Your first certification or two will show your commitment to a Salesforce career, and indicates to potential employers that you have a credible foundation of Salesforce knowledge. For your first Salesforce job you may be surprised to find out you really only need one certification! If you already have a few certifications, that’s even better, it can certainly give you an edge when competing in the job market.

Obstacle #2 - Personal Branding 

There are so many jobs available in the Salesforce ecosystem, but you still have to earn your spot as the top candidate for any given role. Common knowledge is to have a great resume, but here is a quick insider tip - your LinkedIn profile is 100x more important when getting traction with recruiters and employers! This is the single most valuable way to show employers exactly why you are not only a good candidate, but the best candidate for them!

Did you know that your resume will likely never be looked at until you are sitting down for an interview? So how do you think employers determine if they should even call you for the interview? You guessed it, your LinkedIn profile! 

So how can you make your LinkedIn a powerful personal branding tool? It’s all broken down for you step by step in Day 3 of the free 5 Day Salesforce Challenge. You’ll get a step by step guide and a video walkthrough of exactly what to do, not to mention great resources like a LinkedIn Weekly Checklist.

Obstacle #3 - Real World Experience

If you’ve seen Salesforce job postings or been in an interview for a Salesforce position you will know that having experience is absolutely necessary to stand out. Immediately there is an issue though, employers want experience, but you can’t get experience if no one’s willing to give you a chance. The good news is there are a few ways to get “real world experience”, we will list some of these below.  

• A common suggestion is to utilize Trailhead Superbadges as your experience. While this can be beneficial and does carry some rapport it also feels cheap at the end of the day. It’s one of those things that sounds good in your head, but when you share it in an interview you instantly start feeling 2 feet tall.
• The next most common strategy is to build “real” scenarios out in your Salesforce Playground org, the typical advice is to build a Job Searching app, or a My Salesforce Activities app. Generally these are fairly narrow minded and thinking entirely inside the box. Be different, try ideas that your potential employers might value more than seeing how many jobs you’ve applied for. 
  • Consider topics like building a Hiring and Recruiting application. This is something you know your potential employers are dealing with right now and they might like to see how you’ve used Salesforce to tackle the problem. 
  • Or given the global pandemic we’ve all experienced, try creating a Covid Tracing application that would help the CDC better understand who has been exposed and give them a way to mass contact those that might be at risk.
• The BEST way to get experience is to complete volunteer projects for real companies that have real needs. Once again the free 5 Day Salesforce Challenge is a great resource as on Day 4 it will show you exactly how to find these projects so that you can get busy in real Salesforce orgs helping real companies in need!