💃 SalesforceChaCha Salutes the Salesforce 🥷 Ninja 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! The increasingly rare Salesforce Ninja, aka the Salesforce Professional with no certs, continues to survive.....and thrive, in this highly competitive market. Let's get one thing out of the way - is there any advantage to not having a cert? No, there is not. However, as the small minority of Ninjas out there can tell you, it is perfectly possible to succeed without one.

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SalesforceChaCha Salutes the Salesforce Ninja

Nobody knows exactly how many Salesforce Ninjas are out there, but something like 20% of Salesforce Professionals having no certs is within the ballpark.

To give some context on why this is a discussion-worthy topic, let's first discuss the value of Salesforce Certifications, and acknowledge some of it may be some superficial -

1. Salesforce Partners are, among other metrics, assessed by Salesforce by their Certification count and type. Nothing superficial from this perspective, there is direct value-add in increased cert count.

2. Salesforce Professional's resume/Linkedin profile. It has long been known that having certs is not directly correlated with Salesforce skills. But not having them decreases your value as a professional. You may even get auto-filtered out of job openings for having 0 certs (yes, there are some companies who will not look at your resume if you do not have a cert). And with an ever-increasing amount of people getting certified, we are closer to certs being "required" than ever before.

3. Salary impacts. There is no well-funded research around how certs impact salary, like there are for college degrees. The few studies conducted are at the associate-level, vs the company-level; an important distinction since the companies are doing the hiring and paying, not the associate. But, like a college degree, having a SF cert will not hurt your salary.

How Have Ninjas Survived.....and Thrived?

While the cert-less Salesforce Professional is becoming rarer, they are by no means rare, yet. Even with their ranks thinning, what is keeping the Ninja relevant, and most important, effective?

1. Tribal Knowledge - most of the longest tenured, non-cert'd professionals have been with the same company for as long as their Salesforce career. They have developed a deep understanding of both their SF org and the company they work for. They know the weird parent-child data relationships, and they know at the end of the fiscal year that there is going to be a lot more activity in the org, and a lot more helpdesk tickets. Their highest value is in their tribal knowledge, not their cert count or trailhead points.

2. Business and Technology Acumen - Ninjas have usually been in the game for awhile. Today, we know Salesforce as the one-stop-shop for Sales and Marketing solutions. But, once upon a time, Salesforce was a piece of the technology stack, along with 9 other applications like Excel/Access, Eloqua, and .Net solutions. The Ninja was leading or supporting another piece of the business, and then inherited Salesforce responsibilities. Fast forward to today, and the Ninja's knowledge has compounded, with their Salesforce experience as a layer of the business and technology knowledge they have been building since pre-Salesforce. A fresh undergrad with 3x certs cannot compete with this.

3. More Tools in the Tool Belt - The Salesforce Ninja typically has more tools in their tool belt. They are scrappier, they have learned how to learn, they have a track record of success without following Salesforce's prescribed knowledge/resource path. Of course an argument can be made the other way, and that they aren't fully equipped to support all the new features and functionalities and trailheads expose. But Ninjas have made it this far, and it would be a poor choice to bet against them figuring it out.

Takeaway for the Ninjas - Getting this far has not been an accident. You have knowledge, skills, and experience beyond what a certification provides. However, the game is evolving, and SF certification values have never been higher. You don't need to rush out to get as many certs as you can, but have a positive mindset towards getting them. There is no value in looking down on certs, at this point. And if your company pays for it, it's a no-brainer, get a cert!

Takeaway for the Certified Professionals - Continue to get certs. If you come across a Ninja, pick their brain. They probably have a ton of resources you have never heard of or thought of to use as a resource (Youtube, for example, is underrated...). Support the Ninja on their cert journey - offer them tips on the SF exams, like using Focus on Force, or that the multiple choice answers may ALL be correct, and that one is THE MOST correct.

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