Salesforce certifications have long been a great method for “upskilling” and proving that you have the knowledge needed to perform a certain role.
But while up-and-coming admins, developers, and architects might be dreaming of scoring that big job straight after getting certified, the value of these qualifications has become something of a “hot potato” issue in the ecosystem – with some saying it may even be a “red flag” for employers if you take the wrong approach.
Why So Many Certifications?
Historically, most entry-level and experienced jobs have required applicants to have the Salesforce Administrator certification, making it a popular starting point for many.
It seems a no-brainer for someone looking to break into the Salesforce ecosystem to get admin certified as soon as possible, the same way someone looking to become a professional driver in some capacity should probably make getting their driving license a priority.
But while the question of “Where do I start?” has a rather simple answer (the admin certification, for most), the path from there becomes a bit foggier, with around 50 certifications in total now available for ecosystem members.
These can be handily broken down into particular roles, with qualifications built specifically for associates, admins, designers etc., but with so many now available, has this led to a devaluation of getting certified?
While most jobs will require a certain certification, does that necessarily mean more is better? And for someone new to the ecosystem, or just looking to break into a different role, is it even worth spending those hours on Trailhead when you don’t yet have experience in your desired field?
We spoke to ecosystem insiders about their thoughts on whether Salesforce certifications are “dying”, and how many is too many…
Luke Freeland: “You Ask the Most Basic Things and They Can’t Even Answer”
Salesforce Technical Architect and Consultant Luke Freeland said that the administrator certification was always seen as the entry-level qualification to let people know you understand the basics of the platform, but from there you can pick the path you want to focus on.
He told Salesforce Ben: “I’ve always been more of a developer and on the technical path towards architect. I’ve been CTA eligible for years now, and I think CTA would be nice to have – but [it’s] not a requirement. I feel like I possess those skills without the stamp of Salesforce’s approval.”
Given the hefty price tag for the exam – coming in at $6,000 – the benefit of having it simply does not seem worth the cost, Luke said.
But on the other hand, he believes that having the admin cert is “definitely beneficial”, along with more of the consultant certifications which are “fairly challenging” because, instead of just knowing the technology, they give you different problems and scenarios to deal with.
“You actually have to apply your knowledge to pick the right option,” Luke said. “You have to have the knowledge and the requisite experience to know which option to use and it’s not always an easy choice. I place more value in the consultant, sales cloud, and service cloud certifications more so than others.”
Luke, who has 15 certs himself, says the associate certifications seemed a bit too easily attainable and that there is less value in those certs. He adds that, as an independent consultant/contractor, having that credibility seemed valuable to employers, clients, and customers, so he decided to get “a bunch of them”.
Luke says that instead of just learning something for the sake of learning, he would use the certifications as a kind of “carrot” to continue his education, which would incentivize him to expand his knowledge about Salesforce. But he also spoke of his experience as a “salaried person” who was interviewing lots of different candidates, primarily developers, and meeting people who have certifications but lack critical knowledge of their field.
Luke said: “I’ve met so many people who have certifications and you ask them the most basic things and they can’t even answer it. I’m like, ‘How’d you pass the test?’”
He added that he put a lot of stock in the Force.com advanced developer certification because it was not just multiple choice, it was closer to the CTA exam today.
“You had to do the multiple choice portion of step one and then you had an actual programming assignment that you had a month to do,” Luke said. “Then when you were ready to submit it, Salesforce cut off access to you and then you actually had people at Salesforce reviewing your work and giving you a grade and feedback. You then had to do an essay portion when you passed that.”
He revealed how having passed that exam, he put a lot of credibility into others who had done that, because you had to actually show you could program:
“While I think [certifications are] definitely nice to have and they definitely show that you’re willing to learn, I think that, in and of itself, they’re usually good enough for entry-level jobs. But to really distinguish yourself, you’ve got to do more than that to be competitive in today’s job market.”
Vicki Mortiz-Henry: “People Are Doing the Pokemon Game; Trying to Collect Them All”
Salesforce Administrator-turned-Architect and co-founder of Automation Dreamin’, Vicki Moritz-Henry, thinks certifications are simply part of a greater whole, and different things work for different people.
