Recently our very own Antonio Margarita performed a certification marathon by getting 3 Salesforce Marketing Cloud certifications in a timespan of 76(!) days. Very impressive considering he joined Transformative as a Junior SFMC Consultant only a few months prior. We asked him a few questions on how his experience was so far here at Transformative and within the Salesforce consultancy world.
How did you find Transformative and how is your experience so far?
Antonio: Transformative is a startup company with a new innovative approach. The team is great, full of different cultures and everyone is ready to help you. Personally, I am Italian and very sociable and outgoing, so I really liked the open mindedness of the team and the way I was able to easily establish relationships with everyone.
What's your opinion on the Salesforce Certification track? What was your path to becoming a SFMC Developer?
Antonio: Salesforce certifications are a great way to measure your understanding in specific areas of Salesforce since it requires a lot of research, trailhead tutorials and experiencing inside the platform. In my example, my programming background helped me a lot in getting the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Developer. It took me 9 months of practicing and studying and thanks to the team at Transformative who trained me and answered every question I had; I was able to get my 3 first Salesforce certificates quite fast apparently.
How did you find the experience of learning with the SFMC Academy at Transformative?
Antonio: The SFMC Academy is an extremely useful tool provided by Transformative. It contains information on best practices and a lot of exercises to develop in our sandbox environment. I personally used it a lot since it’s full of documents and exercises that prepare you for everything you need to know before you go for a Salesforce certification and far beyond. The resources are up to date with the latest exam topics and the exercises are designed to cover your level experience whether you are just getting started with Salesforce Marketing Cloud or you are a senior with years of experience. Overall is a great way to improve your Salesforce Marketing Cloud skills.
Do you have any advice for those starting out in their career that might have limited experience with Salesforce?
Antonio: Coming from a programming background my advice to people who have zero or limited Salesforce knowledge, would be to focus on the programs used by Salesforce like SQL and Server-Side JavaScript. For people starting from scratch with no access to the Salesforce platform, the Salesforce Trailheads can result too theoretical, so I would recommend watching videos and moving to the Trailheads once you have access to the platform.
Which certification are you going to focus on next?
Antonio: As I said before I already got 3 (Administrator, Email Specialist and Developer) out of the 4 Salesforce Marketing Cloud exams available. Now I will focus on the last one, the Marketing Cloud Consultant certificate. The ambition for next year (or two) will be to get the B2C Solution Architect certification.