Roadmap to the Executive Suite

Creating Better and Future Proof Opportunities Through Salesforce

May 27, 2021 Claudia Miller Season 1 Episode 15
Roadmap to the Executive Suite
Creating Better and Future Proof Opportunities Through Salesforce
Show Notes Transcript

Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a high valued career in tech without the need to be too “techy”? How does Salesforce help you get into this kind of career?

In this episode, we have another amazing guest, Justin Dux. Justin is a Salesforce Administrator for Be The Match, the National Marrow Donor Program, based out of Minnesota. He is also a public speaker on Job Interviewing Skills and the host of CareerCloud Radio, a career advice podcast.

This episode will be all about getting a career in Salesforce, the career roadmap that can help you hit your first 6 figures, and the skills you need to get a career under Salesforce. He will also talk about his own experience in Salesforce, vetting for a candidate, and his pro tips when it comes to interviews.

In This Podcast We Talk About:

  • Justin talks about Salesforce and the career roadmap in getting the first 6 figures through it.
  • How can a career in Salesforce help you add more skills to your resume and how it affects your potential salary.
  • What are the skills you need to have in order to have a Salesforce career?
  • How possible can candidates who just learned Salesforce negotiate their salary? 

Connect With Justine Dux:
Justin’s LinkedIn
Salesforce 5 Day Free Challenge
Salesforce for Everyone YouTube
Salesforce for Everyone Facebook Group

Links Mentioned:
Roadmap to the Executive Suite
Get to know more about My 90-Day Job Offer Program here.
Book your Complimentary Career Strategy Call here.

About me:
I started my career like many people do: in an entry level role making around $35K a year, was the first to arrive and last to leave, putting a 110% into my job…But it wasn’t enough. 

I was consistently being passed up for promotions and realized I was being underpaid compared to my colleagues. 

I knew that in order to get ahead in my career and be able to make the money I wanted… to support the lifestyle I wanted…something had to change. 

So, I started investing in myself. I worked with a career coach, resume writer, read every career book that I could get my hands on, enrolled in career courses, and studied colleagues wo seemed to be crushing it in their careers. And after investing over $20,000 in resources, coaches, and books…and spending thousands of hours over five years…I realized that many of the common advice out there did NOT move the needle when it came to advancing your career! 

Instead, I handpicked and carefully selected what worked to create my now signature program, 90-Day Job Offer, that is unlike anything that is out there. I wish a program like this existed when I was going through my career advancement and salary negotiations. If so, it would have been a fraction of the cost and saved me over four years of frustration of trial-and-error. 

Since then, my clients have taken my ready-to-use resources to advance their careers in 90-days or less, and secured on average a 56% increase in salary (to date my clients have received $30,000 - $120,000 in additional earned income per year)!!

I help women in technology land fulfilling, high-paying jobs at a company that values and appreciates them. I’m on a mission to help women in tech collectively earn over a $1M in the next year. 

Will you join me?

Claudia Miller:

This is roadmap to executive suite podcast, a place where we talk about accelerating your careers and how to get to the C suite, all tailored to the ambitious woman. We're here to have fun, feel empowered and get actionable steps to get you closer to your dream job and salary, no matter where you are in your career. I'm your host, Claudia Miller, and I'm a career coach who helps ambitious women get the jobs they want, all while getting them up to $50,000 in salary increases. I've been featured in Forbes, MSNBC, and a one of the top 23 Most Innovative career coaches of 2025 Business Insider. Welcome to the show. And let's get started. I'm excited to have our next guest, we have Justin ducks, as he is the podcast host, Salesforce administrator, mock interview coach and hobby comedian, just since may play a role playing games in a pandemic. But his ability to roleplay a job interview in the sales for career space is seriously no joke. He's here to share with us how you can break into this lucrative career in technology, as well as jobs, some tips on us that anyone can use in their next job interview. And I actually was a guest on Justin's podcast where he host which is called Career cloud. But today, I want to have him on here because I want him to share some amazing advice and career tips that I want him to share with our listeners, especially like I said, within Salesforce, which can be very lucrative and have be like a high paying job. So I'm excited to have you here. Justin,

Unknown:

thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here, too.

