider enrolling in these courses to receive structured guidance, hands-on experience, and insights from certified instructors. The training provides a structured approach to learning, ensuring you cover all the essential topics.
Depending upon your personal preferences, there are multiple options for getting developer training both online and offline modes. You just need to make sure that the training course curriculum provides you with the right programming and logical skill set necessary for passing certification exams and thriving in the fast-paced world of Salesforce development.
4. Trailhead: Learning playground for Salesforce
Trailhead, Salesforce’s free online learning platform, is a goldmine of resources for aspiring developers. It offers guided learning paths, modules, and hands-on challenges. Trailhead provides a practical and interactive learning experience, allowing you to apply what you’ve learned in real-world scenarios.
It also gives a Platform Developer I study guide that holds the learning objectives related to the syllabus of the developer certification exam. Also, there are Trailblazer communities that allow for asking questions, collaborate, and join groups to help in preparing for the exam.
5. Practice Well
The Salesforce Developer Certification exam includes practical scenarios, assessments, online tests and quizzes to check your skills. Work on coding exercises and challenges, especially in Apex and Visualforce. However, use the Salesforce Developer Edition (DE) org to build and test your solutions. Further, practical coding experience is essential for tackling real-world challenges in the exam.
Salesforce provides official practice exams that mimic the format and difficulty level of the real exam. Attempt these practice tests multiple times to get a feel for the types of questions you’ll answer. These practice exams help you become familiar with the structure and timing, reducing anxiety on exam day.
6. Study Groups and Forums
Another way to get the spectrum of knowledge is by joining the groups and forums. Engaging with a community of fellow learners and certified professionals can provide valuable insights and support.
In groups, you can connect with different audiences including freshers, administrators, developers, consultants and end users. From the experience, you can ask questions and get their insights.
Collaborating with others allows you to gain different perspectives and share knowledge, enhancing your overall understanding. Exam dumps are also prevalent on Salesforce groups and forums on Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, Trailhead, etc. Members are also able to share other resources for better preparation and confidence boost.
7. Time Management
During the exam, time management is crucial. Pace yourself and allocate time-based on the number of questions and their complexity. Don’t get stuck on a single question; move on and return to it later if needed.
Effective time management ensures you can attempt all questions and revisit those that require more attention. You can practice managing your time effectively through the use of mock tests and sample questions.
8. Exam Day Preparation
On the exam day, ensure you have a stable internet connection and a quiet, distraction-free environment. Have your identification and any necessary materials ready. Being well-prepared on the exam day helps reduce stress and allows you to focus on answering questions accurately.
Here are some tips that you can follow for maximum performance:
- There is no need to stress too much about remembering syntax, as you will forget most of it anyway.
- Learn how to write codes and focus on improving your problem-solving skills.
- Master a good debugger and unit test your code for any bugs.
- Remember, highly efficient code is not necessarily good.
- You will surely make mistakes along the way; just be willing to accept and learn from them.
- Projects are the best means of learning for you as they involve implementing the skills that you have acquired during your learning process.
- Attempting multiple mock tests will help you evaluate your degree of preparation quite easily.
- Identifying the areas of improvement through mock tests will maximize your final assessment results for sure.
A Quick tip: Understand the exam blueprint
Salesforce provides a detailed exam guide that outlines the topics and percentages you can expect on the exam. You can get help from these guides to focus your studies on the most critical areas. The exam blueprint is your roadmap for prioritizing topics based on their weightage in the exam.
The Developer certification syllabus consists of six modules, but the actual weightage is different, as shown in the following:
Salesforce Fundamentals (7%)
In this module, you have to learn about how to consider different scenarios while developing an application in a multi-tenant environment. Then, you have to understand how to use the MVC pattern to map the features of Salesforce inside it. Additionally, learning how to use the core CRM objects to build a schema in Salesforce would be a great help.
Data Modeling and Management (13%)
Data modeling is one of the important topics in the syllabus of the Developer exam. It will require you to learn how to design a data model according to the requirements. You also need to understand the schema design, the types of relationships for data modeling, and the import and export of data.
Logic and Process Automation (38%)
Logic and process automation is the heart of the Salesforce automation process. Hence, this section has a 38% weightage, going higher than all the other modules. In this module, you need to understand how to use programming capabilities to design the object schema, create the formula fields and roll-up summary, and use automation tools.
Some other concepts related to Apex programming that must be learned are:
- Variables and constants
- Data types
- Control flow statements
- Classes and interfaces
- Apex triggers and transactions
- Apex custom controllers
- Standard Visualforce controllers
- Exception handling
- Concepts related to SOSL and SOQL
User Interface (25%)
In this section, you have to learn how to expose the data of a company by using a Visualforce page. Then, you must understand the mechanism of the lightning framework. You will have to learn about the different types of content that you can combine by using the Visualforce page. It would be best if you also went through the resources that are incorporated with the Salesforce Lightning components.
Testing (7%)
Testing is one of the crucial parts of application development as it gives information about the performance of an application. In the Salesforce Developer certification exam, it has a weightage of seven percent. This section entails you to learn about testing frameworks along with knowing how to write unit tests for various classes, controllers, and Apex triggers. Further, you have to understand the multiple origins of the test data.
Debug and Deployment Tools (10%)
As debugging is one of the key tasks while developing a full-fledged application, you have to learn about the various types of debug logs. You should also know how to use the Developer Console and Workbench to develop and deploy a secured application. Besides, you will have to learn how different environments and processes are used to build and deploy applications.
Conclusion
Becoming a certified Salesforce Developer opens doors to exciting career opportunities. But knowing the right way to hack this certification and gain demanding skills would be a game changer for your career.
By following the process and tricks discussed earlier in this blog can help you pass the Salesforce developer certification exam. In case you are not code-friendly (Apex, SOQL, and Lightning Web Component), but want to become a platform developer, then dedicating a time slot for learning these skills is highly advised.
Remember, continuous learning, self-assessment and practice are key to success. So, gear up, study hard, and embark on your journey to becoming a Salesforce Developer Certified professional.
