The important thing to note about Chatter is that it is NOT instant messaging - it is way more than that. Instant Messaging is not related to any Salesforce records - the record of conversation is completely disconnected to the opportunity record, contact or account and is not visible to other Salesforce users. With chatter, the conversation… Read more

There are new features now in Salesforce to prevent the creation of duplicate records. It does not help with those you already have in your org but does help prevent more being created.  See more here on our blog: Detect Duplicates Across Contacts And Leads Using Standard Salesforce Rules

Also note that with standard objects you are very limited in what you can change. You can add your own custom fields to them but you can't change the existing standard fields.  This is important to allow upgrades to the Salesforce platform (3 times per year) to be able to improve and add functionality to standard objects without breaking… Read more

I suggest you go along to a Salesforce user group and ask around there.

Here is the list of user groups in California:

https://success.salesforce.com/featuredGroups?filter=a0L3000000Rq7KUEAZ

Certification is not mandatory but is certainly helpful and may be the difference between you and other candidates for a job. I find recruiters are not only looking for certifications but they are starting to ask and look to see what Trailhead modules you have completed too so they can see that you have made a commitment to ongoing… Read more