Road To All Star Ranger

As of today I’m an All Star Ranger on Trailhead. When I first started on Trailhead this rank did not even exist! At that time Ranger seemed like a challenging goal. All Star Ranger requires 6 times the number of points and badges. I think if that had been the top rank I’d have believed it was impossible. And yet here I am less than 3 years later. I thought I’d have a small look back at how I go here.

I was interviewing for a post with FinancialForce in late 2020. During the process I was told about Trailhead. Once I accepted the offer in December to start in January 2021 I knew I had to skill up. I knew nothing about Salesforce and my Java knowledge would only take me so far!

I earned my first badge on 17th December 2020.. By the time I started on the 4th of January I had 29 badges and a good basic grounding in Salesforce and Apex. A lot of my initial training was in Trailhead so I kept racking up badges.

For a lot of that first year I was doing pretty well at the development side of my job but me platform knowledge was something I felt was lacking. As I moved into Architecture I needed to keep widening my knowledge so I’ve kept on the trail.

600 badges may seem like a huge number (although in the context of Trailhead it’s not really all that many). But over the 1003 days it’s taken to get to All Star Ranger it’s about 1 badge ever 1.5 days. So all it takes is consistency really. I would say that as I’ve ranked up the points have become less of a challenge. It’s all about the badges.

Now that I’ve reached the top rank what’s next. Well the obvious answer is to start gaining certifications. But there is always the SuperQBit Leaderboard!