She told Salesforce Ben: “I know people in the ecosystem who have been there for 20 years longer than I have and have zero or one certification, and, as a hiring manager, I would absolutely hire them based on their work experience.”
On the other hand, Vicki says there are people who have up to 40 certifications, which shows a different set of values in terms of a career path.
“It depends on whether people are doing the Pokemon game where they’re trying to collect them all, or whether they’re actually using it as part of their learning path and progressing their career,” she added.
Speaking as someone who has experience hiring admins, she said she would “never” choose someone based solely on their certifications or ability to “pass a multiple choice exam”. Instead, she would look for what kind of projects they have worked on, and what kind of portfolio they can show her; something which shows a desire to learn, rather than just relying on certifications.
When asked whether there could now be some “inflation” in terms of Salesforce certifications – with around 50 in total now available – Vicki said she does not believe so, because Salesforce has come up with so many products, and the qualifications align with them.
“As long as Salesforce keeps offering many different products and keeps expanding the product catalog, you need the certifications to go along with that so that you’re learning that skill set,” she said.
“It shows that you have the knowledge and that you’re good at passing an exam, but you need to have hands-on experience alongside that to be successful.”
We asked Vicki about the emerging role of AI – particularly Agentforce – in Salesforce’s business strategy, and whether expertise in this field could become a new starting point in someone’s career, similar to administrator or developer roles.
She said: “I actually find that some people don’t come in as developers or admins. They come in from the marketing side with a marketing background. We’ve seen that with the BA role. You also might just come in and do project management and BA work without ever taking the admin and necessarily needing that technical understanding of the platform.
“So, I would see AI probably being one of those entry points. It may or may not be as big as the admin and the developer entry points, but there are multiple points of entry that we don’t always talk about.”
Giving her final thoughts on whether certifications are “dying”, or which ones are the most valuable, she said it was important to find what fits someone’s own unique career path. For one person, it could be that certifications are very valuable, and having a goal of getting five per year is attainable and helpful, whereas for others it simply might not be the right fit.
She added: “I think as long as you’re doing something that fits you and your style and your values in where you want to go, that’s the most important thing. There’s very polarized arguments about yes to certs or no to certs, but actually, if you take a step back, it might be a different answer for each person.”
Peter Chittum: “It’s Never a True Gauge of Talent”
Peter Chittum, Salesforce ecosystem influencer and Developer Relations Advisor at Westview 1, told Salesforce Ben there were more important things than certifications – though they did still have value.
He said: “A certification wouldn’t do any harm – go ahead and get one, especially if your employer will pay. But in a job shortage, I don’t know if 10 certifications helps you break in. Maybe one, but get busy building something!”
Peter was asked if, with so many certifications now available, has this led to a devaluation of getting certified? And in previous years, were they seen as more valuable than they are now?
He replied: “I don’t expect that they get devalued as a whole. But the value of any certification lies in the market for that skill and how many people know it. For instance, how many Education Cloud projects are there out there? How many people have that certification?
“From our perspective, it’s difficult to say. But I wouldn’t think, on aggregate, more certifications devalues them all… unless there is a confusion factor in clients being able to rationalize about them and make sense of which maps to what kind of project expertise.”
Peter says that, in his opinion, developer-focused certs are the least valuable.
“Being able to prove developer chops can be done a host of different ways more effectively than a multiple-choice test,” he said.
He added that he doubts Salesforce profits from certifications, with the revenue they generate likely a “rounding error” to the cloud giant. The individual may get some better job prospects early in their career, or in learning a new skill, but soon, past project experience will trump that, according to Peter.
When working for a Salesforce partner, certifications will “always” be valuable because this is one of the factors for how Salesforce rates partner tiers, meaning you can’t be a platinum partner without however many certifications.
Peter says: “Certified technical architect (CTA) is the only one that I would say offers a real-world value to an individual. But this requires experience (unlike pretty much the rest of them). You can’t get CTA without implementation experience. But that’s why they created the lower-level architect certifications – to help onramp folks into the CTA.”
Putting himself in the shoes of a hiring manager, Peter said he would look for around 1-2 certifications for an entry-level position, then correlate certs with experience in what he was hiring for.
