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Salesforce Certification Exam Dumps – Are They Worth It?

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Have you ever considered using ‘exam dumps’? If you’re studying for a Salesforce certification exam, there’s a high chance you would have come across exam question dumps – so today, I’m going to be talking about what they are, and most importantly, if they are worth it.

This post was adapted from the Careerforce video: “Salesforce Exam Dumps – Are They Worth It?”. You can watch the video below, or choose to read the summary:

What are Exam Dumps?

Salesforce exam dumps are a list of questions that are going to be on the test, and a list of the answers to those questions.

Clearly, that’s an extremely easy way to get a Salesforce certification, which is what makes them intriguing.

However, it’s also cheating – and at the end of the day, it’s not going to help you at all in actually becoming better at Salesforce.

How Do You Find Exam Dumps Online?

There are a few different ways to get these exam dumps.

You’re going to see exam dumps prevalent in large Salesforce groups and forums on Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn etc.

Typically, you’re going to see something like: ‘Salesforce training from this person’. Turns out, you’re not directly talking to anyone! They say ‘call this number’ or ‘message me’, and when you do, they’re going to ask you for some nominal fee eg. $20 to send all the answers to go pass the certification exam.

You can also find websites that are just free exam dumps. Or, not ‘free’ exam dumps, but Salesforce exam dumps where you pay for these exams, again a nominal fee $20, $30.

Again, this is clearly cheating and really poor etiquette for getting your Salesforce certification.

Where’s Your ‘Grit’?

If you’re feeling tempted to use exam dumps, all you need to do is focus and have some ‘grit’.

Go out there and get on Trailhead and study for the certifications. Get the Salesforce study guides, use websites like Focusonforce or Salesforceben.com, or at the very least use sites like Quizlet to make your own free flashcards. All of this salesforce training is free and accessible for you to actually go learn yourself!

Enough said, let’s move on to the repercussions of using these exam dumps.

Why You Should Avoid Exam Dumps

What you’re trying to do is skip ahead,when you’re not actually qualified for the certification yet. The problem with this is that, yes it may help you land a job, but you’re going to get fired from that job…immediately.

Chances are you’re never going to even pass a job interview if you don’t actually know how to use Salesforce. The interviewer will be asking questions related to your Salesforce Admin, Developer or marketing role.

I sometimes see some of these people online who have 10, 15, or more, Salesforce certifications but they don’t have a job – a red flag for hiring managers! Why is that? Maybe it’s because they don’t actually know how to use Salesforce, but they figured out a way to get the certifications.

What happens if it turns out you used an exam dump to pass your certification test? Or what if you had someone else take the test for you?

The Salesforce certification program agreement bottom line is that you will have all of your certifications terminated. Even if you studied for three or four certification tests on your own and then you cheated on the fifth, they will terminate all of your certifications and you will not be allowed to get another salesforce certification in the future. This is, effectively, going to tarnish your ability to have a career in Salesforce – a huge price to pay if you consider what Salesforce can do for you as a long-term career.

Salesforce Takes Action

Salesforce actually has an article called ‘together we can maintain the integrity of the salesforce credentialing program’, where they show the guidelines. You have to sign off on this any time you take a certification test, the little “I agree to the terms and conditions” checkbox; that’s where you are agreeing to the certification program agreement and the policies within it.

They also give us a way to submit a case if we come across exam dump sites and postings on social sites so that they can look into who those people are.

Summary

Hopefully this has been an eye-opening look into Salesforce exam question dumps and the repercussions of using or publishing them on websites or social media sites. Number one they’re useless, because you don’t actually learn anything, and number two, they’re actually going to get your certifications stripped away.

Clearly, it’s best to go to sites like Trailhead, start training. And do your bit to maintain the integrity of the certifications that we are all earning ourselves.

This post was adapted from the Careerforce video: “Salesforce Exam Dumps – Are They Worth It?” Watch more Salesforce career videos on the Careerforce channel.

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15 thoughts on “Salesforce Certification Exam Dumps – Are They Worth It?”

  2. Laurence Hall

    Reply

    I agree that dumps get you little bang for your buck. There a practice quiz sets that help hone in on the gaps in your knowledge which makes it easier to open a playground/dev org and then implement the concept(s) at hand. You undoubtedly gain more in this sense and also extra beneficial knowledge. If you’re aiming for mastery this is the only way in my opinion. Salesforce is talented at writing cryptic questions where the answers slightly vary and a critical mind will help you pass.

