People Behind the Certs – Avinash Nair – saasguru

SG: Let’s get started. Why don’t we start from the beginning? Please tell us about your education/ career before entering the Salesforce ecosystem.

AN: After completing my BTech in Civil Engineering, I landed in an IT company through on-campus placement. Luckily, I was provided training in the Salesforce ecosystem and got to work on a project related to that.

SG: That’s awesome. Now we would love to know what was the tipping point when you said, “I want to make this change,” and what was the trigger for that?

AN: I realized that even for someone from a Non – IT background, there was enough scope in the Salesforce ecosystem. And a person with no more profound knowledge of coding can also try it.

I had invested a lot of time in the Trailhead to prepare for the Salesforce Administrator certification exam in the initial years, and I became very comfortable with this point-and-click work I was doing. 

I was amazed at the many features this tool had to offer and was having a thrilling learning process with achieving the badges and points in the Salesforce Trailhead. 

It was after two years that I got introduced to the analytics part of Salesforce, which was known as Salesforce Einstein Analytics back then (currently it’s known as Salesforce CRM Analytics), and I just fell in love with all of its features viz dataflows, recipes, datasets, dashboards, apps. 

I explored a lot on it and felt that going forward, I could contribute a lot to this section of the community.

SG: You achieved many certs along the way. Can you share three things with us?

1. Why do you value certificates?

2. What are the challenges associated with the process?

3. What are your top tips for being successful in cert exams?

AN: Ya sure.

1) Certifications help to provide us with an overall knowledge of that particular Salesforce Sub-Domain. During that process, I also got help from many external sources like Udemy and YouTube and got to enhance my knowledge and understanding of it. Also, reviewing some previous questions and taking practice tests helped me revise the concepts and gave me an understanding of the types, patterns, and formats of the questions I need to expect for the exam.

2) The main challenge with certification is ensuring you get completely comfortable with the scenario-based questions. 

For this, reading the long paragraphs and articles in the Salesforce doc is always helpful. However, reading those page after page can sometimes be a bit boring. So patience and honoring the process had been a really challenging part. 

3) The Pro Tips from my end would be to ensure that one goes through the right kind of articles and preparation guides instead of investing a lot of time in unnecessary external stuff. 

Also, watching videos on YouTube and Udemy related to Salesforce Certifications helps one to visually comprehend the topics, which makes the journey more fun and enjoyable. 

And before starting all this, getting oneself acclimatized with the exam pattern is extremely important!!

SG: What do you enjoy most about your work as a certified Salesforce professional?

AN: As a certified Salesforce professional, I get the opportunity to put in all the practical applications of my theoretical knowledge learned through Trailhead and other sources. 

Also, if some of the tasks take more than expected time from my end, then through other colleagues, I learn how the same work could have been completed faster. 

Also, through some extra features of the Salesforce ecosystem, I get to learn how those developments help to drive the business of any project ahead.

SG: Time for gratitude!! Finally, is there anyone (individual or company) that you would like to take this opportunity to thank for their role in helping you along your journey? If Yes, what was their role in your success?

AN: I would be grateful to my assistant manager and the manager of my first company. They introduced me to the world of Salesforce Einstein Analytics, after which I developed a keen interest in it. 

They tagged me in a project which had to be developed from scratch. And in that journey, I learned a lot about the Connect tab, Data Layer (Dataflows and Recipes), Designer Layer (Datasets, Lenses, Dashboards), advanced concepts like SAQL, Compare Table functionalities, and bindings from the start.  

During that tenure, my scrum master also supported and helped me rectify any technical errors I had encountered regularly during that phase. 

That whole process made me very confident and let me realize my intense passion for Salesforce Analytics.