How to Secure Salesforce Work Experience 

Find out how to Launch your Salesforce Career in 5 Steps with our latest content series over the next 5 weeks. In each blog we cover the four key factors that will help you to make the right decisions to accelerate your Salesforce Career. From choosing which Salesforce Admin Training is right for you, how to benefit from working with a Salesforce mentor, how to secure work experience and how to land your first job role. 

Sign up to our Weekly Career Boost Bulletin to be notified of each release:

• Part 1 – How to choose a Salesforce Admin Course 
• Part 2 – How to benefit from a Salesforce Mentor 
• Part 3 – How to secure Salesforce Work Experience 
• Part 4 – How to land a Salesforce Job Role
• Part 5 – How to find your Salesforce Niche

According to a recent poll we hosted on LinkedIn, the biggest barrier to landing a Salesforce job is lack of work experience and confidence in skills.

When you are seeking work experience it is best to do it working alongside an experienced Salesforce professional who can support, verify and assure your work. This will give you and the customer the security and confidence to know you are doing the right thing and you can ask for guidance along the way. Once you have completed the job successfully they can give you a recommendation on LinkedIn along with the client.

We would not recommend doing an implementation for an organisation all by yourself for your first project as it’s a massive task to undertake, you might not have the necessary business analysis skills, it’s a risk for them and for you and it won’t get you a verified assured reference. Believe it or not, even the smallest non-profit project can be a challenge for an experienced Salesforce consultant.

How to secure Salesforce work experience 

There are 3 options to secure work experience with a real customer:

1) Handpick, target and write to Salesforce admins in companies or consultancies directly asking if you can undertake work experience with them. You could network via Linked In, attend user groups, or community conferences to meet the right type of people. 

2) Find a Salesforce mentor and ask if you can shadow and support them on something they are working on. 

3) Join a Salesforce training programme, like Supermums, that offers guaranteed real life work experience

Getting valuable work experience will accelerate your chance at landing your first job by firstly putting your cv at the top of the list and secondly getting a salary in your pocket quicker. You never know where it might take you – work experience could lead to an ongoing paid work opportunity, or at least a reference or referral to land a job. 

Making the most of Salesforce Work Experience 

1. Treat this as a real life work situation by acting professionally at all times on projects and with stakeholders. Typically there are dependencies, timescales and deadlines related to Salesforce projects so be mindful of being a team player and communicating with the team about your availability, commitment and any challenges you face in completing work if such a situation arises. 
2. Arrange the best way to maintain communication through regular meetings or other communication tools so work doesn’t get delayed and you have a way to document or converse verbally or in writing. Set the agenda for the project you are going to work on. 
3. Undertake some initial business analysis to understand the organisation you are working with, the pain points and the benefits desired from the technical work to be completed and document this.
4. Document all of the proposed and completed tasks you are doing and the time it is taking to do them to understand your effort involved, especially if you are just committing to deliver a certain number of hours for free or paid.
5. Summarise all of the technical work you have completed and ask someone to check it’s what is required. Don’t worry if it’s not right first time, this is part of the iterative development process. It’s normal to ask for user testing and to evolve the technical solution based on feedback. 
6. Once the work is completed appraise the business value and benefits derived from the technical updates and summarise the story for the client and include it on your CV and Linked In profile 
7. Ask for feedback from the person overseeing the quality of your work on areas you can improve upon and what you did well and if appropriate ask if they will act as a reference on LinkedIn.

Different types of Salesforce Work Experience you could offer to do include: 

• Shadowing other people in their roles and making notes 
• Conducting business analysis tasks 
• Undertaking a Health Check on an existing Org
• Building out new functionality 
• Appraising and installing third party apps 
• Building an internal support desk 
• Data cleansing and data integrity tasks
• Salesforce admin and end-user training 

At Supermums we provide trainees with professional training, tools and a safe space to be confident to do their first work experience project working alongside other Salesforce professionals and their Salesforce mentors. Here is what our trainees say:

“The work experience with Supermums was brilliant for me. I was nervous because it was project based, but we were able to put our skills into practice, and really build out the org and do configuration and that was great experience: hands-on exposure, for a real company. I took it on as a challenge, I pushed myself telling myself ‘You’ve got this, go and prove yourself right”

Rayan

“My favourite part of the Supermums course is the hands-on work experience with Exponent Partners who were very supportive and were eager to help me become a trusted part of their team. It is the most valuable way to learn Salesforce — and be the most confident in your abilities. I feel so much more confident and ready to take on any Salesforce situation because of this experience and their continued support even after the class has ended.“

Anita

“I was fortunate enough to get a great Internship. As a team I had so much autonomy to make decisions and create a system for a client. This gave me great confidence to get back into work. I now work as a consultant for the company that i did my work experience with as they were super impressed with my work”

Shenita

“I knew that the work experience was going to give me the edge that I needed to get into the world of Salesforce. I was given the perfect match; it was very serendipitous. I was matched with a non-profit called Camp Simcha that caters to the Jewish community which I’m part of. My project manager was incredible, and I learned so much; it was a perfect balance of guiding me while really allowing me to figure it out for myself. I was lucky enough to offered ongoing paid work with the same organisation”

Hindy

The Supermums Admin Course

At Supermums we deliver a Salesforce Admin Course that offers the following structure which might suit you:

• Weekly Timetable of Activities to Complete equating to 16hrs 
• Live 2.5-3hr Virtual Training Sessions with a Certified Instructor using the Authorised Content 
• Practical Homework Tasks supported by a one to one mentor for 1-2hrs a week 
• Certification Study Group Sessions 
• Peer Motivation and Support from a Peer Cohort of Learners 
• 48hrs of Practical Real Life Work Experience 
• Fortnightly Career Coaching and Employment Readiness Support

The biggest reason people choose Supermums is the structure, quality and level of accountability and motivation it provides. It has received an average score of 4.7 of our 5, by trainees.