How Julie upskilled to a Salesforce Admin

Julie is a mum from Scotland who has worked in the non-profit sector for over 15 years. Her determination to find better ways to work encouraged her to find Salesforce and later Supermums. Read her story.

Julie

  • Course: Salesforce Admin Course
  • Region: EMEA
  • Sector: Human Resource
  • Job Title: Advice and Information Service Manager
  • Works: One Parent Families Scotland
  • Lives: Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
Julie decided to upskill as a Salesforce Admin and launch her Salesforce career because..
 

I have always worked full time in non-profit services that provide advice to the public, and my strong sense of social justice was a great driver for me. I worked in roles as a specialist rights adviser, and then moved into management. 

 

Soon after I had started my current role, I went on a mission to find an alternative database for my service. My team were logging client contact records using a 15-year-old MS Access Database that was never going to be updated.  When I heard about Salesforce, I was intrigued and I reached out to others in my sector to find out what they were using. It was then that I had that ‘wow’ moment: It wasn’t just a database, it was actually a tool and a vehicle for change, and that’s what excited me. At the time, I never thought about it as a career option. 

 

The following year, I googled ‘learn how to use salesforce’ and up popped Supermums. That was the second wow moment for me. I thought this is like me, I am totally the target group! 

 

Julie decided to upskill in Salesforce Admin Course with Supermums because.. 

I was inspired by Supermums who seemed to get that mums have got a lot of skills to offer, so for me that was the pivotal moment. I was also sold by the whole Salesforce value system, the drive for equality and that Supermums was a whole learning process from start to finish. It wasn’t just a teach-to-the-test course.  

 

The course is a whole journey that you’re on for yourself. It’s a combination of in-depth training, homework that gave lots of opportunities to problems solve, coaching, a world-wide community, support for employment, and a live implementation project working with consultancies.  

 

I did not know anyone using Salesforce or anyone working with Salesforce that I could talk to, so having a mentor was essential for me; best of all, she believed in me. She recommended I book the Platform App Builder certification a week after the Admin certification and I did.  

 

Julie was able to launch her new Salesforce career successfully because…. 

I do feel my career to date lends itself well to a Salesforce role. Everything I have done in the past: communicating with clients, negotiating their cases, technical skills around complex calculations, my role to develop service quality and support staff and their pain points along the way, as well as managing a service. Once you’ve done that, you become very much aware of the processes and my journey was always going to lead to Salesforce one day.  

 

My incentive for doing the course wasn’t financial, it was really about the culture and the commitment to the product being a transformative thing for change and the coaching helped me believe I could be part of that. 

 

I’m sure every single mum that hasn’t got a tech background thinks ‘is this for me?’. For me, the biggest message around whether you should do this course is that Salesforce is about people: it’s about making people connect, it’s about making your processes at work easier for the people that manage and use them. People are at the heart of any Salesforce process. 

 

Julie has now successfully achieved a Salesforce career that offers them..  

I am the Advice and Information Service Manager for One Parent Families Scotland (OPFS). My work is flexible, as long as I do all my hours. I split my time equally between our Glasgow and Edinburgh office and work Fridays remotely from home.   

Before doing the Supermums course, the only thing I wasn’t satisfied with in my life was my job. In the non-profit sector you don’t always have this concept of celebrating success and achievements, it’s all about the cause and your strong sense of social justice. I never really thought about myself as having long term goals beyond getting through the next financial year’s funding.  

For the first time, I actually gave myself permission to invest in myself, and that was a really positive thing for me. The only person you’re hurting by not doing it, is yourself. When you do invest in yourself, you kick the imposter down the road, and you can really feel like you’ve got something new and more to give and I really enjoyed that personal journey that I’ve been on as well.  

Since Graduating, Julie has progressed to become a Salesforce Consultant for Globant and is the Founder of Founder of Glasgow Salesforce Saturday

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