Salesforce Admin interviews are not just about what you know or your knowledge, but they also test how you think when presented with business situations. Companies are looking for admins who can efficiently manage users, protect data, automate processes, and support teams. If you are preparing for an interview, the best way to go is to know the concepts very well, having practised common scenarios, but also knowing how to tell and communicate your decision process. This blog is all about being prepared with the most commonly asked Salesforce Admin interview questions and impressive sample answers to help with skills, whether you are a fresher or a career switcher.
Here is a guide to do your preparation in a quicker manner with structured, interview-ready answers based on real admin activities if you are preparing for Salesforce training in Pune right now.
- 1: What is Salesforce, and why do people use it?
Answer:
Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management (customer relationship management) platform that provides businesses to manage customer relationships, sales, service, marketing, and data. Why it is used: because it enhances customer experience, automates business processes, provides real-time reporting, and supports scalability as well. Salesforce is one of the most preferred solutions in the organisation because of its high customizability, security, and powerful automation tools with the least amount of coding.
2- What are Profiles & Roles in Salesforce?
Answer:
Profiles determine what a user does in Salesforce – object permissions, field permissions, app access, system settings, etc. A profile is mandatory for each and every user.
Hierarchically, a role determines what a user can view. So, they are used for sharing records like Leads, Accounts and Opportunities.
By permissions (Profile) vs. visibility (Role) — TL; DR.
3) Role vs Sharing Rule ???
Answer:
A role is a hierarchy-defined data access. Depending on OWD (Organisation Wide Default), users above them in the hierarchy can see the data owned by them.
Sharing Rules are used to automatically grant record access to users that differ from what the role hierarchy permits, based on either criteria or ownership. When you need more access with teams, sharing rules are the way to go.
4) In Salesforce, what are the OWD settings?
Answer:
OWD (Organisation-Wide Defaults) are used to set the minimum access of users to records they do not own. Common OWD options are:
Private
Public Read Only
Public Read/Write
Controlled by Parent
The sharing model starts with OWD. In the access hierarchy, OWD is the first level, and access shares can be added using the roles, sharing rules, manual share and teams.
5) What is a Permission Set, and where do we use it?
Answer:
A Permission Set is used to assign additional permissions to users without altering their profile. Which is great when a handful of end-users need additional permissions, such as:
Access to a new object
Extra field permissions
Option to generate reports or utilise apps
Permission Sets are more flexible and will reduce the profile count.
Top Automation Tools s For Salesforce Admin.
Why Automation Comes Up So Much In Salesforce Admin Interviews: Companies want Salesforce admins who can minimise manual effort. Spend some time being confident in the following tools as an admin; you should be as follows: Workflow Rules (legacy), Process Builder (legacy), Flow Builder, and Approval Processes. Today, Flow is by far the most powerful automaton tool out there, because you can use Flow when you have complex logic, such as creating records, updating records, or you want to build an approval process or screen-based user guidance. We are not going to do specification or documentation as we do in real life, but when you are sharing your approach during interviews, state how you initially start with requirement gathering, determine the type of automation you want to perform (or how do you execute tests in a sandbox, how do you ensure you deploy changes safely, act accordingly, etc.). Always be a Performance-based Automation Implementation Engineer: this is one of those aspirational pieces of advice that most employers love: you can automate everything, but how does it impact performance, and does your system keep sounding and performing cleanly?
Distinguish between Workflow Rule, Process Builder and Flow?
Answer:
Workflow Rules: Simple automation , for example, email alerts, field updates. Limited and older tool.
Process Builder: A more complex tool than workflow, but still legacy now.
Flow: It is the most plug-and-play automation tool available right now. Yeti Dreamer supports complex logic, loops, screens, record-triggered automation, and integrations.
When asked: Why Flow over Process? Answer: Flow is Future-ready and has robust features for automation.
7) What is a Validation Rule?
Answer:
Validation Rule identifies the data quality, which does not allow data to be saved by the users if the information is incorrect or incomplete. It uses a condition formula. If it’s TRUE, then Salesforce displays an error and the record does not get saved.
Use case: Mandatory Field like Phone Number when Lead status = Qualified.
8) What is Record Type in Salesforce?
Answer:
Record Types let you display different page layouts, picklist values and business processes for the same object. For example, on Opportunity:
Record Type 1: New Business
Record Type 2: Renewal
When the same object is used by different teams to follow different workflows, it really helps.
