Navigating Change in Certification Experience

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Dana Walton, Senior Manager of Credential Programs and Operations at Salesforce.

Join us as we chat about how the certification experience is evolving with smarter personalization, easier access, and a learning journey built just for you.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Dana Walton.

Certifications are moving to Trailhead Academy

Dana has been working on the certification team since 2015. When she started, Salesforce had nine certifications. Today, they offer 83. I sat down with her for this episode because her team is finishing a two-year project to overhaul the certification experience.

The biggest change coming is that certifications are moving to Trailhead Academy. While you can still go completely self-guided with your learning, Dana and her team are making it easier to find the help you need—whether that’s an instructor-led course or curated Trailmixes and modules.

Why skills are the most important factor in choosing new certifications

One thing that Dana wanted to know during testing was how her team could help people figure out which certifications they should work on next. She asked Salesforce MVPs how they choose new certifications to target: are they looking for things that fit a specific role? A particular product?

The answer was none of the above. The Salesforce MVPs in Dana’s testing group look for certifications based on what new skills they can learn. Armed with that knowledge, her team added a skills breakdown for each cert to make things easier to browse.

They’re also adding more personalization to your Salesforce learning journey, with AI recommendations to help you plan your roadmap. Dana emphasizes that these are recommendations, not requirements. Your certification experience can still be completely self-guided; they’ve just added a helping hand.

Why certification is the final step on your learning journey

If she could give one piece of advice to admins looking for the next steps in their Salesforce learning journey, it’s that you need to look at every possible pathway. “Certification is not how you learn,” she says, “it’s how you prove the skills and knowledge that you’ve already learned.”

Go to Trailhead, reach out to the community, or find a mentor who can help you understand what you’re getting into and create achievable goals for yourself. And then, when you’re ready, certification will be a breeze.

Be sure to listen to the full episode for more from my conversation with Dana about what’s coming next for the certification experience. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us in your feed every Thursday.

Podcast swag

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Learn more

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Full show transcript

Mike:
Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Today we’re sitting down with Dana Walton from the Salesforce certification team. Dana is here to share how the certification experience is evolving. I want you to think smarter personalization, easier access, and a learning journey built just for you. We’ll talk about the exciting move to Trailhead Academy and how it’s making certifications more accessible than ever. Be sure to stick around. I promise you’re going to walk away and be ready to take your next step in that Salesforce ecosystem. And hey, if you enjoy this episode, go ahead and give us a follow wherever you listen to podcasts. So with that, let’s get Dana on the podcast.

So, Dana, welcome to the podcast.

Dana Walton:
Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Mike:
I’m excited to talk about certification. I’ve been talking about it ever since 2008 when I first got certified, which is a super long time ago. But let’s get started with you. Tell us a little bit about how you got to Salesforce and what you do at Salesforce.

Dana Walton:
Happy to. You predate me just a little. Yes, but I mean, I think in terms of longevity, I hit Koa this year, so I’m very excited.

Mike:
Congrats. Thank you. And for those of you that don’t know, Koa is 10 years.

Dana Walton:
Yes. So my 10-year anniversary will be in June, and I have been a part of the certification team for almost all of my tenure. I joined in October 2015 because I started as a contractor and then got hired on through the certification team, and I have been a part of the growth of this program since then, and it’s been really excited to see when we first were in a very… When I joined, we only had nine certifications.

Mike:
Only. Only nine.

Dana Walton:
Only nine. Now we have 83. It’s been quite a journey.

Mike:
Wow. I didn’t know that. I’m having a moment. 83. Holy cow.

Dana Walton:
Through natural growth and then through mergers and acquisitions, we are now up to 83.

Mike:
Yeah, I didn’t really think about that. I always think of the homegrown. Somebody reminded me the other day that my Salesforce experience would be graduating from high school. I’m like, “Oh.”

Dana Walton:
It hurts when people talk like that. That’s not fair.

Mike:
Oh, well, okay. Maybe we’ll get into a good college, grow up. But honestly, I do remember that first time I took the certification. This was ’08. It was a long time ago. I had to drive 90 miles one way to a testing center. I also live in Iowa, so look, it’s fair. Salesforce was like, “Look-

Dana Walton:
It’s still extreme.

