The Community - Key to a Career in Salesforce Administration

With the demand for Salesforce professionals at an all time high, it has never been more important to highlight the different routes we have all taken into the industry and what has helped us on our way.

For those of us that have found ourselves on this journey, whether as 'Accidental Admins', as part of a strategic career path, or from somewhere in between, we can testify to what a great and rewarding career choice Salesforce Administration can be.

However, a lot of people don't believe that they have what it takes to move into a 'technical' role and so I hope that the story of my journey provides another example of a route into the world of #Awesome Admin.

Salesforce Administrator is a great and rewarding career choice which comes with a fully formed support network in its global community.

At the time Salesforce entered my life I had been working at a b2b publishing company in the city of London for 13 years. Having graduated from University in the last century, I entered a very different job market and economy to today's, I took my 2:1 in English Literature and started work as an editorial assistant.

I barely knew one end of a computer from another but after a few years (and a few promotions), it was clear that I was more interested in the systems than the content I was compiling and so it came to be that in 2009 I was in a position managing the business’ sales operations teams, the internal systems, content databases and CRMs. The majority of this systems were SQL based and I spent my days working in MS Access or SQL, and I was happy doing so. Though I would never have thought of myself as technical, I was confident working in this environment of relational databases and the semi-code of SQL.

Then one day in 2012 one of our newer Sales Managers was grumbling more than usual about our CRM and threw back at me that it didn’t matter anyway as he was ‘getting Salesforce’. This didn’t sound good I thought, I manage the current CRM, if it gets replaced with an 'off the shelf' system then where does that leave me?

Sure enough the sales manager in question managed to convince his MD to buy nine professional edition licences and so when I first logged into Salesforce it was begrudgingly. It was also a failed experiment as our existing CRM was connected to all our other systems so couldn't be bypassed, which meant that the sales users had to double key. They were not keen on that at all and that was that.

At the same time, however, our Group CTO was looking into replacing all of our separate systems with one solution and it turned out that Salesforce was to be it. At this point I realised that this was something in which I wanted to be part and so stepped forward and got a seat at the table.

I was ready for a new challenge, I was keen to learn a new tool. I did not know how all-consuming it would be. As an 'in for a penny in for a pound' kinda gal (some may say slightly obsessive), I jumped into the Salesforce world with both feet, immersed myself in everything I could, and have yet to come up for air.

Most importantly, I went in with zero knowledge of Salesforce but I sought the information and found it with ease.
My company wisely invested in both the face to face administrator training course (for me), and premier support package (for all users) which gave us access to a wealth of online videos in the days before Trailhead. This was undoubtedly a massive help and a key starting point BUT where I found most of the information I needed to be successful was …..

https://success.salesforce.com

I knew the community existed but it seemed a bit American to me, I assumed it would be for those that had been working with Salesforce for years and that everyone would know each other.

But each time I googled a question or a problem scenario I had encountered, the results were all from the success community so I had no choice, the writing was on the wall, or rather it was on the internet, I had to join.

I logged in and saw there were groups called Getting Started. That was me! I was just getting started. I joined and realised that there was a whole series of instructional webinars that I could enrol on, FREE, or even just download and playback at my leisure, there were set up guides and documents, and there were people asking questions, the questions I had, and receiving prompt, friendly, informative answers from other members of the community and Salesforce employees.

I signed up to a lot of groups and was happy behind my computer screen until one day I saw that a user group was being formed in London for Salesforce Administrators. I was in London, I was a Salesforce Administrator, but was I brave enough to attend? I would know NO ONE and had never been very good at networking. Small talk did not come naturally to me and I was still so sure that everyone knew more and more people than I did.

But I gave myself a talking to and I went along.

I knew no one, there weren’t many women in the room but there were a lot of people. There was also a bar, I walked straight over to that and grabbed a glass of wine for dutch courage and to save me standing by the door looking lost.
Glass in hand I looked around, I spotted another lone woman, and so I approached her and said hello. After all, we could talk about Salesforce even if we had nothing else in common.

This became my routine, I went to as many meet ups as I could and each time I would talk to someone new and hopefully see a familiar face from the month before. It got easier. The user groups aren’t just a means of meeting new people and having a glass of wine though, although that is great, they also provide content, each month there will be at least one, but normally two or three, presentations. Occasionally from someone at Salesforce, but normally from a peer, from someone in the community that wants to share their knowledge.

Before long I found that I was upset if I couldn't make a user group meeting. I knew I will be missing some great content, but also an opportunity to meet and talk to people working on the same platform, and an opportunity to see people who have become friends.

Somewhere along the way I realised that I was answering more questions than I was asking and so I decided I wanted to give back to the community by helping the people now starting out. I have done this over the last few years by presenting at events such as Dreamforce, World Tour events, community events (London's Calling, French Touch Dreamin', Surf Force), and, of course, user groups. I have also published blog posts such as this one, and by co-leading the London Salesforce Women in Tech user group. I now also do all this with the title of MVP, something I couldn't have foreseen 5 years ago when I was brand new to the community.

If you are just starting out, returning to the workplace after some time away, or ready for a career change then I urge you to consider working towards a Salesforce related role. You don't need a technical background and with the community and now Trailhead, made available to all, for free, the (Salesforce) world is your oyster.

Good luck, I'll see you by the bar.