Study Tips: Salesforce certified administrator exam

Written By Kirby Rowe

Are you preparing for your Salesforce Administrator exam and feeling a bit overwhelmed with the amount of information and resources available? That is completely normal and I definitely know the feeling! There is a lot to learn, especially for someone who has never used Salesforce as an admin or end-user. However, if I can do it I know you can too! After lots of learning and studying, I was excited and relieved when I took my exam for the first time and saw the word “Pass” on the screen! Here are a few tips, methods, and resources that I used to learn and study for my exam.

Join a Study Group or Find a Study Buddy
When I first started learning Salesforce, I didn't know anyone who worked in the Salesforce ecosystem or who was studying for their exam. Thankfully, I was able to find a small group of people to study with in the Talent Stacker program. We met every week at a scheduled time and during this time we would do practice tests together over Zoom and would pause after each each answer to discuss or ask questions if it was something we did not understand. Our group later merged with another group and the additional members brought even more insight and knowledge to our study sessions. We made a Slack channel for our group where we would post links and resources that we found helpful and we even started a channel to keep track of all the features within Salesforce which need to be enabled. Your study buddies will help keep you motivated and will likely become your friends and biggest cheerleaders in your journey to becoming a Salesforce professional!

Some ideas for finding a study group or study buddy include:


Earn your Associate Certification First

When I started learning Salesforce, the Associate certification had not been released yet. I was working through the Admin Trailmix and feeling a bit overwhelmed by the amount of information that I was trying to remember. When the Associate certification and Trailmix were released, I decided to switch gears and earn my Associate certification first before moving on to the Administrator exam. This worked well for me because the Associate certification covers some of the same material as the Admin but it is a more high-level overview which is perfect for Salesforce beginners. Getting that Associate certification gave me the boost of confidence I needed to keep learning and studying for my Admin exam, which I passed about four months later (after taking some time off during the holidays).

Here are a few resources if you are considering earning your Associate Certification:


Take an Online Course and Follow Along in a Dev Org

Trailhead is awesome but sometimes it helps to hear someone explain a concept and watch them go through the steps. As a kinesthetic/hands-on learner, I found it super helpful to follow along in my own org by doing each step along with the instructor. There are many courses available but my favorite is Get Force Certified. David Massey explains things in a way that I found concise and easy to understand and he also provides sheets with mind maps that you can use to study the concepts. Below is the set of courses that I used and recommend:


Use Practice Quizzes and Exams

When you are preparing for your exam, it’s a great idea to test your knowledge using practice quizzes and exams. These quizzes can help you practice your test-taking skills and give you an idea of what kinds of questions you might see on your Admin exam. If you get a question wrong, use that as an opportunity to learn more about that topic and understand how that feature works and why. The most important thing to remember when using this method is that you shouldn’t be memorizing the actual questions and answers but you should be understanding how and why things work the way they do in Salesforce. It’s helpful to open a playground or dev org and find the setting or feature and practice using it. Click around and see all the options and try to remember where things are and when you should use a certain feature.

Here are a few links for practice exams and quizzes:

Make a Study Plan and Set Goals

When I was studying for my admin exam, I noticed that I was most productive when I had a routine and planned my week and day out ahead of time. There are a lot of different ways to do this and they are definitely a personal preference, but here is what worked best for me:

  • Weekly: I use a weekly paper planning pad to plan my week, including study goals that I want to meet that week and include any appointments or other tasks that I would need to plan around.

  • Daily: I use an app called Structured to build a daily routine and time-block my day. You can schedule blocks of time for studying as well as other things you need to do during the day and the app will notify you when it’s time to switch tasks.

  • I use Notion to set goals for myself and track them in the Kanban view. I also use to it to take notes and to save links or resources that I will want to be able to find later.

Gain Hands-On Experience in Salesforce

So you know what an object, record and field are and you know how assignment rules and queues work, but how do those all work together in a Salesforce org? The best way to connect the dots is to get into Salesforce and build an org from the ground up! If you are a member of Talent Stacker, I highly recommend completing Alex Warneke’s Admin Build-Along project. This project is where all the concepts I had learned about really started coming together and making sense. Here are a few other projects that you can use to gain some hands-on experience:

Attend Salesforce Certification Days

Certification Days is a free webinar by Salesforce for those who are learning Salesforce and studying for Exams. This webinar is a live presentation by a Salesforce professional and reviews the topics and knowledge needed to pass the exam. A bonus is that when you complete a Salesforce Days webinar, you will receive a discount voucher that you can use when your schedule your exam. You can view the link below to see upcoming Salesforce Days:

Schedule Your Exam!

If you are having a hard time staying motivated and studying everyday, the best advice I have is to set a goal and deadline for yourself! You can schedule your Exam in advance and use that deadline as motivation to study everyday. Having a date on the calendar really helped me focus on studying and avoid procrastination. If the date nears and you really feel like you need more time, you can reschedule your exam with no penalty as long as you do it at least 24 hours in advance. I did find myself in that situation and pushed my exam date out a few more weeks and felt a bit disappointed but in the end, I know I did the right thing because I really did need that extra time. When you are ready to schedule your exam, here are a couple of links:

The Few Days Before Your Exam

I scheduled my exam for a Monday morning and studied over the weekend. Because I knew I had the big exam on Monday, I told family and friends ahead of time that I would be busy studying that weekend and would not be able to talk or hang out over the weekend, which eliminated a lot of potential distractions. During this time, I focused on two things: completing a hands-on project within Salesforce in a Dev Org and watching Talent Stacker study group videos, which was all review for me at this point. I spent my time and energy getting into my Salesforce org and reviewing where the various settings are, what they are called, what the options are, and how to build things in Salesforce. I went to bed on Sunday night feeling exhausted but optimistic. (Make sure you go to bed early enough to get plenty of sleep, of course!)

The Day of Your Exam

If at all possible, be selective about the time of day you schedule your exam, based on when you are least likely to be distracted and at the time that you usually feel the most focused and awake. For me, that was at 10:00 AM- late enough to not have to rush or feel like I am still waking up, but early enough to still feel refreshed and caffeinated from my morning coffee. I decided not to study or review my notes the morning of my exam. I went into the online proctored exam feeling optimistic and positive. While I do have a history of test-anxiety, I tried my best to stay calm during the exam and focused on reading every question carefully and re-reading it to make sure I didn’t miss any words. I used the process of elimination to mentally cross-out answers that I knew were not correct (a great tip from Anthony Scrima) and compared the remaining answers to look for the correct answer. If there is a question that you are not sure of, you can mark it for review and come back to it. When I got to the end of the exam, I went back and reviewed the questions I had marked and really spent some time on those ones. I did not review the ones I had not marked because I had felt confident about those ones and did not want to second guess myself. When I was done reviewing the marked questions, I hit “Submit Exam” and waited for the moment of truth… and saw the magic word “Pass” which was the best feeling ever!

I hope you found these tips helpful and when you get discouraged, just remember to keep your eye on the prize! If you get overwhelmed, take a break and come back later. I would recommend studying for short sessions instead of trying to spend multiple hours studying. And try not to compare your progress or timeline to those of others. It’s a marathon, not a race!

For a more comprehensive list of resources that I have compiled during my journey to becoming a Salesforce professional, please visit trailblazerresources.com.

You’ve got this!

Kirby Rowe
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Trailblazer Resources: A Collection of Links for Salesforce Trailblazers