Rizul Vyas’s Journey in Salesforce With Trailhead and saasguru

I am Rizul Vyas, a 13-year-old 8th grader who also happens to be the youngest individual with a Salesforce Admin Certification. I recently received my certification, not more than a month ago. I’ve always had a passion for gaming, and it’s just migrated to Salesforce.

The Exciting Learning Experience with Trailhead

It all started with Trailhead during my June summer vacation in 2020 while doing my first internship. I was ecstatic for various reasons ranging from bragging to friends to make some money; I jumped into this with enthusiasm and zeal. I began to like what I was doing in a very short period. After following some of the trails on the Trailhead, I gained a great interest in Salesforce, and I appreciated the unusual learning experience because it was all so new and exciting. As a beginner on Trailhead, I felt like I had a teacher to assist me, and it made studying as enjoyable as a game experience.

My Salesforce Journey, From The Start To Getting Certified

After I developed a genuine interest in Salesforce, I was determined to do the Admin Certification. I became passionate about the Salesforce learning experience. It was indefinitely my next goal. I started almost as anyone would, with the trailhead trailmix. I slowly started doing all the trails and modules, enjoying all the challenges and the quizzes. I just kept going on every day, starting the day with a trail and ending it with one. I didn’t even realize, and two months ago, when I was almost done with the trailmix, I realized I had finally become a ranger. That meant that I had finally reached the final rank of Trailhead, which required 100 badges and 50,000 points. I was delighted to know that I had become a ranger, and I was almost done with the admin trailmix.

After finishing the trailmix, I began with the free offered admin practice test on Salesforce to see how far I had progressed. But, I soon recognized that it wouldn’t be enough because I was still receiving low scores like 45 and 50 percent. I even went back through the trailmix again, and I realized that I might have to find something else to refine my knowledge because Trailhead provided the foundations and essentials. However, I still needed to polish and fine-tune the knowledge I gained through trailmixes to achieve a good grade. I thought of enrolling into focus on force, udemy, and a few other sites, but they all seemed like practice tests to me. I started receiving better mock test results, so I just decided to attempt the exam. But, I failed at the first attempt by just around 2 to 3 questions. I saw that I was close to passing, so I prepared more and took another go at it, and sadly I again failed by nearly the new score. That is when I decided not to give up now that I had almost passed the exam twice.

saasguru: My Perfect Learning Partner 

After two failed attempts, I decided to prepare well for a few months before reattempting the certification exam, as this would be my third attempt. I started doing the same thing I used to do, mostly just reading or doing mock exams. But then I happened to stumble upon saasguru, a mostly free platform with topic revisions, topic tests, and unlimited mock exams. It was perfect for me, the topic review was great to brush up on my fundamentals, and the mock exams had many relevant questions. 

As soon as I finished the topic brush-ups with saasguru, I realized that the topics were better polished. I then started getting 65s in my mock exam scores, which is the passing score of the real exam. After that, I used saasguru’s mentor system, and I got a mentor from saasguru, who personally taught me all the topics and helped me understand some fundamental concepts. After that, my scores started improving, and I started getting 70s and even some 80s. So I knew that it was time to take my third attempt at the exam. I just booked it and took it, and I was relieved and delighted to see that I had passed the exam and finally achieved what I had set out to do about six months ago.

Trailhead helped me a lot, and it is an excellent tool for anyone to get started due to its ease and free usability. Also, since it is gamified, it is interesting and genuinely engaging, making you want to continue and make progress. With the help of trails and trailmixes, you can also study specific topics that interest you more, and it summarizes particular topics for you to try out. It also gives you practical experience with the trailhead playgrounds in which you can test out anything as if it was your production org. 

Although Trailhead gives you a lot of info on the topics, it is not enough to help you pass the actual exam, and that is where saasguru comes in. The concepts that you can revise to polish up on everything learnt from Trailhead and to brush up on any topics that you might have missed as it takes some time to learn from Trailhead can be well understood with the help of saasguru. The review process on saasguru is quick and takes no more than a week to finish. The mock tests are the final thing before you attempt the actual exam, where you will understand whether it’s time to try your luck on the real exam or prepare more.

My Future Aspirations and Deepest Gratitude 

I aspire to be a Salesforce MVP someday, and I recently started slowly preparing for the app builder certification on Salesforce.

I am really grateful to many people and especially saasguru, for providing me with the required mentorship and access to their well-curated content and mock exams, almost for free. I firmly believe that they have played a crucial role in assisting me in preparing for the Salesforce Admin Exam.