9) Difference between Page Layout And Lightning Record Page?
Answer:
Page Layout: It controls fields, sections, buttons and related lists shown on a record.
Lightning Record Page: Used to define the components and overall design of the page (charts, tabs, highlights panel, custom components), using the Lightning App Builder.
A good admin understands the difference and applies the one appropriate based on the business needs.
10) Objects: What in Salesforce
Answer:
Salesforce Objects: An object in Salesforce, primarily, helps store data like a table in the database.
Standard Objects: like Account, Contact, Lead, Opportunity, Case, etc.
Custom Objects: Built by the business, such as “Students”, “Courses”, or “Invoices”
10) What are Fields & Field Dependencies?
Answer:
Each field records a data point (e.g, phone number, email, amount)
Field Dependency: It helps you control the values that can be selected from a dependent picklist based on the value selected in a controlling picklist. Example:
Controlling Field: Country
Dependent Field: State
It enhances the accuracy of data as well as the experience of users.
Q12 — What is a Junction Object?
Answer:
You use a Junction Object to create a many-to-many relationship between two objects. It uses two Master-Detail relationships.
Example: Students and Courses
Many-To-Many → students can have many courses, and a course can have many students.
13) Differentiate between Master-Detail and Lookup relationships.
Answer:
Master-Detail:
The child’s record depends on the parent
Ownership and Sharing are inherited from the parent
Roll-up summary fields are supported
Deleting the parent deletes the child
Lookup:
Loosely connected relationship
Child node has an owner anda sharing policy
Not supported roll-up summary (without workaround)
14) How are a Report and Dashboard
Answer:
List – A collection of records shown in a structured format, containing available filter and summary features.
DASHBOARD: Representation of reports in the form of charts, metrics & graphs.
Dashboards hit management through KPI — make sure to mention this in interviews, and that management can track performance through dashboards.
15) What are Governor Limits, and why should admins be concerned about them?
Answer:
Salesforce has what are called Governor limits to provide performance and fair usage on the shared platform. The concern for admins is that poorly constructed automation (like excessive amounts of flows or recursion) can consume extensive resources and compromise performance, and throw exceptions. Of course, not all changes require code – even the most hands-off admins can affect system efficiency through data operations and automation.
(16) How do you debug a failed flow
Answer:
A strong admin approach:
Verify the error message and debugging information
Step-through with Flow Debug
Check input criteria and verify variable values
Review permissions and field-level security
Verify whether recursion is occurring or the record is being locked
Sandbox test and adjust if required
Rarely, this is actually a problem-solving and real admin experience.
17) What is a Sandbox & Why are we using it?
Answer:
A Sandbox is essentially a testing environment where changes can be developed, tested and validated in a manner that does not affect production users. We use a sandbox for:
Testing flows and automation
Creating objects/fields
Trying integrations
UAT (User Acceptance Testing)
18) What is the Change Set and the Deployment process?
Answer:
A Change Set is used to deploy configuration changes from the sandbox to prod. Basic steps:
The first step is creating an outbound change set in a sandbox
Append [Incorporations (streams, items, fields, layouts) ]
Upload to production
Validate in production
Deploy after successful validation
Therefore, admins have to ensure that they test before deploying so that system issues do not arise.
19) Situation Question (A sales team cannot see records owned by another team.) What will you check?
Answer:
I will check:
OWD settings for that object
Role hierarchy access
Sharing rules
Manual sharing
Team settings (Account teams, Opportunity teams)
Profile and permission set access
A structured answer to this Salesforce security-related question shows expertise in Salesforce security.
20) Can an Admin later become a Developer?
Answer:
Yes, I know, a lot of admins become developers. They already know objects, automation, security, and business with respect to processes. It’s easier from there to pick up Apex, LWC, and integrations. In case after completing the Salesforce admin course, if someone looks to expand their path, then they can go towardsthe Salesforce developer course to learn programming and an advanced level of customisation.
Last Tips to Pass Salesforce Admin Interviews
Practice your answer with examples using real-life situations
Master the security model (OWD → Roles → Sharing rules)
Flow Automation and Debugging
Get a grip on reports, dashboards, and data
Please project confidence and clarity of thought
However, if you prepare with these questions and answers meticulously, you will be all set to shine in any Salesforce Admin Interview, regardless of whether it is one for freshers or experienced professionals.