Claudia Miller:

Yeah, of course. So I mean, one of the things that I remember in a conversation we were having, and you just seem to mention this comment, and I was like, wait, I need to bring you on the show. And you mentioned that you help especially professionals are trying to go into technology and specifically within, you know, Salesforce, that once they know how to get in, and they put in their time, like a few years and correct me if I'm wrong, but somebody's around like three to five years, that there is a career roadmap that within those five years, they'll hit those six figures. So it could be literally anyone you don't have to be anything special or go to Ivy League degree, or have great connections with the right family is if you're interested, you can pivot into a career in technology within Salesforce. And three to five years, you'd be making six figures. Right? Yep.

Unknown:

Okay. And, and we've proven it out with 60 plus students and countless anecdotal stories from other people in the community, you know, will attest to it as well. It's just that this career space is hot right now. And, you know, to kind of throw out a little clarification because people hear Salesforce, and they think sales because they threw it in the name 15 years ago. And it's not that at all. CRM is another acronym, that's their ticker symbol on the on the stock exchange, CRM, but it also happens to be a joke, because that's also the name of the type of platform they have. They just got that as their ticker symbol. Customer Relationship Management, we're database people. But again, people hear these words, like I explained what I do at you know, a party with relatives or friends, you know, when we could do those. And I would just get these blank stares. Because people think database, they think, Oh, my God, this is technology. You're one of those coders. And it's like, no, actually, like when you call the call center, they look up your record, that's me, like I figure out where your record is in the data. I'm not the person on the phone with you, I'm the guy that helps that team retrieve records, so they know who their customers are, right. And it's really a low tech skill, to add to your resume and be searched and more valuable. So like, even if you don't become an administrator, like me, adding this skill to your resume is just another 10 grand in value right there to your salary. Right. Now, if you want to go as far as starting the career path, like we're gonna be talking about today, like, then I can tell you that the entry level salaries start about $60,000 in the United States. And that's a pretty conservative estimate, we've seen play out, it's and then back to your point, three to five years down that journey, you are already more valuable to another employer, you know, leaving your current company that gave you your first shot, and going out there and go into some of these places that have bigger problems to solve more bigger instances of the database to work on, you know, their challenges are bigger, so their pay is bigger, and then you're getting into that 90 to $110,000 range pretty quickly in three to five years.

Claudia Miller:

So we'll just say that for someone that's not in the technology industry, like how would they know that this will be a really good career for them? Like what are like top level like high level skills that anyone could say like, Hey, that sounds like me. I think I'd be actually really good at this.

Unknown:

problem solving skills and desire to figure things out really is what I would look for is a skill that's like really hard to teach somebody. And so what I mean by that is like, there are people that, you know, this isn't right for. So a joke that the founder of the program that I work in, says it's like, if when your computer doesn't work, you want to throw it through the wall. And you don't understand how to install Google Chrome as a new browser. Yeah, then Salesforce might not be for you. Okay. But if you've installed your own browser, or downloaded an app on your cell phone, you're probably tech savvy enough to handle Salesforce. Everything is very intuitive. They have spent 15 years as a technology company, working down to the lowest common user. And having a ton of people like myself, who started as an accidental administrator, where they gave us way too much power in the platform in our first day of work. And we got to figure stuff out, we got to figure out how to make a brand new field appear on the screen, we got to figure out how to make a process happen automatically, rather than users clicking buttons, right? Make it call that automation, but like, little small joys of figuring something out. That's untrainable. Like, if you love doing that you are going to have a blast in this platform.

Claudia Miller:

Okay? And then would you say something like when I'm thinking like CRM system, or I like to think of it is like you help organize information where it's easily accessible. Like, if I want to call my friend, I go to my cell phone, and I look up their contact? There you go. Now if I have like, let's just say I'm trying to call my friend Amanda. And there's five, Amanda's and all of them are name Amanda, like, how do I know which Amanda I'm trying to call? So that's when someone like you would say, well, we're gonna call like, Amanda, work, Amanda, you met at a restaurant, Amanda, like your sister's friend. So like that way it's organized. Like, would you say it's like something like that, but obviously, at a higher level, but if you can organize or like you said, download the app, you'll be able to be successful and be able to learn the skills needed in order to be a successful Salesforce administrator.

