Studying for certs: the method to my madness

Since the moment I laid eyes on Trailhead and Salesforce, I was hooked on their gamified hands-on modules and skill-focused certifications. I love to learn and the gamification of Trailhead and the sense of accomplishment through achieving certifications make it really easy for me to stay motivated to learn more and just keep going.

Credentials also offer a way for me to browse Trailhead, the Partner Learning Camp and other resources with a clear focus in mind. I’m sure without it I’d get hopelessly lost in the wealth of content. In addition, they can also help guide you towards where you want to go. It might not always be easy to get a chance to work with a certain product or take on a certain role, but getting the relevant credentials can help demonstrate your enthusiasm, ambition and drive towards your company and leadership. This doesn’t mean that you will automatically or immediately become a full-fledged architect after getting architect credentials, but it can help in having the right knowledge to be more proactive in your role and spearhead your growth towards your goal.

How we learn

Before jumping into how I learn, I want to take a moment to dive into how learning works in our brains. While the way we process information may differ from person to person (reading, listening, doing, explaining, etc.), the way to retain information is the same: through repetition.

Our brain and knowledge can be considered as a network of connected concepts. There are two important characteristics to how these connections facilitate surfacing information:

• The stronger connections are, the easier it is for us to surface information. The way to strengthen these connections is through repetition. My psycholinguistics professor described this well by using the analogy of plowing your way through a thick layer of snow. The first time you take a certain path through the snow, it requires quite a bit of effort and might advance slowly. However, each time you follow the same path, the effort gets less and less. It works the same way for accessing information: something you access only sporadically is more difficult to remember than something you access every day. Repetition is key.
• The more connections we have to certain pieces of information, the easier they are to surface. For me, the easiest way to learn is to make sure I understand the underlying concepts and principles and tie them back to familiar topics. By breaking down information into smaller pieces and broadening the associations to these pieces to both existing and new knowledge, the task of retaining this information becomes less daunting and the effort to learn them becomes smaller. An example of this is the concept of attributes: attributes can be considered as elements that store information which can vary per instance. Regardless of whether we are talking about variables in a Flow, parameters in an Apex method, fields on an object or columns in a CRM Analytics dataset, the concept is the same.

This idea of connections ties back to the steps of the learning process which I discussed in Digesting the CTA knowledge bite by bite: understand, associate, reproduce and apply.

How I learn

My process of learning has evolved over time - and I’m sure I will keep tweaking it as I go - and while my approach might work very well for me, it might not work for you. The goal of this article is not to dictate how you should study, but offer some insights and perhaps inspiration by sharing my way of studying, so take what you like and drop what you don’t.

My first stop in setting my sights on a certification is the exam guide. I want to get an understanding of what the exam is about, what concepts (outline) it tests and how it weighs one compared to the others. The bullets described in the exam outline will become a kind of checklist throughout my study process to ensure I’m focusing on the right topics. 

From this exam guide or credential overview, I also get my first taste of recommended resources in the shape of a trailmix, trail or module which Salesforce recommends you complete before taking the exam (see the Recommended Training and References section in the exam guide or the Study & Prepare section in the credential overview). Next, I check the Partner Learning Camp to see if they offer a “Get to Know”, “Fast Path” or “Prepare for the … Certification Exam” curriculum. Finally, I search Trailhead for relevant content by entering certain keywords or using the filters for a specific product or role. Aside from getting a lot of great modules and projects (and superbadges if you’re lucky) on the content of the exam, I always like to find “Cert Prep” trails and modules as well as “Certification Maintenance” modules to keep to the end of my preparation and help me gauge if I missed any key concepts.

Afterwards, I gather all these resources in a “raw notes” document which I will later to use to create more concise and refined notes (see Digesting the CTA knowledge bite by bite). However, this raw notes document also becomes my ‘to do’-list of what resources I need to read, view or complete which helps in the next step: planning. Once I know which resources I need to go through, I can estimate how much time I’ll need to go through them, include a bit of buffer and set a goal on when I will take the exam. I like to set a goal that is realistic, has some contingency in case something goes wrong but still challenges me to keep a steady pace in going through the resources. Usually, I schedule the exam at this point too to make the deadline more concrete. If I finish my preparation earlier than planned, I move up my exam date.

After going through everything and refining the notes, I read the refined note multiple times, indicating areas which could use another read before testing / validating my knowledge. If possible, I test my knowledge on the sample questions Salesforce provides in the “Cert Prep” modules. While these may not be fully representative of the actual exam questions you’ll receive, they do help you identify areas you may not feel entirely comfortable with and need to research a bit further. In addition, I reread the exam outline to check I feel confident in each of the sections and bullets within them.

When it comes to the exam: slow and steady wins the race. I make sure to read questions and answers carefully and mark those where I have doubts. Usually, I trust my gut feeling when it comes to the marked questions and stick to my initial answer, but it can happen that rereading the question helps put the answers into perspective.

If you’ve done all this, you’re just one Submit-button-click away from knowing your result (which I hope will show a PASS). Before wishing you luck in your exam preparations, I’d like to end on some final tips I wanted to share:

• Don’t hesitate to add additional content where you feel it may be beneficial. Maybe you’re studying for a product certification for which playgrounds and trial orgs are not easily available so you want to add some videos demoing the product (such as Marketing Cloud or CDP). Maybe you’re tackling complex content which may warrant some more expert explanation (such as identity flows or LDV migrations).
• Make sure you trust the source of your information. Sharing study notes can speed up your study time, but if these notes are incomplete, outdated or incorrect, you may end up underprepared or misinformed for the exam and jeopardize your chances.
• Above all else, don’t cheat as you will only cheat yourself. Having a certain certification means people will expect you to have a certain level of knowledge on the related topic and people will catch on really, really quickly if you don’t meet this expectation. Not to mention that cheating is of course in violation of Salesforce’s Exam Candidate Code of Conduct. I can go on and on and write an entire article about this topic alone, but instead I’ll refer back to Kevin Poorman who said it best:

Certifications, Regardless of the ecosystem, exist for a number of reasons. First and foremost is to ensure that you know what the heck you’re talking about. Can you imagine a doctor or a pilot asking around for their certification and licensure exam questions? (@codefriar, Twitter, July 19th)

The talks

If you’re still with me and want to hear (specific parts of) my study method again, you may want to check out this session I did:

• SAIMA Session 9: How to study? & How to run a study group?