He adds: “But, having been a developer/engineering manager of a sort, I would also look for open source code contributions on community forums [and focus on] the quality of what they share. There are a lot of ways to pick up signals as to what people know. If their public persona doesn’t match up, I might still interview them, but I would dig into that discrepancy.”
Peter’s bottom line: “Certification is to show a minimum level of knowledge. It’s never a true gauge of expertise or talent.”
Paul Battisson: “Certifications Will Never Be Killed Off”
Paul Battisson, Founder and CEO of Salesforce app delivery service Groundwork Apps, says certifications are important, but they should be done to prove you have the knowledge already; rather than as a way of learning.
Paul added: “Certifications are not dead and will never be killed off in my opinion. Certifications offer value by confirming that an individual has shown they have a baseline set of knowledge.
“The experience and understanding of how to apply that knowledge in the most appropriate manner is the human element where value is provided to a customer or end user.
“Taking a requirement and constructing a well-thought-out and scalable solution that utilizes the platform and products most effectively.”
He points out that certification guides from Salesforce always include a recommended experience prerequisite, hinting that they are intended to be used as a way of proving existing knowledge.
Paul adds: “Even as roles blur, being able to show that you have experience and knowledge through certification will be helpful in maintaining a baseline for comparison and provides confidence for customers.”
Jennifer Olson: “If You Have Zero Experience and 12 Certifications, It Doesn’t Look Good”
Salesforce Solution Architect Jennifer Olson, who has an impressive 16 certifications under her belt, says the qualifications are necessary for getting into the ecosystem.
Getting the administrator certification would be a good first step to prove you know what you’re talking about, and from there, if you’re still looking for a job and you have the time, it may still be valuable to keep working on some base certifications like platform app builder, Jennifer said.
But she told Salesforce Ben: “If you have zero experience and you have 12 certifications, it doesn’t look good. I’ve talked to hiring managers and I know myself. I start to wonder, when I see people posting on LinkedIn, they might have 20 certifications, but they’ve never worked in Salesforce… to me, you’re a good test taker, but you have to be able to apply it.”
She said that people looking for a job, who don’t have experience, should not simply carry on getting certifications.
“Once you get to three [certifications], if you don’t have experience, do personal projects and showcase them, because you need that hands-on experience,” she said.
“I think the toughest part is when you don’t have experience and you’re working on it, you’re only thinking what you can think of, you don’t actually have a client use case, and client use cases can be very, very complicated. They can go outside the box with things you haven’t thought of, which is great to get experience. But in the meantime, I think you need to do personal projects and not just for yourself.”
Before she landed her first role, Jennifer got together with a group of people who were all in the same boat and decided to come up with a project, emulating something that could happen in the real world.
The scenario they came up with was: There are two people getting married, and they want to send a QR code instead of having people RSVP in antiquated ways like sending a reply in the mail. Once the code gets scanned, the system needs to be able to record someone as “attending”, assign them a table, and various other automatic tasks that would be completed.
Crucially, the group decided to not work on one unified project but to come up with their own unique orgs, which they could showcase themselves, with a thorough understanding of how everything in it works – rather than working on a single org as a team, leading to each person only having limited knowledge.
This would mean that while group members would meet once a week to discuss and solve problems together, each person would have all the requisite knowledge of how the org worked and would be able to answer questions about it in interviews.
Jennifer said: “That is really important because if you do a group project and you only own parts of it, you can speak to those, but when you go into an interview and they ask you about something else and you don’t have any knowledge, it’s tough.
“Not that you have to have a full 100% knowledge of Salesforce – it’s too big. But you can hone in on the basics – so we did that.”
The group also started promoting each other on LinkedIn during the run-up to Dreamforce 2022, using Jennifer’s marketing background knowledge to effectively cross-promote. She said:
“I think that’s more valuable than trying to get a bunch of certifications, things like that. I know there are things out there where you can work for a volunteer organization, but I think the problem with that is you can mess up their org.
“But if you have somebody mentoring you, somebody that works at maybe a nonprofit, and they bring you in and they’re checking your work, you’re fine. But I think getting experience over certs at a certain point is better.
“And my I would say the first maybe three two to three certs, you should be having projects under your belt and promoting yourself. So it’s not just about the certifications.”
