How to Get Certified as a Salesforce Professional and Verify the Certification

Salesforce is one of the most in demand and fastest growing skill sets today. It has been fully entrenched as CRM platform at a number of organizations. Salesforce also offers the certification to Salesforce developers, architects, sales and marketing professionals, project managers and designers. Basically having Salesforce certification can be a valuable addition to your skill set in the following three ways:

1. It may increase your marketability
2. You can get the certification in just a few days or months
3. You can apply for just one or a bunch of certifications

The addition of a Salesforce certification can provide you higher hourly rate and offer you the best salary. When you appear for a certification, the verification is also available and is offered online by Salesforce. This blog covers the information of all certifications offered by Salesforce in addition to its verification in detail.

Major Certifications Offered by Salesforce

Salesforce offers several range certifications including architect, administrator and developers aiming sales and marketing professionals. Here you can find a brief of every certification offered by Salesforce:

1). Salesforce Certified Administrator

For those who focus on administrative functions of an existing Salesforce solution, Salesforce offers two level Salesforce Administrator certifications

1. Salesforce Certified Administrator
2. Salesforce Certified Advanced Administrator

The Salesforce Certified Administrator exam is for 90 minutes and has 60 MCQs. The registration fee for this certification is $200. For this exam you must have the knowledge of managing users and security on Salesforce CRM, along with building reports, workflows and dashboards and maintaining and customizing Sales and Service cloud.

Read: Software Testing illusions & Reality

Those who have passed the Salesforce Certified Administrator exam can appear for Salesforce Certified Advanced Administrator exam. The duration of this exam is as well 90 minutes and it consists of 63 MCQs and the passing score is 65%. To pass the exam, you must be proficient in optimizing and extending Sales and Service cloud, designing advanced reports, workflows and dashboards.

2). Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder

This certification is suitable for those Salesforce professionals who can design, build and implement Salesforce custom applications. This certification may require programming and technical skill set than the Salesforce Administrator certification. To get this certification the professional must have deep knowledge of customized functions and declarative development of Salesforce platform.

This exam is of 90-minute duration and consists 60MCQs with a 65% passing score. The registration fees for this exam are $200. Any candidate who wishes to apply for this certification must have the knowledge of designing reports and dashboards along with designing user interface, data model, security and business logic implementation. He must also know how to customize the application for mobile use and deploy custom applications.

3). Salesforce Certified Architect

This certification of Salesforce comprises of three tiers which are:

1. Architecture Designers
2. Domain Architects
3. Technical Architects

Based on expertise and knowledge Salesforce Architecture Designers are certified as per their domain specialization. Mainly available domains are Salesforce Certified Management Designer and Data Architecture, Salesforce Certified Identity and Access Management Designer, Salesforce Certified Mobile Solution Architecture Designer, Salesforce Certified Sharing and Visibility Designer and Salesforce Certified Integration Architecture Designer.

Read: Salesforce Tutorial – An Ultimate Guide for the Beginners

For Domain Architect Certification one needs extensive knowledge of Native Salesforce functionality and features along with Salesforce Certified System Architects. For Salesforce certified technical architects have to prove their skills to maximize the potential of Salesforce Platform. The exam has MCQs and the registration fee is $6,000. The most advanced level exam is Salesforce Technical Architect and has the most extensive pre-requisite. Candidate must have both of the certifications Salesforce Application Architect and Salesforce Certified System Architect. Only then he can apply for this certification.

4). Salesforce Certified Developer

There are three tiers of this certification, which are Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I, Salesforce Certified Commerce Cloud Digital Developer and Salesforce Certified Platform Developer II. The candidates applying for this certification must have the knowledge of using and building commerce cloud applications.

For Salesforce certified Platform Developer I exam you must have the knowledge of developing acustom application using Visualforce and Apex and knowledge of user interface, data model, security and business logic for thecustom application. They must also be familiar with the development lifecycle of the application. The exam is 105 minutes duration with 60MCQs and passing score is 68%. The registration fee is $200.

Salesforce Certified Platform Developer II exam must have advance programmatic capabilities for Force.com platform. This exam has three components a programming assignment, multiple choice questions and an essay exam. To move to programming assignment you must pass MCQ exam. The duration of exam is 120 minutes and it has 60 MCQs passing score for the exam is 63%. The registration fee for the exam is $400.

Any aspirant who wants to appear in Developer II exam must know how to troubleshoot the file synchronization issues and how the inventory and products data models will be managed. They must also be aware of the process of modifying and enabling search option for any specific product attribute and to create the custom types of object in which the custom data can be stored. They must have knowledge and understanding of configuring OCAPI permission for shop and Data APIs and to create JavaScript Controllers and script to render the templates.

Read: Salesforce Architect Certification Study Guide

How to Verify Your Salesforce Certification?

On completion of Salesforce certification you may receive an email from Salesforce and you may be invited. In this process you may have to simply login to your account. The following link shows the page and link view of this certification. From the above link of Salesforce website you can search either by email address or full name: To verify the certification online is not a new concept instead many large certification providers or employers or agencies use and offer such facility to ensure the candidate’s credentials. Salesforce initiated this process to strengthen the importance of Salesforce certification. You can use http://certification.salesforce.com/verification URL to access the link of Salesforce certification verification page. Salesforce is offering its certification since 2008 but its online verification process got live in December 2013.

Salesforce has launched this certification so that its aspirants can easily verify their certification and the employers can also check and ensure the skills of the candidate who says that he is Salesforce certified.

Final Words

Salesforce offers this certification for the candidates who want to build a long-lasting and proven career as a Salesforce professional. These certifications can be applied by the candidates as per their skill and technical abilities.