Unknown:

Right. And you don't have to wonder about this, like, you can try it out absolutely free to figure out if you have this skill, Salesforce 1015 years ago figured out we need to make playgrounds, that's literally what they're called, these are fake little platforms spun up in the cloud, that you get one to work in yourself, and you just do whatever you want, try to break it for all I care, right. And like, you can do a lot of what the, you know, real clients of Salesforce pay for in a playground environment where the only limitations is how much data is in it, you know, how much fake data that's when they want to start charging people money is if you actually are trying to run a business with one of these, but I mean, I've seen people learn this skill set by managing their garden, you know, figuring out seeds to plant, you know, or maybe scheduling playdates with neighborhood, families, you know, and have small children, you know, like they use these little playgrounds to explore the platform and buildings that are real. It's just, you're not charging money for it and things like that. You're just kind of dabbling in the platform. So what you were talking about there a moment ago, I want to call out to is kind of the early days of Salesforce back in the late 90s, early 2000s, what it's become sense is a lot more exciting. And this is what I want to kind of dispel a common myth out there for people. If they heard about Salesforce five, six years ago, for the first time, they still remember that first impression, and it's now wrong. Salesforce has grown to one of the top tech companies in the world, because they have 25% of the market. That's huge. Competitors dream of getting to 25%. And they're already there. And they just need to hold that spot. Right. And the way they did this is they made it easier and easier to use, and easier and easier to learn, rather than go the normal technology path of a tech giant and make it harder and harder to use. And now you got to pay people more and more money to administrate it. And you got to have a super specialized skill set. Now granted, people who've been in the platform 15 years have that now and they're highly sought after technical experts. But people breaking in don't need that. And that's what's really exciting me. So now we're into marketing adjacent technologies. So lead generation and figuring out who to call in your example, like I might have to decide is it Amanda the lead that we are prospecting, or is it Amanda, one of our former customers that's all in the same platform. And we might have tie ins to marketing platforms. There's one called Marketing Cloud, which Salesforce often also owns or there's others like Adobe and Marketo, Eloqua. These are other competitor names. But those can tie into Salesforce CRM too. And so you end up finding yourself in a really interesting position where you're marketing adjacent, maybe figuring out journeys and things like that about how people get emailed and marketed to through the data in your system. And likewise, were adjacent to accounting and finance. So I like my role, because I ended up kind of becoming an expert in my entire business that I'm employed by my employer, because I touch all of their most important data. Make sense? When I was working my first job as at a nonprofit, we ran $13 million of fundraising, just donations through our CRM platform. So when I went out there and started interviewing three to four years later, I started saying that and saying, like, Hey, I extract $13 million of fundraising dollars every year out of our database. And everyone who works in a nonprofit as a starting point does that to you know, just maybe on different scales.

Claudia Miller:

So I was gonna say, like, can you give me some examples of like your clients that you've worked with that have come from like, very random industries that are not technology? And then say, like, well, this person was like a hairdresser. We worked with them. And now they're a Salesforce administrator and making 60 $75,000

Unknown:

Exactly right. And I have some of these stories. Now since I joined the talent stacker Career Development Program. I'm their mock interview coach. And one of my favorites said, when he got his offer, he's like, Justin, I can't wait to get out of the truck. And what he meant is he literally was an over the road trucker, put millions of miles driving, professional driving on a semi tractor trailer. Reefer, as they call him, which is not what it meant in the movies. It's a refrigerated truck, you know, is one of the forms of trucks he could drive. Right. And he's now a Salesforce professional. And we helped teaching those skills gave them that roadmap, no pun intended, to you know, go from being a truck driver to being a technology professional. And that was a really exciting journey. We have another person, professional, viola player, yeah, used to perform in orchestras, with the pandemic, his whole industry was shut down. So he starts looking like, what's my backup plan? What should I be able to do next? I still have this skill of playing music. But what else should I be doing. And so for the last four or five months, he's been retraining in Salesforce, using those free tools available to him in which we show him how to navigate the program cost money, but some of these resources are still out there for people to explore on their own as well. Then my last one that's a favorite of mine is called Shout out to Tanya, she was traveling the world in private cruise industry. So this isn't your gigantic cruise ship, she she helped me understand there's a whole industry of private cruises to where you might be organizing a cruise on somebody's yacht that they're loaning out to a cruise company like this or something like that, or other types of situations. So going from the travel industry, in this technology. These people I hope, just and many more stories like it, I hope people just realize, you just have to have that curiosity, that desire to figure it out. I call it because they had it. And they were able to make that jump.