Mike:
I don’t know. We’re used to it in the Midwest. They only need one spot. I could see somebody saying, “How many people besides Mike are really going to get a certification in Iowa anyway?” But I remember taking the test. I was the only one in the room. I got done. And then there’s that moment where you’re like, “Okay, I think I’ve answered all the questions.” I click Submit, and then you’re expecting a result, and at the time, I think it asked you a followup question, “How was your certification experience or something?” I was like, “I don’t know. Just tell me if I passed or not.” I was like, “It’s great.” And then I clicked and it was pass, and I remember I stood up and shout. Really loud. I was like, “Woo-hoo,” really loud, and I kicked the chair over and the proctor ran in. I was like, “I passed.” And she’s like, “Be quiet.” I was like, “There’s nobody in here.” I was so excited.

Dana Walton:
If you did 2008, you must have been one of our beta testers because the program didn’t officially launch until 2009.

Mike:
Yeah, I was one of the first 500 for admin and for advanced admin

Dana Walton:
My goodness. Congratulations.

Mike:
Yeah. So very exciting. So this is what we’re talking about, the new certification experience.

Dana Walton:
Yes. This is-

Mike:
Go ahead. Go ahead.

Dana Walton:
Sorry. I’m really excited about this product because I’ve been working on it for two years.

Mike:
Wow

Dana Walton:
And so we’re at the finish line. We’re so close. We’re about to start user acceptance testing, so I’m really anxious to see how people are responding to what we’ve built. And the whole experience that we are building is really with the end user in mind. We rethought the entire journey of what a user would experience when it comes to how they would get started with Salesforce certifications. Where would they go to find information? And we realized that it’s a really disparate journey that we offer to our users. We assume a lot on their behalf, and we wanted to roll that back and really come at it from both an expert and a beginner mindset.

So first things first. It’s moving to Trailhead Academy, which is the learning platform of Salesforce, and we’re really excited because it brings a combined experience of both instructor-led training and certification onto the same platform. So when you go to Trailhead Academy, you are first introduced to both instructor-led courses, instructor-led training, and then you can also look up certifications, and you can start your journey wherever you choose. If you feel confident in your certification goal, you don’t have to take any classes. You can go ahead and get started and register right away, but if you want to brush up on some skills or if you’re net new, we also provide the learning resources on the exam pages that will help you out.

And it’s not just instructor-led training. We still link out to Trailhead modules and Trailmixes, and those are curated by the certification team and aligned directly to the exam objectives. So we don’t forget the learner in all of this experience, but we bring it together in a new platform that then uses single sign-on through TBID so we can continue building that journey out for you as you grow in experience through Salesforce.

Mike:
Nice. I like that. I mean, the goal is the certification, but the journey is learning and understanding everything so that you not only have the certification, but you have the knowledge behind that certification.

Dana Walton:
And we’re building in personalization too, so it’s not just you have this certification, but it helps you figure out what’s the next one on your roadmap. So if you already have started building some skills, we’re going to use algorithms and AI to suggest new skills or new certifications for you to focus on next, because a lot of questions that we get from our users is, “I’ve done this. Where do I go to after that?”

Mike:
Yeah. I mean, I think that’s always the discussion around certification. It’s always the question I get is, “Where do I start?” Even with Trailhead modules, where do I start?

Dana Walton:
It’s a lot. There’s so much that’s offered these days that figuring out that entry point can be really challenging. We have a new format for our catalog where we also highlight exams without prerequisites, so that way we’re not sending you to focus on something that you’re not ready to take. If you haven’t earned that prerequisite, you can start at the entry level and then work your way up or stay wherever you’re most comfortable.

Mike:
So in your initial introduction, we talked about 83 different certs through acquisitions and just growth, which still amazes me. I thought it was 18 or 20. I was like, “Oh, 18 or 20.” No, 83. I’d love to know, when you looked at that whole family of how everything had grown organically and through acquisitions, what were some of the challenges or opportunities that you were looking to solve in this new experience?

Dana Walton:
I think the biggest opportunity or challenge that we were focused on is the fact that our audiences are so different. When you just look at it purely from an M&A perspective, you have Slack. You have Tableau. You have MuleSoft. You have accredited professional. All of those users come from a different experience for how they get certified, for how they maintain their credential, and then we have to bring them onto the Salesforce way of doing things, which is jarring in a lot of ways, because as you know with Salesforce, we like to do our own thing. We don’t necessarily like to follow prescribed paths, and so trying to bridge the Salesforce method versus the history that those programs have can be really challenging for the audience. And so we’re trying to be mindful in how we roll that out with the, again, challenge of the fact that we’re still going to do it this way. We’re going to try and bring you on slowly.

