Month: January 2016

I feel like Shera Princess of Power this week! I finally passed the Advance Admin certification!

Phew… what a load off of my mind.  The moment I passed I wanted to jump up and scream “YES! Take that!” but I maintained my composer and calmly walked out of the room with my 3 sheets of paper and pencil to check out.

How in the world did I do it? 15 weeks of Deepa Patel’s  Salesforce Certification Study Group with Tami Esling as my instructor plus weeks of Salesforce TrailHead and the support of my family and Salesforce User Group. I loved the study group. You are with your peers learning together. The instructor provides an assignment each week that really tests your knowledge. TrailHead is a similar path, but what I found valuable were the challenge questions. The questions are in the same voice as the cert exam questions. I also enjoyed the videos provided.

My pro tip for you is to use your 3 sheets of paper. I know that someone somewhere in my Salesforce life told me to use the 3 sheets of paper before, but they never said why or how. Well with a little help from the study group I found out the best use for this magical paper.

I’m a high anxiety, the bar is too high person; one that should probably not drink coffee but does. I’m really good at worrying myself into a hole of doubt and lack of confidence. To help with this Tami Esling shared a very valuable tip in the last session of our study group: use the magical paper!

Here is how: number from 1-60 in columns on the first sheet of paper. As you work through the exam mark the numbers.

• X out the number if you know your answer is correct. This will help you to gauge how many you have correct on your first pass.
• Circle the number if you don’t know the answer and mark it for review in the exam.
• If you have an idea of the answers that are not correct for a number write them down and cross them out. You can also mark the answers that you think are correct.  Mark the question for review in the exam.

Once you have done your first pass, count the numbers you have X’ed out. You have to get 40 correct to pass the exam. If you are well passed that you can review your marked for review and you are all set!

In addition to the first piece of paper, I used the other paper to write down the order of operations and some of the service console and knowledge items that I knew I needed to remember. This let me feel at ease that I had the info handy if I need it and could let that part out of my mind.

One last thing that helped me was to schedule the exam on a Monday after I could spend the weekend cramming in any last minute studying. I locked myself in the home office to re-watched videos, review my notes and research anything the I may have found challenging. The morning of my exam I did a quick pump up meditation and looked myself in the mirror, eye to eye and said “You are a ROCKSTAR! You know this, go NAIL IT!”

Best of luck to all that start this quest. You too are amazing and can be Shera Princess of Power!