Claudia Miller:

Yeah. And I think you kind of touched on that. So someone that has no technology experience or background, but they can download an app on their phone? What does like the average timeline to learn something like this? Like, is it going to take them two, three years?

Unknown:

Like? Yeah, that's a great question. So there's some people that have the luxury of time, you know, so if they have no job commitments right now, it may be minimal family commitments right now, where they made, maybe they can balance it with their spouse or something where they share for the purpose of learning, I'm going to do less than around the house or something. You know, that's something they work out as a couple. In that situation. They can go very fast. We've seen people get offers in two, three months, when they can hit the learning curve, you know, by five to seven hours a day. Not everyone has that luxury. We have a lot of students that also are working full time and trying to do this in their evening hours, maybe even later evening, you know, after dinner is on the table, kids are in bed, then they start studying, right? I call that Salesforce after dark. But what they're doing is a little bit different. And so that extends the timeline, you know, maybe just six or seven months, it can be longer if they just get distracted with life, you know, it happens. But here's what I say. Even if you fail, and it takes you 12 months to learn this skill set. Most of the people I've been working with, that's still a 30 to 40% Raise off The previous salary.

Claudia Miller:

And I love this because it's tangible. And I love the fact that you can say, if you're unemployed, this is the timeline, you're employed and have a life. This is the timeline. So like for me, like I wanted, like one of the things that I picked up from it is, if you really are interested, you want to try it out. So based on what you're saying is, by the end of the year base, obviously, talent is really dictated by that person is, you know, conceptually they can have a job offer already, as a Salesforce administrator, even if they had never worked in the industry or role before or just even over on technology. Have you come across event that? How possible and how often is it for someone that doesn't have experience at just learned Salesforce for them to still like be able to negotiate the salary because you mentioned it's a very lucrative field. And it's very popular, it's popular as in people need at Salesforce administrators, they're just not may be enough of them. So yeah,

Unknown:

let me put in perspective, Salesforce announced last fall that they have over 45,000 nonprofits using their product, you better believe a huge percentage of those nonprofits, couldn't afford an admin yet. So what we do is we explain to people how you might even approach some of those and offer to gain some stories, you know, let me try to do some administration for you couple, maybe two weeks worth, you know, and maybe build something small for you real quick. And you get experienced, and you leverage those stories in a future job interview for an employer that can afford an entire position, right. But the role is also extremely flexible to, you know, maybe you're not looking to go back to work 40 hours a week, the whole freelance market starts you out in this industry at like 25 to$40 an hour. 40 is a high end, that's almost the point where you should be getting a full time offer by then. But still offering 25 to $35 an hour is a savings to the average person who can pay for a small project at that hourly rate. Why? Because the consultants cost 90 to $180 per hour. Because they have to do a blended rate through their a consulting firm. And that's a team of people that might work on your project. And so they blend that rate to over$100 an hour, and then they pay their person 45 to $55 per hour, there's a pass through amount they call it right. So when you understand that that's what you're up against as a new person. And you can try to go break in for some part time work at $25 an hour. Still better than most. And so there's another subject, I want to attack there that to your question, because I hear it, and I heard it from countless people. So I want to blow it apart here real quick. What else you got? Like, show me another path that can break you into technology in six months? What are you gonna do learn Python? You're gonna learn data science. If you have the aptitude to learn Python or data science, I don't think you have a problem finding work right now. Right? Like those courses and YouTube videos are out there for free right now too. But those people have a different criteria, those employers that might be hiring that person, they are practically taking PhD grads over entry level people that learned by their bootstraps, right? The culture in the CRM space with Salesforce is much different. Because for 15 years, many of us misfits like myself, have been breaking in. And now those people are managers, and they're picking a new junior admin on their team. So we respect that path in a different way than the people out there doing computer science degrees and thinking they're going to learn Software Engineering from a boot camp. Hey, more power to you. If you can learn Software Engineering from a boot camp, go do it. My own wife took a 10 week boot camp from a women only boot camp to one out of San Francisco. It's a great program Hackbright Academy. But she finished it and she's like, Man, I don't know if software engineering is for me. I think I'm gonna go back to my old work. And she was she had the luxury of being able to choose that. Right. But she wanted to be able to communicate better with software engineers. And she got that out of that bootcamp. But some people, you know, they're in the middle of a boot camp and they figure out that this isn't for them. They're kind of overextended already. You know, they've taken on debt maybe to do that. They quit their previous job to do that. Like, sometimes there's no turning back. So what I really like about Salesforce is you can dabble in it, play in those playgrounds. really figure out if it's for you before you've taken much risk at all.

