Salesforce regularly releases and updates its certifications to ensure skills remain current. Like many other Trailblazers out there, you may feel the need to earn them all!
This Salesforce certification map should help you choose the right career path for you. You’ll find which certifications you’ll need to progress, and the recommended amount of experience.
Dividing the certifications into pathways was not an easy task – what this proves is that a career with Salesforce can take many different turns. Trailblazers can choose their next step from a range of options.
We chose the following paths, and gave them each a color:
- Associate
- Admin/Specialist
- Developer
- Consultant
- Architect
- Marketer
- Designer
- Artificial Intelligence
Although you can blaze your own path, some rules must be followed. Some certifications have prerequisites (certifications that you need to pass before attempting your target certification), which form the backbone of the pathways. For example, before you can take the Platform Administrator II exam, you must have passed the first Platform Admin exam.
The dotted lines show which certifications are related to each other, but are not strictly prerequisites. We didn’t want to leave these path options off the certification landscape!
You will find the recommended experience in months or years on each certification, in line with Salesforce’s suggestion. An important approach to certifications is for candidates to have real-life experience working with these products.
Certifications may be one thing, but the hands-on, tangible experience will be more valuable in the long run – something that is hard to test in a multiple-choice exam. However, Salesforce has written questions to filter out inexperienced professionals.
A couple of outliers to note:
- CPQ Administrator: Neither a core administrator nor a consultant.
- Platform App Builder: Part of the architect pathway, but most popular among admins.
Summary
Salesforce’s certification pathways offer Trailblazers plenty of options to further their careers and improve their skills, with each path providing distinct opportunities. You can choose your path, but bear in mind any prerequisite requirements, and that real-world experience is useful before advancing.
No matter which direction you decide to follow, Salesforce certifications can open new doors for you. Which path will you choose? Let us know in the comments!
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