How to Benefit from Having a Salesforce Mentor

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

There are many benefits to having a mentor when you are launching your Salesforce career. Our Supermums trainees can’t speak highly enough about their experience working with their one to one mentors each week and have summarised the range of benefits you can experience, if you get the relationship right. 

Seek independent validation of your skills 

Ideally a mentor will see you build a practical demo org or real-life project and can testify that you can deliver the admin competencies independently. 

Accountability 

If you arrange a weekly meeting with your mentor, it’s great way to set weekly homework tasks and to create that accountability framework, to make sure you get things done.

Answers to your Questions

If you just do virtual on-demand training courses, there is no one to answer the questions that you might have. By meeting a mentor each week, they can help you to solve problems, boost your confidence, overcome blockages, and help you to get clarity. Its someone to bounce ideas off, validate your thoughts, give you assurance that you have done the right thing. 

“The mentor was one of the reasons I signed up to Supermums, otherwise I would have been scared to fail. My mentor was based in Sweden but was a French speaker like me. He was there every week for our call, and it was important for me because I built my homework around our discussions. The mentors instantly know what’s wrong, which step you’ve missed. Supermums are very good at putting you in the position of a consultant: they don’t give you all the answers – just enough for you to know what to do.”

Erika

“I found the mentorship immensely useful. We set up weekly meetings and I’d go through anything I was stuck on. Having that mentor there as a support network, to help you understand what you’re learning was really helpful. That’s one of the best things about the program.” 

Kully

“The reason I always vouch for the Supermums program is because of the support I got, the confidence that my mentor instilled in me, and the kind of assignments I did prepared me very well. When I started my job there was nothing I didn’t know how to do or know how to figure out. I had been doing much of it in my Supermums program already.  My mentor had valuable experience and as she reviewed my coursework, she shared tips and tricks about how to do things faster and more effectively. I was able to do exceptionally well at my work.“

Donna

Eco-system Connections 

Through mentors you could get access to new job opportunities, introductions to others at events, and opportunities to get promoted on social media. Mentors can open many doors for mentees. For example, Denise was invited to apply for a job at Slalom through her mentor relationship.

Cert Study

Use your mentor to help you prepare your certification exam. Do some mock exams and ask your mentor to help you with the areas you are struggling with to provide some additional teaching or practical advice. 

They can act as a Referee 

If a mentor can verify your skills, then they can act as a perfect referee. Make sure you ask for references on your LinkedIn profile so any recruiters can see them straight away. 

Job Preparation 

Ask your mentor to review your CV, conduct a mock job interview with you, or set a practical admin test. Practice, practice, practice for the real thing so you feel confident asking questions and selling yourself into a new role. 

“Being set up with a mentor was incredible. Any time I had a question, he was available. What really surpassed my expectations was when the coursework finished, he was always in touch, encouraging me with the job search. I was so impressed. As far as he could have been concerned, his job was done, the course was over, but to this day, he’s still in touch with me.“

Hindy

“My mentor was really phenomenal and such an important part of my Supermums journey. Outside of our weekly homework review call, he was also a great resource for questions I had about the Salesforce ecosystem and the overall job search process. The mentor component is definitely something that sets Supermums apart.” 

Jen

Supermums include one to one mentoring as a core part of our Salesforce Ultimate Admin Training programme to help build the confidence of our new talent who are on their learning journey. To establish a good mentoring relationship, we deliver a comprehensive mentoring and coaching training programme to upskill our volunteer mentors in mentoring skills and below we have shared some snippets of this training programme.

To establish a great mentoring relationship it’s really important to have some foundation blocks, in place.

Creating a Mentoring Relationship 

Agree SMART Outcomes and Goals – specific, measureable, achievable, realistic and time-framed. For example our Supermums mentors will work with our clients over 6 months. Each week there are clear outcomes and deliverables to be achieved as part of the training curriculum and the mentor supports the mentee to complete the weekly homework. At the end of the six months the focus is securing the Admin certification and landing a job.

Understanding Learning Styles – Learning styles are approaches to or ways of learning. They are preferred ways of interacting with, absorbing, and processing information. There are a number of classified learning styles but the three main learning styles include: Visual, Auditory, and Kinaesthetic. Most people experience one learning style that dominates, although some individuals have a balance between all three. Ask your mentor to teach you with your preferred learning style by searching for VAK Test online. 

Creating a Mentoring Plan – Agree how, when and where are you meeting. Make it a routine so there is accountability towards outcomes and goals unless something sudden comes up that they need support with. Agree the boundaries for communication in-between meetings, e.g. phone calls and emails so you both know what is reasonable.

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 
• Practical 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.