More Salesforce certifications are released every year, and if you’re like some Trailblazers, you have an urge to “catch ‘em all”!
Here’s a Salesforce certification map for where you can take your career. You’ll find the recommended experience and prerequisite certifications you will need to progress to the next stage. Which path will you follow?
Dividing up the certifications into pathways was not an easy task – what this proves, is that a career with Salesforce can take 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
- Developer
- Consultant
- Architect
- Marketer
- Designer
Although you are able to blaze your own path, there are rules that do need to be followed. Some certifications have prerequisites (certifications that you need to pass before you can attempt your target certification) which form the backbone of the pathways. For example, before you can take Advanced Administrator, you must have passed the Certified Administrator exam.
The dotted lines show which certifications are related to each other, but 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, but Salesforce have written their questions to oust out inexperienced professionals.
A couple of outliers to note:
- CPQ Specialist: Neither core administrator nor consultant.
- Platform App Builder: Part of the architect pathway, but most popular among admins.