Is A Salesforce Career For You?

Author: Peggy Schael | Salesforce Trainer | WeLearnSalesforce

Let me start by asking you a few questions:

Are you new to the Salesforce ecosystem?

Have you been getting confused by all the information out there?

Do you struggle to understand what Salesforce is and how it works?

Do you feel like you keep forgetting what you have already learned?

If the answer to at least one of the above questions is Yes, then keep on reading. The concept I’m going to walk you through applies to any new topic or area you are getting into. Therefore, this article is for everyone who is either brand new to the Salesforce ecosystem or wants to revive their Salesforce talent.

WHY ARE YOU LEARNING SALESFORCE 🤔

Whenever you start learning about a new topic, or you got a new device or you want to learn a new hobby, it helps to understand why you want to learn more about it, or better, why you should learn more about it.

Why is the Why relevant? If you don’t know what you are learning something for, you may lose interest as well as motivation very quickly. Understanding the Why and how you will benefit from it, will not only give you purpose but also reason and motivation to keep going, even when the process gets tough along the way.

For example, if you have no idea why you should learn Salesforce or whether you will actually be able to find a job in the Salesforce ecosystem, why should you even get started? Only because everyone else around you does? Only because someone said you can earn so much money with a Salesforce job? These are potential motivators for sure, but not the reasons why a Salesforce job would actually be something for you to pursue.

The good news is, Salesforce jobs have very different faces and pretty much everyone can potentially find a suitable role. You don’t have to have any IT background whatsoever. Salesforce jobs range from Salesforce Administrator to Salesforce Developer to Platform App Builder to Salesforce Consultant, to Business Analyst, Product Manager, and on and on.

This means the first thing you need to look into are the requirements of the Salesforce job role that sound most appealing to you. Or rather, browse through all of them and pick those that seem most attractive.

‘Appealing’ or ‘attractive’ means, they speak to a skill or belief or philosophy that you agree with. Let’s take the Salesforce Administrator job role as an example. This role is primarily about working with people on a daily basis, such as answering questions, setting up users, fixing issues, managing change requests and so on.

Therefore, if you are someone who is more of an extrovert person and happy to deal with daily requests from business users, plus you like getting your hands on an IT-based system, then this might be the job to go for.

However, if you are more of an introverted person who prefers to work quietly in a quiet environment, then a Salesforce Developer or Platform App Builder role might be better suited to you.

Therefore, make yourself familiar with the different Salesforce job roles and Salesforce career paths to see if any of these may suit you: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/career-path/

HOW DO YOU REACH YOUR SALESFORCE CAREER GOAL

Once you’ve decided that a Salesforce career might indeed be something to pursue, you’ll move on to the next phase. And this is exploring Trailhead.

You have probably heard of Trailhead, Salesforce’s own learning platform. It includes a lot of information about Salesforce career profiles, Salesforce Certification paths and even more content on all the learning topics around their entire Salesforce product line and Salesforce ecosystem, and even beyond that.

Trailhead is huge and it can be rather confusing to find out where exactly you should get started. What you need to get your head around is that it takes time and patience. It won’t take forever, but it’s important to take it step by step. Avoid trying to understand and learn everything at once. 🤯 Your brain can handle a lot but it’s still not a machine.

In order to get started, I’d recommend taking the following steps:

Identify your preferred Salesforce career path (as mentioned earlier)
Familiarize yourself with the corresponding Salesforce Certifications and their requirements, for example the Administrator Credentials
Follow the provided learning units of the selected Salesforce Certification, for example the Administrator
Get involved with the Salesforce Community, a.k.a Trailblazer Community to connect with peers, ask questions or share your own experiences and knowledge

Of course, there is so much more to explore. But again, don’t rush it, you’ll get there. I promise! 🤓

HOW DO YOU STAY MOTIVATED THROUGHOUT YOUR SALESFORCE CAREER-BUILDING PROCESS

The toughest part in all of this is staying motivated and seeing your progress. You may be a self-driven person, you may be not. In any case, it can be helpful to follow a guided structure and build a routine to stay on track and see how you are getting closer to your Salesforce career goal. Or maybe, you’re still not yet sure whether a Salesforce career is for you, I’d say get to know it better first.

And that’s why we have created a 21-Day Salesforce Beginner Challenge. It takes you through every single step in your Salesforce discovery process in bite-size chunks. Every day we will send you an email with tasks to complete. This starts pretty much with the steps above, then moves into setting up your Trailhead Account and Trailblazer.Me career profile then takes you all the way into the Salesforce platform to gain hands-on experience and start building your Salesforce skillset.

Throughout this challenge, you’ll get to know both the Salesforce platform as well as the Salesforce ecosystem. This helps you understand whether or not Salesforce is the place to be for you. It also gets you set up already in case you decide to keep going.

Now, why is this challenge 21 days long? This period of time is generally considered to be required in order to form a new habit. While we are talking about learning Salesforce, we’re also talking about keeping on track as well as staying motivated by building a routine. You’ll get into the habit of logging into Salesforce on a daily basis. Some days you’ll spend 15 minutes in there, others may take up to two hours or more. That depends on the complexity of the task and your own personal curiosity to explore the Salesforce Platform. You will probably want to spare some days for other things, but what matters is, that it becomes a more natural task.