Claudia Miller:

And I mean, one of the main reasons I wanted to have you here Justin is the because, you know, when I talk to clients or people that you know, are struggling to find work or job seeking at the moment, they might say, you know, I'm looking to pivot into technology, I just don't know how to do that I work in non technology, industries, finance, marketing, healthcare, whatever. Yeah, accounting, or I also hear that I'm currently making 45 to 55,000, I just can't see I've been doing this already for, you know, 10 years at this point, I feel like everyone's getting ahead of me, I'm not getting paid as much as I wanted to, or how much I was expected to get paid at this point in my life, maybe got a bachelor's degree. And yet, like, they're really having a hard time getting past that, and but they don't necessarily know what to do, like, I know, I want to make more, I just don't have the bandwidth to go back and get a master's degree. Or, like you said, quit my job and start a boot camp with something I don't even really know about. And I just don't know what to do. And, you know, there's a process that you can go through it, but one of them is, you know, if you really have the curiosity and you want to try it out, then kind of take that rattle, Salesforce administrators start learning it so that way, within three to six months, you have that under your belt, and then you can start not only pivot into break into a new industry itself, but now you have an idea of, hey, I know that in three, five years, I'll be able to hit six figures as opposed to working at a job where they'll give you a one or 2% salary raise, and then maybe you'll start up and then up at 70, within five years.

Unknown:

Right, you're spot on, we try to summarize it a little differently. I'm trying to take what you said and apply what I my lens on it my perspective, right. And what that is, is value, the value proposition of an employee has been eroding for 25 years or more. And that's what you were kind of getting at at the end there about if I started out my career valued at$50,000 That's what we were being promised back in college, you know, days, right? You know, I'm gonna get that starting salary 50k. Well, where are they? 45? If you're lucky at a college degree, bachelor's degree, right, $45,000 a year,

Claudia Miller:

I was like, 32, coming out of college, right? Yeah.

Unknown:

And so like, first of all, that busted pretty fast that myth, but then look at that gross salary growth potential to eight stagnated, the value didn't change for years. Even if you were like five years experience and entry level marketing, you were like still trying to push into 60k After still being an experienced veteran. So here's what Ian Segal figured out in is the CEO of zip recruiter. And he and somebody he talked to who had also written a book, they both written a book now, they both kind of shared this concept of single skills. The ability to search for a candidate for a job, didn't make broadness more pas, more likely, it did the opposite. It made people zero in more. And so now what they see happening at the recruiter level, and at the level that are requesting to post postings on the zip recruiter.com, and he looked at 10 million listings to figure this out, he's like, they're not looking for sets of lots of skills anymore. They're looking for one single skill. I need somebody who knows Salesforce. Let's start there with our search for new candidates, right? And then they'll broaden out one maybe two skills at a time. Like, I need somebody who knows Salesforce and Eloqua, because that's what we're using in our company. I need somebody who knows Salesforce and marketing cloud, now you're a top candidate and worth 100k, right, if you got both of those, right. But it all starts with that single skill searching. And so that's what I wanted to suggest as to kind of counter your point about value is I love Salesforce, now, I've hitched my career to it, because I see the value changing faster. Over the years, in the last five years, I've been in this industry and let alone the last 15 years and some of the people I look up to have been in this industry. But I see that the value we have to an employer is increasing faster than I can keep up with it. And that can't be said about these other industries that are stagnating.