Jennifer added that consultancies are going to push you to get certifications, and you can go along with that and become a “good test taker”. But when that happens, it might be useful to not simply do the qualifications, but to say, “Okay but I want to be on projects using them because I want the knowledge”.
She added that she has a friend who is a hiring manager who believes that it’s not necessarily the number of certifications you get that matters, it’s more about what you are going to do with it. Jennifer said: “I just think it’s a waste of time to get a cert that you think you’ll use and you don’t have any practical knowledge of.”
Andy Engin Utkan: “Employers Want Experience With CICD Pipelines… Not Just Certifications”
Andy Engin Utkan, founder of Salesforce Break and Flow Canvas Academy, says there has been an “inflation” of certifications, and he’s not sure that even hiring managers know or understand all of them. He told Salesforce Ben that it was important to bear in mind what happened to the job market, especially through the pandemic, when it comes to determining how valuable certifications are.
He said: “What happened throughout the pandemic is the demand for consultants was really high, consultants and admins, and pretty much everyone was working remotely, and that kind of leveled the playing field in the United States.
“The income levels for the same positions across the states used to be very different and many employers started offering the same salaries [as competitors].
“I think pretty much all the hiring managers think experience trumps certifications. If you have experience, relevant experience, if you can speak to that, show your skills, that’s much better than certifications. If you have certifications on top of that, that’s icing on the cake.
“But in the end, because the hiring was so hot, the big consultancies and some of the smaller ones, they were super eager to bring on some of the inexperienced people. When they did that, they didn’t really have a lot of experience to go around among those candidates, they would say, okay – you need these certifications. They themselves offered a lot of training programs.”
Now, Andy says, when you look at the current job market, it’s harder to find a position in the United States, amid lay-offs and lower demand for consultancies.
“People are looking to save money now rather than spending. In the past when they had leftover budget around this time of the year, they would just spend it. Now people are spending less. Some are moving out of Salesforce, some are downscaling it… top of mind right now is to save money, and at the same time find a good use for AI to deliver faster, to be more efficient, to cut costs.”
He said this affects the world of certifications because in the past, typically what would happen is someone with an admin cert would be taken on by an employer willing to train them, but nowadays you don’t really find businesses motivated to do that.
“If you analyze the positions and the listings on job boards, you see that people are posting admin positions and they want Apex, Visualforce, they want experience with CICD pipelines and all kinds of stuff – not only the certifications.”
Despite all that, having the qualifications is still valuable, Andy says. He added that what employers tend to do in the current job market – where positions typically get flooded with applications – is ask for people with advanced administrator or platform developer 1 as requirements, to narrow the candidate pool down.
“I would say the basic ones are still very important, and also specializations. If that particular job is in field service, then they will want the field service certification.”
Evan Ponter: “Nobody’s Going to Hire You For Something Called Salesforce Administrator if You Don’t Have the Certification”
Salesforce Consultant Evan Ponter told Salesforce Ben the value of certifications depends on each person’s journey. Speaking of his own career, he said he started as an “accidental admin” and didn’t have any certifications but wanted more Salesforce responsibility at the small non-profit where he was working.
When he learned there were people making a career out of Salesforce, he earned the admin and Force.com developer (equivalent to today’s App Builder) certifications in 2014. Evan said:
“For me, early on, it seemed very important to have certifications in order to get that first job because nobody’s going to hire you for something called Salesforce Administrator if you don’t have the Salesforce Administrator certification.
“But as I’ve progressed in my career, since that job, I don’t think anybody’s asked me if I have a certification.
“I tend to get about one per year, I’m not out trying to maximize my certs, but whenever I get to a point where I feel like I’m comfortable with an area that Salesforce offers certifications in, I already have the hands-on experience, then I sign up for the exam and we’ll go through the study guide on Trailhead, and take the exam.
“So I still keep up with it, I maintain it, I have, I think, 11 certifications now, and I’ve been in the Salesforce space since 2014. So, 10 years and 11 certs – and one of them came for free because I got the Certified Application Architect after clearing all the prerequisites.
“Once you get that first job, people are going to look at the projects you’ve done, the experience you have, and the way you solve a problem way more than they’re going to verify your credentials.”