Mike:
You also mentioned that learning journey, the personalization, and I think that’s one thing where you always have to think of… And I was a learner. I still am a learner. You’re never not a learner. Where you’re trying to go and the questions you’re trying to ask. How does that personalization work for an individual who may only know the next year or two?

Dana Walton:
Well, with all the personalization, it is recommendations, not requirements.

Mike:
Got you.

Dana Walton:
And so we will look at the skills or the product areas that overlap between credentials and really say, “Okay, based on where you are, here’s where we think you may be going.” But it is not a requirement. It is not a checkbox that you have to complete. If you decide that, “I want to pivot and do something else,” you are absolutely more than welcome to do that, and we will still support you through that journey as well.

Mike:
Got you. Yeah, it’s always trying to understand where you want to go, because the platform is so big and so vast at some points that I don’t know if there’s any one person even on your team that knows everything.

Dana Walton:
I would not assume that at all, and I think that that’s where the community is still going to be a great resource for users because we can only tell you from our experience of what we think aligns, but somebody else may out there may say, “Oh, actually, because of this really interesting job path that I took, I had these different certifications that you wouldn’t think would overlap, but they serve me really well.”

Mike:
Absolutely. I believe you said at the very beginning you’re in user feedback beta testing.

Dana Walton:
We are about to start.

Mike:
About to start.

Dana Walton:
We haven’t officially started yet, but that is our next goal.

Mike:
Okay. Okay. I was going to ask you what kind of feedback you were getting.

Dana Walton:
Well, actually, when we first introduced this project, we brought it to our MVP audience first, because before we built anything, we wanted to make sure that what we were building made sense for them.

Mike:
Okay.

Dana Walton:
Now, they are the experts, so we had to caveat that a little bit because they know Salesforce so incredibly well, and we still had to think about the people who don’t know Salesforce that well. For instance, something that I thought was really interesting from MVPs, when we were trying to segment our certifications and show different filters in the catalog, one of the things we asked them was, “What do you focus on when you’re filtering? Is it skill? Is it level? Is it role?” And I thought it would be role or product. And they completely flipped the script on that and they said, no, they want to build skills. So whenever they’re looking at a certification, they want to know what skills that aligns to and then they’ll fit it where it needs to fit. But that’s where they are in their journey.

And so we added a skills option. We put it on each certification page that this aligns to these skills to help bridge that gap of knowledge area that we hadn’t highlighted previously. We still have the ability to segment by role or segment by product, but we added this new feature as well because it was missing from the previous experience.

Mike:
Yeah. Funny story: when I did get back after taking the certification, I ran into my boss’s office, and at the time, as the admin, I reported to the president of the division. That’s a long story, but I ran in and I was like, “Is So-and-so in?” And his assistant was like, “Yep, just go ahead. Go inside.” And I ran inside. I was like, “I passed. I’m certified.” He was like, “Great, what does that mean?”

And if it had been a sitcom at that point, the sound of all of the air rushing out of a balloon would have been made. Because it’s like, ah. But the reason I get at that is a lot of career building, a lot of what you do and skill shows through the certification. So I’d love to know how this new experience helps admins, developers, members of the ecosystem track their career and grow their career.

Dana Walton:
I think that is definitely something that we will focus on for the next iteration. We have not really focused on the career side of the house yet. Well, I will say that everything that we’re doing will still integrate and update your Trailblazer profile, so we’re not taking that away from you. When you have your certifications on your Trailblazer profile, that is still the source of truth or your certification history. But when it comes to how this experience directly impacts how that reflects on your career, we’re not quite there yet. I think it is a great question and a great lens to look at, but in phase one, we’re just building the brand new platform and make sure that it functions. Phase two is really about, okay, now that this is live, what else can it do?

Mike:
Yeah, and I love pivoting off of the skills thing, because then you can also look at adjacent skills and maybe a certification will stand out to you that you weren’t previously aware. I think I did a podcast a couple episodes ago and there’s a strategic design certification.

Dana Walton:
Strategy designer, yes.

Mike:
Strategy designer, thank you, that Melissa Hill Dees brought up, and I had no idea that certification existed.