  6. PEDRO A PRADA

    Reply

    Bradley, what are your thoughts on people who take exams WITHOUT any preparation…. testing their luck to pass the minimum threshold based solely on “experience” and never take the time to go over the material that is covered under the certification?

    1. EJ

      Reply

      I think Focus on Force does not use questions from the real exams. They might be similar but they are not the same. I have found their studying material really useful, but just getting their practice tests is not going to take you very far if you do not have the knowledge.

  8. James

    Reply

    Nice Article. I totally agree with your point that sometimes it happens that people have 10, 15, or more, Salesforce certifications but they don’t have a job – a red flag for hiring managers! The people should have the practical experience of the Salesforce and they should more focus on getting the things done practically rather than searching for dumps over the online space.

  9. Mr Himanshu Patel

    Reply

    Part of the problem is with Salesforce as well. The way they ask the exam questions are wrong, so confusing, outdated and provided options with half/no information. Some questions are just plain dumb with only one answer.
    I have completed 16 certifications and conclude that for a strong learner exams have no improvement in their knowledge. I work in Salesforce consultancy with more 10 big clients. Rarely seen edge case which I have learnt from exam.

    And price of each exam is a joke. We have to agree that some people can’t afford the resit. It is waste of time and money for something they will never use or find from Google . They don’t want to take chance hence using the dumps. For me company was paying me.

    2. EJ

      Reply

      I have to agree with most of this. There are certain certification that are not particularly realistic or useful proving the individual’s knowledge. The best example of this is the Platform developer ones. It would be much more realistic to have a timed assignment instead (or even not timed) of a multiple choice question test. My understanding is that Salesforce has licensed the certification testing to Kryterion, but want to eventually take this back and utilize trailhead instead, which makes so much more sense. They already started doing this with the maintenance exams, which has been much better in my opinion.

      1. Andy

        Reply

        Man, having just taken and passed (barely) platform dev 1, I couldn’t agree more. I have been developing in SFDC for 7 years and finally got around to taking the cert (little incentive since I love my job, but finally got around to it). The questions are so edge case, and silly. I don’t really have any limitations writing Apex, but there were so many super granular syntactic questions about little-used functions, features and EXACT SYNTAX that it was borderline offensive. I have probably tens of thousands of lines of my own code on my local machine that I can and do reference when building something and I don’t NEED to remember the “3 limitations of calling a custom interface,” a question like that does not evaluate my competence as a developer AT ALL.

        Many excellent developers do not remember exact syntax when sitting down to write. Hell, I would be hard-pressed to sit down and write a start, execute, finish, schedule shell for a batch without reference and I’ve written TONS of batches and can double-loop through nested maps in my sleep. Dev exams should be:

        – Challenge-based
        – Timed
        – Remote, with the taker required to be on video and sharing his or her screen
        – Salesforce Platform Documentation and Developer Community as allowed reference websites

        As they exist they’re a disservice to the SFDC dev community. The dev Superbadges, on the other hand, are excellent, though there are far too many solutions shared on github and I wish SFDC had a way to DMCA those.

  10. Charles

    Reply

    I think what you’re missing here is taking a critical eye towards the exam itself. Does the exam actually prove that someone knows more about the topic than someone who didn’t pass the exam… and I’d argue very strongly that it doesn’t… in any way. This is the biggest problem with modern education. The test is little more than a test of how easily you can memorize anecdotes about the topic in question. Questions like “Which of the following objects are part of the standard Salesforce deployment?” and my answer? Who cares. That only matters prior to deploy and you’re going to spend the vast majority of your career post-install. lol Do you actually need to know that to be a good, or even great admin? Not at all… you’d just open the application and look. It doesn’t matter what the default objects are, ever… there cold be a patch or an update that adds NEW objects months from now… now what good does having that old info memorized do you? It actually hurts you. You need to check EVERY TIME. And really, that’s what Salesforce should be testing. Can you setup and deploy a new salesforce org based on guidelines provided in the test challenge? The only argument against such a test would be that it’s harder to grade pass/fail, etc… but that’s just a silly argument. We’re already paying $200+ to take the test, and Salesforce could charge just about anything they wanted to within reason. So there really isn’t any excuse for such a lack-luster test. I’ve admins working with me that I know for a fact passed the test legitimately, and they’re terrible at their jobs. I know they have fantastic memories though! So, do I approve of cheating? Well no… but I just do not think the salesforce certs hold any value at all, and that’s entirely the fault of salesforce themselves. The trailhead badges prove far more to me in my mind.

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