When asked who he would choose to hire, in a hypothetical scenario where he was a hiring manager deciding between two equally junior people, one of whom has 10 certs and another who has between zero and two certs, Evan said the certifications would not be the deciding factor.
He added: “There’s going to be something in personality, the culture fit, and, really what I’m looking for is your problem-solving abilities, the way you think about things, and also what’s the need for the team.
“I think there’s other deciding factors. I’ve never been a hiring manager so I can’t say from experience, but I would try not to make the number of certs the tipping point for who to choose.
“There’s way too many variables: Did they just pass the exam? Do they have good experience? Do they remember what they were taught? There’s way too much to try to make that a deciding factor.”
Joey Chan: “There’s So Many Things I Wouldn’t Touch in My Daily Org if Not for the Certification”
Salesforce Architect and founder of Cloud Jedi Solutions, Joey Chan, told Salesforce Ben that getting certified these days was much easier because there are so many blogs available – both legitimate and illegitimate.
“For the question, ‘Is it still worth getting certified?’, the answer is definitely yes. I’d say having the certifications and being willing to work as a junior gives you the edge. All things equal, two junior people, same job, same salary, one person with certs, the other without any, the person with would more likely be prioritized. I would say it definitely opens the door.”
On the question of whether experience trumps everything else, he said there is still space for people with a lot of experience and very few certifications, but there is still definite value in getting the qualifications.
Joey said: “The value [in certifications] is there are so many things I wouldn’t touch in my daily org if not for the preparation for this cert. That is the value I see. Even though I know people doing admin work for 3-5 years, what is the likelihood they know the intricacies of setting up? The kind of thing you only encounter when you set up a new Salesforce instance.
“There’s all of those points because you cannot simply assume somebody knows what they’re doing because they’ve been doing it for so many years. Certifications provide a baseline knowledge – it doesn’t mean they’re an expert. I would say it’s a minimum to say you’re qualified.”
He said that he has his data cloud certificate, but would not be brave enough to do a whole project on his own. Although he could still figure it out, he would not call himself an expert simply because he has the qualification.
Joey added: “The thing is it became a game of trying to get as many as possible. I have close to 36, so it doesn’t matter for me at this point. I look up to people who are striving to get a lot of certification, as long as they’re not cheating, right – it still takes hard work!
“At the end of the day, there’s so many things that can go wrong with the Salesforce implementation. You just want to minimize that.”
He agreed that if you are willing to do things outside of work to show people you are willing to make things happen, that’s far better than simply saying you can do something. Joey believes that the value in certifications depends on what you expect to get out of them.
“You’re not going to be getting the same salary [as someone else] just because you have 10 certifications. It requires a certain amount of experience,” he said.
“There’s still so much value in certification. I’m still studying for certain things even though I shouldn’t be, to be honest.”
Final Thoughts
After speaking to several ecosystem members, a few key themes emerge on the certification issue.
Firstly, it seems that very few people say that having more certifications would be a deciding factor when choosing who to hire for a position. Things like relevant experience, cultural fit, and problem-solving skills trump the number of certifications in this scenario. On the other hand, it seems to be generally agreed that getting certified in the relevant field is a good idea when first starting out one’s Salesforce career.
No one’s going to accuse you of trying to “collect them all” for getting your first admin cert – which employers often require for entry-level positions. A point to be made in favor of certifications, as Joey Chan says, is that they make people deal with topics and issues that they would not ordinarily deal with, expanding their knowledge and experience.
But a point against them, made by Luke Freeland, is that this theory is not reflected in reality – in his own experience – with some supposedly qualified people not understanding the basics of their field.
It might be rather ambitious to try to summarize the large swathe of interesting points made by everyone I spoke to for this article, but it could perhaps be boiled down to this: If you’re trying to get your first job in the Salesforce ecosystem, then get one or two certifications and some relevant experience. Don’t just grind out more and more certs if you haven’t built something.
In this respect, we can say that certifications certainly are not dead. For newcomers, at least, they are critical to have.
But once you’ve been in for a few years, a common theme seems to be that, while there can sometimes be value in getting certified for relevant fields, this is not the ultimate measure of your skill, and there are several more important factors to consider.
So, are certifications dying? Well, they are not dead yet, but it certainly seems that more is not necessarily better – and in some cases, more can in fact be worse.
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