This week’s announcement pulled CPQ, Nonprofit Cloud (NPSP) Consultant, and Education Cloud, among others. Last exam sitting is August 31. The credentials stay on profiles, but Salesforce stops maintaining them.

It landed right on top of another number. Salesforce Ben’s 2026 admin survey asked Salesforce professionals what actually increases their value in the market. Hands-on experience scored 9.1 out of 10. Certifications scored 6.

The people you’re trying to hire already knew what Salesforce just confirmed.

Now look at your last job posting.

Odds are it leads with the cert list. Five required, three preferred. The ATS screens on them before a human reads a resume. So the Architect who spent three years untangling a real Org gets filtered out behind someone who collected badges in a practice environment.

And some of the certs on your requirements list won’t exist in the catalog next year. The skills behind them will. The CPQ specialist who spent five years in pricing logic doesn’t lose that experience when the exam retires. Your screen can’t tell the difference.

Certs tell you someone can study. They don’t tell you what happens when the sandbox works and production doesn’t. And as of this week, they don’t even tell you what Salesforce plans to keep.

I’m not saying certs are worthless. The Admin cert is still the most respected baseline in the ecosystem. But when your screen weighs paper over projects delivered, you’re optimizing for the thing practitioners rate lowest, and the vendor just retired two dozen of them.

Screen for the work instead. Ask what they built, what broke, and what they’d do differently on the next Org.

So I’ll put the survey question to you: when you’re hiring Salesforce talent, how much do certs actually weigh? And did this week’s announcement change your answer?