Failure is an option

First, don’t be afraid to fail. Failure is the perfect way to learn.

Would you believe me when I say that I passed all these tests without a Result: FAILED message?

Let’s take the Advanced Administrator certification as an example. It took me two attempts to clear the exam: in the first attempt, I was sure I could get through it without any issue, but I discovered that I hadn’t studied the right way and I was actually bad at some key topics that I had no experience in.

After the completion of the exam, you will receive an email from Salesforce with your percentage score for each topic (you don’t know which questions you failed, but you get a clear view of your deficiencies). I can show you my first attempt scores (with the weights for each topic as shown earlier):

• Security and Access: 50% (weight 20%)
• Extending Custom Objects and Applications: 80% (weight 8%)
• Auditing and Monitoring: 66% (weight 6%)
• Sales Cloud Applications: 50% (weight 10%)
• Service Cloud Applications: 33% (weight 10%)
• Data Management: 66% (weight 10%)
• Content Management: 50% (weight 3%)
• Change Management: 100% (weight 10%)
• Analytics, Reports, and Dashboards: 33% (weight 10%)
• Process Automation: 75% (weight 13%)

Multiplying each score by its weight, I got almost a 60% overall score.

Given that the passing score is 65%, it was close indeed!

What lessons did I learn? Never underestimate your exam, study all the topics, and test the features out. Learning through doing is way better; you’ll remember how something works just by remembering how you configured it on the org.
 
 Never skip a topic just because it is boring or because you already know it: there could always be a feature that you don’t know or that is crucial for success in the exam.

I know you are wondering about the scores of the second attempt (the first score mentioned for each topic is the second attempt’s score):

• Security and Access: 58% versus 50% (weight 20%)
• Extending Custom Objects and Applications: 80% versus 80% (weight 8%)
• Auditing and Monitoring: 33% versus 66% (weight 6%)
• Sales Cloud Applications: 83% versus 50% (weight 10%)
• Service Cloud Applications: 83% versus 33% (weight 10%)
• Data Management: 83% versus 66% (weight 10%)
• Content Management: 50% versus 50% (weight 3%)
• Change Management: 83% versus 100% (weight 10%)
• Analytics, Reports, and Dashboards: 33% versus 33% (weight 10%)
• Process Automation: 75% versus 75% (weight 13%)

If you do the math, it’s about 76%: the worst parts were the Analytics, Reports, and Dashboards (where I supposedly missed 2 out of 3 questions), Auditing and Monitoring (2 out of 3 wrong), and Security Access (where I probably missed 7 out of 12 questions) sections.

An exception should be made for the Analytics, Reports, and Dashboards section, where I admittedly skipped some study because I didn’t like the topic at that time. I probably answered the other topics without understanding the question, or some of the topics I studied were not as clear in my mind as I expected (for the Security and Access section, I had another blast a few months after I cleared this exam as I had to design the whole sharing configuration for one of my company’s biggest customers!).

All of this is to let you know that we can all make mistakes and fail a certification, but you can get a lot of experience just by preparing and appearing for a single exam.