Claudia Miller:

Yeah. And it's so easy for like someone like like I said, I've talked to people and they'll like, maybe even have a master's and they are still not making six figures. It's like I don't know what else to do. I've done everything I'm supposed to and I feel like a lot of us are in that frustration because I was at that point. I went to school I got good grades, I tried to volunteer I did the internships I did everything I could I work hard when no whatever job I'm in, I do the right thing. And then yet the promotions don't always come the salary increases don't come. It's not like a lot of recognition happening. So you know, at some point you have to decide especially, you know, how do you want it to have control over your career. Now, if you do have a passion for technology, I think that this is even like the best time for you to be able to break into technology. And there's different ways but you know, kind of like one of the main reasons or an easy way to is through the Salesforce administrator process. And from then on, you can expand on it as much as you want. And then you can, because I even have clients to that they'll say, I want to work for a mission driven company. But I also want to make good money. So how do I do that? And it sounds like, you know, kind of like that track where you just mentioned, you actually work at a mission driven company who's doing amazing things. And you're getting paid, you know, lucratively very well, and you're a sought after employee from other companies. And not only that, it's something that you can still continue to doing. And so you're getting paid while you're working for a mission driven company. And it's very lucrative, or it's very sought after at this point. So it's like a really great trifecta.

Unknown:

Yeah, absolutely. Let me answer your embedded question there too, though, about, you know, what do I do if I want to work for nonprofit and make money? Well, you can put in more hours, because like I said, earlier, you could work 40 hours a week for your nonprofit, help them meet their mission. But in the evening hours, for 10 hours a week, you can earn another 2k a month, two or $3,000 a week. Depends what rate you set for yourself, your employer and nonprofit could be paying you about $30 per hour, let's say they don't have a big budget, you know, and they're not a big nonprofit $30 Now, or is respectable might be like, you know, in that 50k range, right? But what if you charge $75 Now on your hours, because it's your evening hours, you're committing those balance out pretty nice, you know, and you don't have to break your back to do it. Just a few extra hours a month. We have people doing that there's a founder of the program, talent stacker Career Development Program. He also has a freelancer program for that reason, because it fits so well. And I feel like I'm like super salesy, but it's because of how excited I am. And I'm trying to figure out why that happens. Like, I'm just so excited to have somebody asked me, you know, like, my friends, you know, we play board games, I'm a level seven wizard. Like, they don't want to hear about my job. And so like, I come on these podcasts, because I want to talk about how great my job is. And I want other people to join me and be in this job too. Because it's that great.

Claudia Miller:

Okay, so one of the things that you do is you help a lot of these candidates or, you know, professionals or job seekers are looking to break into the industry with mock interviews, from your experience from people that you've worked with, especially like, I feel like it's just common when you're like in our level or our side. Or if you're a manager, and you see people interviewing, it's easy to see like common trends, like, Oh, everybody tends to do this. And everybody doesn't do that. And why doesn't anyone do something different? Because everyone sounds the same at this point. But as far as like the interview process, and just overall, because you have worked with, you know, a lot of people, what do you tend to see, like the most common mistakes when people are interviewed, or at least when you're doing these mock interviews with some of your clients?

Unknown:

Got it? Yeah, there's, you're right, the patterns are emerging? Absolutely. We've had just since the beginning of 2021, over 60 people have started in landed offers for 60,000 a year jobs. So I'm definitely spotting some patterns here. Right. First one I spotted was these cliches are popping up a lot. And they think they're high value statements, and they're not. And what I'm referring to is like I love technology, or I've always loved technology. Yes. So is every other candidate. Next, like

Claudia Miller:

I'm looking for my next challenge. Oh, yeah, that's

Unknown:

a good one. Another one is like, I'm really passionate about your mission. You know, if you're talking to a nonprofit, you gotta be careful with that, because it doesn't say more. It just, it's like the premise not the conclusion. Like, okay, yeah, we have a mission to prove that you know, what our mission is? Like. Right, right. So the way you bust through this cliche land, is to think very personally, and very authentically, about when you figured it out. So one of the questions I ask all our students is, why Salesforce? And when did you know? Because those are different moments in time. But more importantly, the When did you know gets very fascinating answers, it brings the listeners in it brings the hiring team in that might be hearing this answer later, into who you are. And that's huge. So like, for me, I should answer this question for myself here. When did I know Salesforce? I hadn't thought about that for a while. It's been five years for me now and I feel like I've always known but that's not true at all. I think it was when I first like made something happen. And with automation, like, I was so blown away at the amount of work I had saved for myself, because I was the one doing the work. I use spreadsheets in Excel and tools to upload the data into the CRM. And that was what was handed to me as a new employee at this company. And they were saying here, you're gonna do this procedure every week. And I said, Yeah, right, that's boring. But it took me months, Claudia months, to learn the techniques to learn what was possible in the platform. And then finally, someday try it. And I gotta say, I was like, so excited when it worked for the first time. When I didn't need to use that spreadsheet anymore. I made the business process happen with automation. And to me, I felt like the most powerful coder in the world. But you got to understand I didn't code anything, I didn't do a single line of code. Because of the tools the platform has been building in the last 15 years. We call it clicks, not code, or declarative is big fancy words we use for all it means is I punched the buttons for a while and about eight hours. And suddenly things started happening automatically. And, you know, if you want me to walk you through it, I could show you a diagram, but I was guessing until it worked. Okay, that might be another skill, I should say, if you're ever that person that smashes buttons long enough for things to start working, you might be great at Salesforce,