Dana Walton:
Yes. And for instance, somebody may look at strategy designer and say, “I don’t think that really applies to me,” but maybe you’re business analyst, and why wouldn’t that apply to you? Just because you’re not actually the UX designer doesn’t mean that you’re not involved in the strategy of whatever project or company or direction you’re working on.

Mike:
So let me ask, because there’s 83 and I can’t possibly know them all. Maybe you don’t. I am hearing from you that there are certifications that also include non-technical skills.

Dana Walton:
Not a ton.

Mike:
Not a ton.

Dana Walton:
But there are a few.

Mike:
Okay.

Dana Walton:
Yes. So for instance… Well, I will say our certification names are going to be changing as a part of this experience.

Mike:
Well, of course it’s Salesforce.

Dana Walton:
Of course.

Mike:
We change the name all the time.

Dana Walton:
So I’m going to reference the old name right now, but if people are listening once the experience is live, those names may have changed. Quick caveat. But for instance, sales representative. That is not a technical focus. That is an end-user focus. It is about what key skills, core concepts, do you have as an end user in Salesforce that you need to be able to apply to your job?

Mike:
I like it.

Dana Walton:
Then, similar… Well actually, I would say business analyst does have some technical overlap. Even though we did take away the admin prerequisite, you still need to know some admin skills as a business analyst. Strategy designer would be another good example. It’s more knowledge-based, and not knowledge in skills, but knowledge and capabilities that you need to be able to be successful in that certification. I feel like I’m just now going through all of the different things that we offer, and I’m trying to think. You put me on the spot.

Mike:
Right.

Dana Walton:
The majority of our exams are technical-focused. The vast majority are.

Mike:
But I think it’s also good to know that there’s non-technical ones out there to really grow that skill.

Dana Walton:
I mean, this is definitely something that most of your admins, I don’t know if it applies to them, but for folks who are not admins but are aspiring to be, getting started with our associate certification, so we have Salesforce certified associate, that really is not technical at all. It’s just understanding, how does Salesforce work? How does Trailhead work? And then if that’s something you want to keep growing in, admin may be the next logical path for you.

Mike:
Yeah. No, I’ve seen that one. I think it’s great. It also helps explain things when you have a friend that’s like, “I hear you do Salesforce. What’s that?” and they look at you. Because Salesforce is a platform, if you introduce it to most admins, they fundamentally see it as a B2B CRM platform, and, “That’s just alphabet soup you threw at me.” “No, here’s how this works.” And then once they conceptualize it, “Okay, great. A lot of people buy this?” You’re like, “Yes, a lot of people do buy this.” So it’s an actual conversation I’ve had with a friend, I suppose.

Dana Walton:
You’re right, because it’s overwhelming, so it’s nice to be able to break it down into digestible portions.

Mike:
Well, yeah. I mean, most people already assume they’re going to go in overwhelmed when you start talking about technology in a platform. “Oh, I’m probably not going to understand this anyway,” because for a myriad of reasons that they’ve told themselves, they won’t understand it. You mentioned the MVPs flipping the script on you and bringing up skills. Was there any part in the design or testing process that maybe, other than that, caught you off guard?

Dana Walton:
Oh my goodness. I had a feeling you were going to ask something like that.

Mike:
No, no. Oh, you gave me the easy one. I want to find out the other ones.

Dana Walton:
We have learned so much. Honestly, it’s the boring stuff, because as a part of this, we are bringing on a new exam delivery vendor, and I think the biggest learnings are transitioning away from a platform that we’ve been on for 15 years, and that’s been really hard. But I think as well, we are still trying to understand, what are the pain points that our users encounter when it comes to any part of the certification experience? Where do we need to provide more clarification, more information? And so we’re still learning. We are still figuring out, okay, so like I said before, once this is live, where do we go next? Because it is not just going to be static. It will keep growing and keep improving and iterating.

I think that there are definitely more opportunities to integrate with more of Salesforce, especially Trailhead, to build out the full comprehensive journey for users. That is a gap that we still haven’t quite evolved for. We point to Trailhead, but we don’t have an integration with Trailhead yet, and so with the experience for our users and where we’re trying to meet them at their needs, I think that would be our next logical path forward, but we will need to get so much feedback from audiences as well. So hold us accountable, reach out, open cases, reach out to us in the community, because we want to hear from our users. We need that feedback, because we don’t want to assume we know what’s best for them.

