Salesforce Developer (DEV 401) Certification

Are you planning to take Salesforce credential through certification? If it's Dev401 (Salesforce Certified Force.com Developer): here are few notes from my recent experience:

1. First and foremost, if you have hands-on experience with Force.com or if you have worked out the 'Recruiting' app - it should be easier for you to crack the developer certification. Dev401 deals with basic of Salesforce and Force.com platform (checkout the exam outline on Salesforce site).
2. You will find most of the questions are available on different web pages (see link below), expect few non-familiar questions. Number of non-familiar questions are pretty low though. So, no need to be concerned of those. Non-familiar but not super complex. Give it a shot!
3. Go through the Force.com fundamentals to try out Recruiting app. This is very important.
4. Understand the differences between Lookup and Master-detail relationships. Handful questions are there from these area.
5. Clarify security model basics - specially record sharing portion. Questions are pretty straight forward as long as you understand the basic concepts. Try out security model of Recruiting app to be on top of this. Expect many questions in this area.
6. 'Force.com Platform Fundamentals' study material does not cover few aspect which are important from certification perspective. While you don't need chatter and deep details of workflows, approval processes (which are part of 'Force.com Platform Fundamentals') - make sure you are covering concepts around Data export-import, Record ID, External ID, basic of Force.com sites.
7. Don't get in depth of Apex and Visual Force (unless you are interested for other reasons) - understanding how they fit in MVC, knowing few apex tags (like dataTable, pageBlockTable etc.), knowing about apex controllers should be enough.
8. Try out mock exams available on different web pages - clearing these would give you an indication if you are ready!

Links:
'Force.com Platform Fundamentals' study materials
Sample questions for Dev401