A couple months ago, I Threw Down the Certification Gauntlet to become Certified Technical Architect (CTA) eligible by the end of this year and a couple weeks ago, I completed it. While it was a lot of work, especially the last two certifications, I had a lot of fun because I learned a ton and the community, aka Ohana, was very supportive. Some people said they felt inspired to get certified too, which is a nice, unintended benefit. Interested in getting certified too? Checkout my Get Salesforce Certified and Salesforce Certification Tips for some other info.
Challenge #2
Get 5 more certifications by the end of this year excluding CTA. Why 5? I like to set the bar high but mostly that’s the number of other certifications I’m currently interested in.
Wanted Certifications
Admin– Passed 6/8/2018. Study Guide- Advanced Admin
- Sales Cloud
- Service Cloud
Community Cloud– Passed 6/15/2018. Study Guide
First up will be Admin because it’s a prerequisite of the others. That’s scheduled for 6/8. After going through all the Architect Designer certs and having worked with Salesforce since 2011, this should be, knock on wood, easy. I’m still going to go through all the resource guide resources to cover my butt. Stay tuned for an Admin study guide coming later this week.
Why Not CTA Next?
Preparing for the CTA is a huge undertaking and at this time, I feel like getting these other certifications will help round out my knowledge because Sales Cloud and Service Cloud are items I could use more knowledge in. Also, CTAs are expected to know this material despite not being explicitly listed in the Architect Pyramid.
Furthermore, I’ve thought about becoming an official Salesforce consulting partner, which requires having at least 2 consulting certifications. Luckily, Platform Developer I counts towards it so I’d only need Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, or Community Cloud to satisfy it.
One other very minor reason for wanting to do 5 more is I’d like to be 15X certified like Peter Knolle or Quindecuple Certified as he puts it on his twitter profile.
What are your certification goals for this year?
CTA is a pretty hard undertaking. Even I’ve the goal of completing all the Designer certs by the end of 2018.
Let’s see how it goes.
Atul,
Based on your excellent blog and user group, you’re gonna totally accomplish getting the other certs.