The Power of a Salesforce Year

My journey from asking "What is Salesforce?" to working full-time in Salesforce and mentoring others in the ways of the Force.

In 2021, after an injury led to over a year of uncertainty including a surgery that would limit my abilities to continue in my former heavily manual job, I was forced to evaluate other career pathways. Although the process was both daunting and overwhelming, a conversation with my friend Mark Segall , who works in tech, ultimately steered me down a path to my new future. When I asked him his thoughts on pursuing a Coding Bootcamp, he told me, "If you want to get into technology at all, you have to check out Salesforce .

I officially kicked off my life-changing journey in Salesforce on September 7, 2021, by signing up for Trailhead by Salesforce , Salesforce's free learning platform. Mark advised that if I fully committed myself to learning Salesforce for around six months, the likelihood that I could find an entry-level role would be high.

With the support of my wife, I went all in and devoted myself full-time to learning Salesforce. The gamification of the learning platform made Trailhead both fun and interesting, and the pre-built trails helped provide direction. After completing the Admin Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced trails, I focused on working through Superbadges, which are project-based challenges to demonstrate what you've learned. After completing the seven Superbadges contained in the Admin Super Set, App Builder Super Set, and Billing Specialist Super Set, I shifted to finishing out the remaining modules of the Prepare for Your Salesforce Administrator Credential.

Just one month into my Salesforce studies, I took the "Salesforce Administrator Certification Practice Test" on Webassessor to gauge how well I had learned the material. I did well enough on the practice test that I decided to go for it and signed up to take the Admin exam immediately. Once I had completed the test, I received my score and quickly reached out to Mark to share that I passed! After all of the stress, excitement, and determination I had experienced while learning Salesforce, it felt so rewarding. I knew this first certification would only be the beginning.

I immediately moved on to studying for the Advanced Admin certification and completed both the Advanced Admin Prep and Platform App Builder Prep Trailmixes in just one week. I was feeling very confident after passing the Admin certification and I felt I was ready to pass my second one. I quickly proceeded to sign up and take the Advanced Admin exam, but was both surprised and disappointed that upon submitting the exam, I saw the word "Fail." I had been fairly confident I knew the material, but I realized that I needed to spend some more time studying before I could achieve my second certification.?I was determined to make this work, so I sought out other resources to prepare myself to see that "Pass" that I so craved.

I saw that there was a Certification Prep Day for Platform App Builder the following Monday so I signed up. The instructor did such a great job of presenting the content that I signed up to take the PAB exam the following day, October 19th. The extra preparation paid off - I was thrilled when I came out of the exam with my second certification! I was on such an emotional high that I immediately scheduled my Advanced Admin exam and took and passed it on the same day as well! Achieving both certifications on the same day felt like an affirmation that God was leading me down this path and that it was the right one for me.

One area that still extremely baffled me was Flows. I had no clue what a variable was, how to properly use one, or even how to create one. I wasn't even thinking about loops. Thankfully, I found an extremely helpful Udemy course by Nick Frates called "2022 Salesforce Flows: The Complete Guide to Lightning Flows". This course taught me so much about flows and built up my confidence in building flows so much so that I decided to build my own flow to track Football stats to test out my Flow skills. Since the NFL Football season had just started, I created a Screen Flow that would allow me to track NFL plays while watching the game and then be able to see Game, Team, and Player stats through the use of standard objects, custom objects, and automation. It was a fun way to put what I had learned into practice!

After becoming comfortable configuring Flows, I set the high goal for myself to start learning Apex, Salesforce's native programming language. While I knew that most Salesforce Admins would never need to know Apex, I had a lofty goal of getting my Platform Developer I certification and wanted to know how to solution when declarative configuration options are not sufficient. When I came across David K. Liu 's Apex Academy, it felt like finding a key to unlocking the world of Apex. What I learned from David Liu's content helped me to pass the Platform Developer I exam and ultimately influenced my certification roadmap plan from there forward.

