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Salesforce Career Recipe

David Bruce
7 min readApr 9, 2020

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Adapted from https://trailhead.salesforce.com/career-path
Adapted from https://trailhead.salesforce.com/career-path

The recipe is simple

This is a six step process to get and build a Salesforce career. Jobs are plentiful and in about six to nine months of part-time effort, you can be on your way to a well paying, satisfying career. Here are the basic steps:

1. Trailhead training — (a) Basics, (b) Career Paths, (c) Get your free org
2. Find a mentor
3. Certifications
4. Get experience
5. Update your resume
6. Get Industry related experience

1. Trailhead training

Trailhead is Salesforce’s self-guided training platform. The resources available through Trailhead will help you develop the skills you need. This document cuts through all the options to help you focus on what is important for your career, whatever that may be.

  1. Go to: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/home
  2. To learn what “trailhead” is: Getting Started with Trailhead

1.1. The basics

If you don’t know what Salesforce is or what CRM stands for then you must start at the links below. Otherwise, skip to the Career Paths for the next step.

  1. CRM Basics for Salesforce Classic
  2. Lightning Experience Basics
  3. Sales Cloud: Quick Look
  4. Salesforce Platform Basics
  5. You should also know what the difference is between Salesforce Instances vs Orgs vs Environments
  6. You’ll also hear a lot about the various “clouds”. These are sets of features available for various functions. Older software often referred to this as “modules”. I look at it as “tooling” that you need to accomplish tasks for different business or technical areas like Sales, Service, Marketing, or Analytics. There’s a lot of overlap like with email which is available in several areas. A decent visual of the breakdown is provided by SalesforceBen.

1.2. Career Paths

Salesforce has a great way to find the right career path for you available here: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/career-path. From that page you can explore the careers listed below. The career paths are illustrated through the persona of someone with that career and what they do. Here are the careers covered:

  • Business Analyst — This is the role that I got my start in. You do a little Salesforce and a little business operations and a lot of reporting. Here are some tasks per Compare the Admin and Business Analyst Roles:
    * Elicit and document requests and user stories
    * Develop and define project roadmaps
    * Communicate with managers and stakeholders.
    * Analyze data and draw business insights.
    * Create and deliver business presentations.
    * Facilitate Salesforce implementations.
    * Create user training materials.
  • Salesforce Administrator — You either have the expert chops for this role, or you were given this role because there was nobody else to do it. Here are some tasks per Compare the Admin and Business Analyst Roles:
    * Set up the Salesforce org and user logins.
    * Configure security and access settings.
    * Configure and manage objects, fields, and data.
    * Manage sales, support, marketing, and mobile applications.
    * Build reports, dashboards, and other analytics.
    * Create and manage process automations.
    * Install and manage packages from AppExchange.
    * Manage sandbox and production environments.
    * Communicate with stakeholders
  • Salesforce Consultant — You work on projects based on your business analyst, system administrator and declarative development skills.
  • Salesforce Developer — This role often means you have a degree in computer science, or at least a knack for code.
  • Salesforce Architect — You know the answer before the question has been asked if you have this role.
  • Marketing Career — You manage email campaigns, social media, surveys, and possibly even events.
  • Sales Career — You are either a rain maker, relationship builder, or a Sales Engineer who can mock up a demo in 30 minutes.
  • Service Careers — This includes call centers, field service, and support people who manage all sorts of cases for customers and constituents.

To really decide you may want to understand what the job market looks like. Here’s a trailhead on that: Discover Jobs in the Salesforce Ecosystem.

1.3. Get a Developer org

A “Developer org” is your own Salesforce “org”. They’re free and last a lifetime. It’s worth it just for that. You can even create multiple “dev orgs” with different setups.

You don’t have to get a developer org anymore as Trailhead allows you to set up “playgrounds” for testing and stuff. But those are temporary. Anything you might want to keep should be in your developer org. This is a good idea for developers and administrators. Here’s how you get yours:

  • Signup here: https://developer.salesforce.com/signup
  • Don’t worry, you will get no spam. You may get a sales rep to reach out if you install any packages in it. But the unsubscribe is solid.
  • Explore this, your very own org. Build things in here but don’t use it for every trailhead. You’ll want to keep it as a reference. So only use it for trailhead projects that you’ll want to refer to down the road.

2. Find a mentor

With the information I’m providing here, you won’t need a mentor to simply get started. But you may find one useful for tips that are specific to you and your career path. The best mentor will have experience in the industry and career you are interested in. You can find mentors in the following link:

3. Certifications

This used to be pretty simple. Now it really depends on the career path you want. However before you do anything, get your Administrator Certification. Even if this appears to be optional, having it will set you apart from the competition. However it is not an easy certification to get. I failed it three times before getting it. So don’t be discouraged if you don’t get it the first time.

Once you get certified, you will need to take maintenance exams three times a year. This is good because it keeps you updated on the latest releases and things do change a lot in the course of a year.

4. Get experience

Below I’ve listed resources to get experience. I’ve ordered this according to my hunch of what the priority should be. But follow your own intuition. It’s not always easy to find a fit. But it’s good practice and you will learn along the way so it is time well spent.

Although, before you do that, please read this alternative opinion from Gordon Lee, co-leader of the Salesforce San Francisco Nonprofit Group: No Salesforce work experience? Make your own. | by Gordon Lee | Jul, 2021 | Medium.

With that under your belt, get some on-the-job experience:

WARNING: Never give your date of birth or last four digits of your social security number to a recruiter. The only time this is necessary is the job interview process is through a third party background check company (and you should verify the company is legitimate first), and after an offer letter has been sent with instructions on onboarding through the hr system.

5. Update your resume

Now that you are certified and have some on the job experience volunteering, you should update your resume. Salesforce Mentorship Central provides a good resource as does Trailhead:

Also, if you haven’t already, update your LinkedIn profile and your Trailblazer.me profile, too.

6. Get Industry related experience

Now that you are certified and have some volunteer experience, it’s time to get yourself a Salesforce job. Getting your first job in the “industry” that you want to work in is important as your pay and career advancement are fairly tightly tied to the industry you work in.

If you are struggling at this point, it may be time to revisit the trailhead on the jobs in the Salesforce “Ecosystem”: Discover Jobs in the Salesforce Ecosystem.

If you want to change industries it’s sometimes hard to make a lateral move and you may need to start a rung lower. Being in the right industry is good for other reasons. If you are interested in the industry, you will be more interested in your career and your performance will likely be better because of that interest. Employers assume that. So you should expect that up front. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t change industries. I have and having done so makes me more valuable. But it also meant my career did not shoot up in a straight line. I’m a curious person. So that is how things worked out for me.

Conclusion

That’s it. Follow these six steps and you will be launching your career. Be warned that each step is a months long effort and will depend on factors both in your control and out of your control. Stay focused on what you have control over and observe what you don’t have control over. Maybe a career move is necessary to another industry or another career path. Look, listen, learn, and grow.

Happy trails!

Other Resources

Salesforce
Career Change
Job Training

 by the author.

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David Bruce

Written by David Bruce

22 Followers

I'm a Salesforce Solution Architect by day, have a BA in Economics from CU Boulder, an MBA from Presidio Graduate School, and live in San Francisco.

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