Claudia Miller:

not code. And then kind of like to the next point. So it's like, I love that you mentioned those cliches because it does tend to happen. Or they'll say, you know, I'm interested in working for a company like yours, yours, like how many people are you like applying to, even though like we know, as job seekers, we're applying to multiple companies. But as well as like, so out of those clients, you said you had 60 Plus clients getting job offers. And this is probably their first technology or Salesforce administrators. What are you looking like, what are your top two tips to make a candidate stand out during their interview?

Unknown:

It's got to be about them. And what makes them uniquely them. And people I find a lot of students don't know this about themselves. And so they kind of need a reflection or a coach to show it back to them. I'll just use it because it's it's just such an amazing story. But I think it illustrates this point about figuring out who you are enough to show the audience because you got to understand you're not a veteran candidate. You're not five years experience like me already. So you don't get to sell your your experiential stories much beyond. I have some experience. And then we get that, right. So the strategy is to be showing that tenacity or attitude or character trait through a story. And you got to find that story that no other candidate can share with you. Right, though, there's some patterns I've noticed that we can all usually reach for. One pattern, for example, is like if you're the first in your family to get a college degree, that's the starting point for a great narrative. But let me tell you the story of facade, he really loved this client, because of how amazing the story was. And I'm not going to be able to, like, impersonate him. As much as just kind of retell What clue was dropped in his coaching session, that became his narrative. Because we found this after about 3540 minutes into working together going through a mock interview setting. And then what I did is I said, Whoa, hold the phone. That's it. That's the moment, we got to take that moment and put it up in the front of your job interview. And tell that story from there. Make that the starting point for your audience, your your hiring team, because he was explained, he stopped himself short of explaining something he said I had a background with limitations sounded really interesting. I was curious. But he stopped short and went on with his point. And he tried to stay professional. And this is another myth is like I'm in a job interview setting, I need to express this amount of professionalism, that will get me the job. I'm sorry, professional, amazing, doesn't set you apart, though. It looks exactly like every other candidate. So go ahead and stay professional for 80% of your interview. But for a small portion of your interview, you got to tell them who you are. And so I asked for sabe what what was that about? What was this limitation in your background? I don't understand why you said Justin, I grew up in Africa. And my school had one computer who was in the principal's office. And no, we barely had any access to it. And so I It wasn't until late high school, early college. That was a first chance I got to get into the computer side of things. I later studied mathematics and even dabbled a little bit of coding. But it was only because in college, I was so excited to get the chance to use a computer. Right. And so, you know, he kind of continued that story and I listened and I heard heard the narrative form in my head that he then later used in his job interview, he messaged me on LinkedIn and explained that the interviews, you know, when he got his offer, he's like, I got an offer. It's great. And it's a great did you use that moment we talked about? He's like, Oh, my god, yeah, I used that moment. I had three rounds of interviews. And I started every round with that narrative about the school and computer in the limitations. Ah, that's great to hear.

Claudia Miller:

So glad differentiator to like I can visually see that story I can, I feel like I can see him sort of, I don't know who he is, but like, I can see it. And I'm like, oh, that's the guy that, you know, didn't grow up with a computer. And all of a sudden, of course, I can see why he loves it so much, because he didn't take it for granted as I did, because I did grow up, you know, with it this age, or whatever that may be.