Mike:
Yeah. I hear you. I had a question pop in my head and I’m just going to run with it because I think it’s fun. You’ve also been in the certification space for a long time, so I recently did a podcast with some hackathon participants, and I asked her a question, what’s one piece of advice you could give admins as they’re building agents? And we were talking about AI. And she said, “Well, look ahead, the next 5, 10, or 15 years. Will this still be here? And frame your decision-making around that.” And that added a lot of gravity to the situation, because is it just adding a field or is it more than that? You can spin off into that.

But where I’m going, so bring the car home, Mike, AI is everywhere, and we’re still building tests that are very static questions, static answers. Do you, 15 years from now, see us or certification getting to a point where perhaps it’s more interactive with, say, an AI agent as opposed to an exam?

Dana Walton:
That is the million-dollar question. I definitely think that the landscape of certification is going to change. It has to. AI is so revolutionary, it completely upends the way that people experience how they learn. There will need to be a balance that we have to put in place between memorization or recall skills, which is a lot of what certification does, versus practical application. I don’t know if that practical application will involve an AI agent or if it’ll involve something more like hands-on challenges in Trailhead that are in a secure environment that can be that kind of idea, where we can still see you implement skill, actually have you go through and solve a business use case in an org, for example, or some environment that is not just you answering questions. But I am also grateful that I am not on that side of the house where I have to develop that. I just have to implement what they say to do.

Mike:
Yeah. No, I do think it’s interesting the way that AI is evolving, and we even see that with Agentforce, how you can really be conversational with it and actually give it more context and meaning than… There’s been times when I’ve been taking a certification and I was like, “It’s really A, B, and C, but that’s not one of the answers, and I need to talk you through my thought process. I don’t know. I’ll just put D.” That’s usually where I end up.

Dana, if somebody’s listening to this and they’re like, “I should probably get on the ball. I should start thinking about certifications. I should plan my career growth,” if you were to give them advice on taking advantage of our certifications and all of that, what would you say?

Dana Walton:
I think that certification is a really great tool to prove the knowledge that you have. It is not the tool to learn, and I think that’s a distinction that some people don’t always grasp. And so if you are trying to learn something new, absolutely go forward and do that, but certification is not how you learn. It’s how you prove the skills and knowledge that you’ve already learned. So if you have a goal in mind of where you want to be and you’re not quite there yet, go to Trailhead, reach out to the community, find a mentor of somebody who knows that job, knows that role, or can at least help you put it in a format that is approachable and has achievable goal as you work towards that and then get certified. I think so many people just jump to certification, and that’s not always the right path forward for them at that time. But once you are ready, please get certified. We love our certified audience. Come see me at Dreamforce. If you have questions, I’m there to help.

Mike:
Oh, that’s good to know. I mean, to me, I remember 2011, standing on Dreamforce stage and talking about the importance of certification as just a common language. It’s a way to, in the community, connect with other people and say, “Well, I’m a certified Salesforce admin,” or, “I’m certified advanced,” or now I suppose you probably have Data Cloud and Tableau, MuleSoft.

Dana Walton:
You do.

Mike:
And it’s also a great way to introduce yourself in a short way that somebody goes, “Wow, MuleSoft. You’re certified in that. I would like to know more. Please tell me,” as opposed to trying to explain all of the tools and products that you use.

Dana Walton:
I think that’s a really great lens to look at it from as well. It starts the conversation. It’s not the end of the conversation.

Mike:
Right. Unfortunately, we’ve reached the end of our conversation, Dana.

Dana Walton:
Ah, look at that.

Mike:
So thank you for coming on the podcast and giving me a great segue at the end.

Dana Walton:
Happy to. This was a lot of fun. Thank you, Mike.

Mike:
Big thanks to Dana for helping us get through the maze of certifications and understand all of the behind-the-scenes changes that are coming in the new Salesforce certification experience. I love how the new experience keeps the learner front and center while helping you chart a clear path forward. That’s something I’ve always wanted.

If you found today’s conversation helpful, be sure to share it with a friend or a team member. Maybe somebody you know is looking to get into the Salesforce ecosystem or get certified. And remember, you can always find more resources on the admin site at admin.salesforce.com and connect with us in the Trailblazer community. So until next time, we’ll see you in the cloud.

The post How Salesforce Is Transforming Certification for New and Experienced Users appeared first on Salesforce Admins.