My goal in January 2010 is to become a Salesforce.com Certified Developer. This would be my 3rd certification and, in my opinion, the most important one moving forward. I am using the DEV-401 podcasts, my developer cookbook, and the online study guide. There are also some blogs that were recommended to me – ForceCertified.com is great and written by @johncoppedge (who also has a admin study guide)!
Certified Administrator – I took this exam a month before Dreamforce 2008. I wanted to pass it so I could recieve the special treatment that it came with! I thought the exam was fairly straight forward and easy. I had been my company’s Salesforce admin for about a year and a power user for 2 years. We use PE so I had to study and learn things in theory and apply them in my dev. org. If you are have not taken this exam but are an admin and a Salesforce.com evangelist – I would look into it, study for, and take it.
Certified Consultant – I took this exam the day Dreamforce 2009 started after taking CON-201 the previous 2 days. There are parts of this exam that make perfect sense; eg. “Should you involve the VP of Marketing when talking about Campaigns?” Other parts are a bit more difficult. I found most of my trouble to be around the Service and Support. I do not use that functionality in my everyday work and I had to learn some best practices as well as learning how to determine the need for and implement the Service Cloud. I feel that most admins are already consulting for their own organizations, data gathering, managing expectations, selling new functionality internally, then I would look into it, study for, and take it.
If you have any questions, please let me know. I am more than happy to talk about this with you!
7 comments so far...
Good luck in your quest! I think the Service & Support is the toughest for mw as well, for the same reason. On my own re-certification quest, although Developer is a way off I feel, as they tighten the passing requirements.
hey keep us posted on the dev exam. I took it about one month ago – I thought I had a good understand of master/detail relationships, but apparently not. I want to go all the way; eventually earning the advanced dev cert in 2010…
Of course! Check out the DEV-401 Podcasts – there is some great info on all relationships.
Good for you for continuing to learn and expand your capabilities & credentials! I have both certifications (Consultant & Developer), and it is definitely helpful to understand both sides of the coin. With all of the resources available on the web to help you study for the Certified Developer exam (and your evident thirst for knowledge!) I’m sure you’ll do quite well! Please feel free to reach out to me if you need any help!
Hello All,
I am going to take CON 201 exam. If someone has taken,can you please share their experience. Your help will be highly appreciated..
Thanks a lot
Hey Jared,
Congrats on the certs & thanks for the shout out! If you flew through the consultant and administrator exams, I think DEV will be pretty straightforward (similar content to admin exam).
Cheers,
John
Excellent! I’ve shared this already!
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