Unknown:

Exactly right. And that was a message we tried to land in that story, as we kind of crafted it more was about not taking it for granted. And removing the limitations that customers of Salesforce have, because that's where he was interviewing was actually at the mothership and Salesforce, you know, and they loved it, because that's exactly what we hope CRM does for their business, small businesses and big businesses is make remove limitations. And here he's describing coming from limitations to no limitations, possibilities opening up for him. So what does that mean for everyone else? Okay, great. We found for sabe story, what about the other people listening, right? Think back to those character building moments in your life. And think about which one might most directly apply to the job you're thinking about. And then connect the dots for them. You use storytelling to get interest. Just like an entertainer might want to get the attention of an audience member with a flashbang grenade or something like, Okay, I've got your attention. Now, what are we going to do with it? This is the biggest flaw of the 21st century, we have a million devices and advertisements, scientifically engineered to make sure they get and hold our attention. So you know what that means. We are absolutely terrible human beings and holding each other's attention anymore. Right. So the job interview is one of the last vestiges I think the last places where for a few minutes, you are actually given and guaranteed somebody's a human being remember, full, undivided attention. So don't waste it. Right. And what that means is give them something of interest for a moment. That's that authentic storytelling, like the Sabi was doing, tell them a story, bring them in, but then land a message. That's what you got to follow it up with. So like, you and I have done some stand up comedy, right. And so like, we talked about that, I think I'm on my show, but like, I want to just bring it back in. Because I think it's just so important that people hear it yet another way. And it's like, you know, in a comedy, we have a premise and a punchline. And I think in a job interview, we have, you know, that interest grabbing moment of authenticity, and landing a narrative, they go hand in hand together, your landing a message, I call it. And so what's that message you want to land, it should probably be something about a soft skill, or a communication skill, that's my pro tip for you. Because that's something we should all be able to reach for, to land job offers soft skills, and emotional intelligence, strong communication skills, maybe written communication skills, if you've got like a portfolio, or were really great at summarizing a meeting or something, maybe land a story about that, or how your teammates relied upon you as another great power phrase. My teammates really relied on me to improve a presentation and make sure that the audience left with the most information possible. You know, that's an example one, and things like that. But those are things we should all be able to reach for. Because yet again, a common misconception I'm seeing is people enter the job interview chair, and then the first five minutes, they try to re qualify themselves. And I'm like, Guys, you were qualified. That's why they picked you as the top five candidate to interview like, I don't think they doubt your qualifications. They doubt what you're going to be as a co worker.

Claudia Miller:

Exactly. They want to hire and work with people they're gonna like, and that are not going to cause trouble or make their everyone's jobs even harder.

Unknown:

Yeah, I soapbox there a bit. I'm sorry. I am just really excited to have figured this part out about job interviews. Like Like I told you at the beginning. I'm a guy who likes to figure it out. And that's what I figured out about job interviews.

Claudia Miller:

You know, those are really great tips, Justin, you know, so one of the things like if people wanted to reach out or they're interested in, you know, starting a job or just checking out like, would this be a good opportunity for them or they want to get into Salesforce, and administrative type of roles, where can they find you?

Unknown:

I'm in the Facebook group Salesforce for everyone. You can find an interview with Bradley rice on his YouTube channel Salesforce for everyone, just the name of that YouTube channel and Then also, if you want to learn more about the program, you can go to my Bitly link, I don't have it set up on another link at this time. So I'll just use it the bitly link, that's URL shortener, B I T dot L Y, forward slash. It's a five letters are going to follow here, S F CDP. And, of course, I chose the worst letters to say it on audio only format. So I apologize. But they stand for something they stand for Salesforce Career Development Program, SF CDP. And that link will take you into a five day challenge, where you get to get an guided instruction about how to set up these playgrounds we mentioned at the beginning, so that you can find out for yourself if this is a career path you'd like. And we guide you right through how to set that up how to learn through the trails that Salesforce has produced, these are education modules available for free, and you can start to earn your first internet points, or badges. They're called but they're fake internet points. And they even have images and things like that, that are look like badges from the scouts, you know, and stuff like that. It's fun. We actually have gotten to the point where we kind of like collecting them.

Claudia Miller:

And I'll actually have the links in the show notes. So that way, they can click on the link to join the challenge. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Well, it was great having you on the show, Justin, and thanks again for sharing this all amazing information, this new industry that may be new for some people.

Unknown:

You bet. Thank you for having me. And I know what it did for my career and my income. And I want everyone to have that same chance.

Claudia Miller:

Thank you. Thanks for listening in. If you liked this episode, you can go to our website roadmap to the executive suite.com For show notes and sign up to get alerts. All new episodes will be posted every Thursday. Talk to you next week.