Salesforce Admin exam — failed at 61%, retaking in 4 weeks with a different plan
Just got my score report: 61% and the passing mark is 65%. I went in underprepared, and honestly I knew it before I walked in, but I was hoping experience would cover more than it did. I've been a Salesforce admin at my company for about 18 months, mostly maintaining existing configuration rather than building new stuff from scratch.
My worst sections were workflow automation — Flow specifically — reports and dashboards, and security and access. The security section is frustrating because it's conceptually straightforward but I kept second-guessing myself on which profile, permission set, or sharing rule combination applies in specific scenarios. Flow questions caught me completely off guard — I'd barely touched it in my actual job and apparently it's a huge portion of the exam now.
For the retake I'm committing to 2 hours per day including weekends. Week 1 is entirely Flow — building real flows in a developer org, not watching videos. Week 2 is the security and access model. Weeks 3 and 4 are full practice exams with focused review on wrong answers. Does that sequence make sense to people who've been through this?
Also wondering if Trailhead alone is enough for the retake or if I should supplement it. I used Trailhead almost exclusively the first time and it clearly wasn't sufficient for me personally.
Building flows in a developer org is the right call. I watched probably 10 hours of Flow videos and still failed that section. Two weeks of actually building decision elements, loops, and record-triggered flows in a sandbox and it finally clicked. Hands-on is non-negotiable for Flow.
Your overall plan is solid. Don't let week 4 turn into more content review — stick to practice exams no matter what.
The security model questions almost always hinge on the "most restrictive wins" principle or on what org-wide defaults combined with sharing rules can do together. Internalize those two concepts and most scenario questions become much clearer.
61% to 65% is a small gap. The biggest issue at that score level is usually test-taking approach — specifically not eliminating obviously wrong answers before picking between the remaining two. Keep that in mind during practice tests and don't just review wrong answers in isolation.
Trailhead alone wasn't enough for me either. The content is good but the practice questions don't match actual exam difficulty or format. Use Trailhead for concepts and supplement with Focus on Force or Salesforce Ben practice exams for question-type familiarity.
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