Now that I had several certifications under my belt, I began applying for Salesforce jobs and proactively reached out to recruiters to try to identify open opportunities. I quickly learned that navigating the job market with only a few months of Salesforce experience would be challenging. From receiving no responses to jobs I applied to unanswered messages from recruiters to a lack of career history that I could add to LinkedIn, I began to feel discouraged.

I finally began to have hope when one company contacted me in November and started me in their interview process. After several successful interviews over a month period with this company, I was devasted when suddenly all communication stopped and I heard nothing else from them. I felt so discouraged, wondering if I had blown my one chance since no other companies had been interested. I did not give up though.?With the encouragement of my family and friends, I continued studying Salesforce and exploring new resources, like Focus on Force , to continue to grow my knowledge.

At the turn of the year, I was 4 months into my Salesforce journey and I felt like I had a solid foundation. I decided to postpone any additional certifications and instead focus fully on the job search and only spend residual time on developing my technical skills. By now, I had more of a LinkedIn presence after posting about my certifications and Salesforce learning journey, but I was still not receiving responses from most of the jobs I was applying for.?I did have interviews with one company that followed the same story as before - the interviews seemed to go great, but then suddenly everything went radio silent. I began to wonder what I was doing wrong and started paying attention to what other people I had connected with on LinkedIn were up to.

I began to notice several people in my LinkedIn network posting about their new Salesforce jobs and mentioning an organization called Talent Stacker. When I saw that Talent Stacker was a paid program, I was hesitant until I watched a video resource that explained how the Talent Stacker program worked and told about its success rate in helping participants find Salesforce jobs. Considering I was unemployed, I knew that if Talent Stacker could help me find a Salesforce role quicker, it would ultimately pay for itself. I joined Talent Stacker in mid-January and immediately started seeing results after applying their LinkedIn and personal branding recommendations.?I started to actually get interview requests from companies and even had recruiters proactively reach out to me.?While I made some traction, I still struggled in the interview process due to my introverted nature and lack of actual Salesforce experience in the workplace.

I decided to try a different approach and started reaching out to consulting companies through the AppExchange to ask if I could work on projects for them pro bono in exchange for work experience. Of the ten companies I reached out to, two responded.?One of them only led to a phone call, but the second, Fast Slow Motion , turned into an actual interview! I was thrilled, especially because the culture of the company and the way they operate truly aligned with what I was looking for. I was also grateful that instead of assessing me based on my resume or interviewing skills, they gave me the opportunity to complete and present a project as an assessment of my skills.

Thanks to Talent Stacker, as my interview process with FSM progressed, I ended up going from no legitimate opportunities to four interested by the time I accepted my offer with FSM on February 14th. This led to starting my first Salesforce role on March 1st, 2022, 6 days shy of the 6-month goal I had set for myself to learn and work in Salesforce.

Since I started working in Salesforce consulting for Fast Slow Motion, it has been fun, challenging, and rewarding. I have not stopped learning or looking for opportunities to explore more of the Salesforce ecosystem.?I have been personally driven to learn about new Salesforce functionality that will make me most effective on my projects. In the last six months, I have had the opportunity to gain experience in many different clouds and have taken and passed the following exams: Field Service, Sharing and Visibility Architect, Data Architect, Application Architect, Business Analyst, CPQ Specialist, Manufacturing Cloud, and Experience Cloud. I am astounded by how far I've come in my Salesforce journey, but it just goes to show the incredible opportunities that a career in Salesforce can offer! I'm very grateful to my friends and family for their support, the guidance of the Talent Stacker | Salesforce Career Development Program , and for Fast Slow Motion for offering me the opportunity to be a blessing through Salesforce.

My goal is not to try to lay out a roadmap that I recommend everyone to follow or suggest that you should be somewhere different than you are. I hope that some part of my story can help you to realize that incredible change can happen from one year to the next or even from one month to the next. One of the biggest pieces of advice that I can give is ASK. Many milestones in my journey would not have happened if I hadn't asked questions. Back in September 2021, when I asked Mark about getting a job in technology is just one example. If you have a burning question, ask instead of extinguishing or trying to forget it.