The influence of Salesforce within the business world is quickly growing. Salesforce has moved into every business sector and become an essential CRM tool for thousands of large and small businesses alike. What is CRM? The acronym stands for Customer Relationship Management, and Salesforce offers the market leading CRM system.
The fast-growing tech company on the Fortune 500 is a highly coveted landing place for graduates and experienced professionals alike. Looking to nab a spot on the team? With 130 offices in 28 countries, there is bound to be an office that appeals to you. After landing an interview at Salesforce, increase your chances of acing the interview by understanding the company’s history and culture, life at Salesforce, the Salesforce interview process, and what interview questions are likely to come up.
Table of Contents:
(Click to jump to section)
- Salesforce History & Culture
- Life At Salesforce
- Salesforce Interview
- Salesforce Admin Interview Questions
- Salesforce Developer Interview Questions
- Salesforce Lightning Interview Questions
- Salesforce Business Analyst Interview Questions
- Salesforce Scenario Based Interview Questions
Salesforce History & Culture
Salesforce was founded in 1999 in a San Francisco apartment. The company was formed to allow companies to take advantage of cloud, mobile, social, blockchain, voice, and artificial intelligence technologies to connect with customers. The company completed its IPO in 2004, raising $110M. At this point in time, Salesforce had just short of 800 employees and 14,000 customers. Strategic initiatives and acquisitions supercharged the company’s growth to $1B in annual revenue in 2008, making Salesforce the first cloud computing company to hit that mark. In 2015, Salesforce entered the Fortune 500 and continues its rapid expansion across the globe. Today, the company has close to 60,000 employees and shows no signs of slowing down.
Salesforce’s culture is one that places a high value on family, trust, and intentionality. The company embraces transparent communication, equality, and employee wellbeing. Salesforce is also known for its philanthropic spirit, encouraging Salesforce employees to give back to their local communities through volunteer work. Throughout the Salesforce interview process, keep these things in mind and bring them up during natural conversation.
Life At Salesforce
What is life at Salesforce like? Salesforce has a fast-paced collegial environment and emphasizes career growth and progression. Employees report that the work is varied and interesting, and that they feel a commitment to work-life balance. The central components of the Salesforce work culture are equality, giving back, and sustainability.
Salesforce Interview
In preparing for your interview, it is more important to have a solid technical knowledge than to research every single question possibility. Nonetheless, thorough preparation will help you come across as confident and polished and fight interview day jitters. Below are Salesforce basic interview questions you can expect to see based on the type of position you are interviewing for. In addition to technical questions, and for certain technical roles, there is a chance you’ll be asked by your interviewer to code. You can prepare for this by completing some coding challenges. The interviewer is interested in seeing how you communicate while working on an actual project.
As always, we recommend leading with real-life examples (AKA stories) when answering interview questions. Examples demonstrate the work you can do and, when presented convincingly, provide a stronger motivation for hiring you than anything else.
Salesforce Admin Interview Questions
10 common Salesforce admin interview questions include:
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- Explain Salesforce admin characteristics.
- Expand CRM and explain.
- Distinguish between Salesforce.com and Force.com.
- What are the available portals in Salesforce?
- Why do we use Tabs in Salesforce?
- What is a profile?
- How can you delete or freeze users in Salesforce.com?
- What are the ways to store files, documents, and images in Salesforce?
- How do you set the Login Hours and Login IP ranges for the users in Salesforce?
- What are the different kinds of reports in Salesforce?
Salesforce Developer Interview Questions
Common Salesforce developer interview questions include:
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- What is a Sandbox? What are the different types of Sandbox?
- What is workflow?
- What is the distinction between Trigger and Process Builder?
- What is a Field Bucket used for?
- What is the difference between S-Controls and Visualforce?
- What is your typical approach to test classes?
- Have you ever created a Lightning component without Apex? What did the component do? How did you approach it?
Salesforce Lightning Interview Questions
Salesforce Lightning is a component-based framework for development with the purpose of simplifying processes for business users. Common Salesforce Lightning interview questions include:
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- What is Lightning?
- How can Lightning Components be used with the Salesforce1 Mobile App?
- Can a Lightning Component that shows up in both the Mobile and Desktop User Interfaces be made?
- Do you think Lightning is an MVC Framework?
- Which parts of the Lightning Components are server-side and which are on the client-side?
- What is the type of different events in the Salesforce Lightning Component?
- What is the difference between the component event and the application event?
- When should component events and application events be used?
- What are a few Lightning Component bundles?
- What are some advantages of Lightning?
Salesforce Business Analyst Interview Questions
Common Salesforce Business Analyst interview questions include:
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- What is the difference between a Data Analyst and a Business Analyst?
- List the core competencies of a Business Analyst.
- What is a feasibility study?
- What are the different tools used in Business Analytics?
- Explain the business analysis process flow.
- How do you perform risk management in your project?
- Differentiate between risk mitigation and risk avoidance.
- What are the different phases of an IT project?
- Differentiate between a software development life cycle and a project life cycle.
- What are the tasks and responsibilities of a Project Manager?
Salesforce Scenario Based Interview Questions
In addition to the above questions, here are a number of scenario-based interview questions and sample answers from past candidates:
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- List things that can be customized on page layouts.
- We can customize different things on page layout like Fields, Buttons, Custom Links, and Related links. It is also possible to create sections.
- What is an attribute tag? What is the syntax for including them?
- An attribute tag is a definition of an attribute of a customer component, and it can only be a child of a component tag.
- What are the different kinds of reports in Salesforce?
- Tabular report
- Summary report
- Matrix report
- Joined report
- Why can’t users be deleted from Salesforce.com?
- In the interest of data integrity and the preservation of accurate historical records of who did what and when to support the audit process, users cannot be deleted but may be deactivated.
- What are the different Salesforce.com editions?
- Personal edition
- Contact Manager Edition
- Group Edition
- Professional Edition
- Enterprise Edition
- Unlimited and Performance Edition
- Developer Edition
- List things that can be customized on page layouts.
Conclusion
We hope this article has been insightful to your Salesforce interview prep process. As you prepare, keep the company’s core values (family, equality, sustainability, etc.) in mind. It’s important to understand the ins and outs of the tech company before walking into your interview.
Lastly, remember that practice makes perfect. Practicing for Salesforce interview questions is key to acing the Salesforce interview. Make sure you have enough stories prepared – we recommend 15 – that you can pull out of your pocket to demonstrate how your skills and attributes line up with what Salesforce is looking for. Looking for expert help preparing those stories? Work with one of our expert coaches. Good luck!
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