How to be an expert and get your dream job in salesforce in less than 5 months

Salesforce is a hot product and has changed a lot in last few years. Back in 2010, when I started working on this platform, very few people in India were aware about it. But now, almost every IT company knows about Salesforce and want to have some good resources on the same technology. Also, since new customers are joining Salesforce every single day, that means demands for Salesforce Admin, Developer & consultant are increasing.

It is not very difficult to become an expert in salesforce, but it requires some patience and dedication. In this blog, I am going to share few steps to become a salesforce expert, which I have learnt from my experience of 7 years in salesforce. If you follow these steps, you will get a good paying job in salesforce technology.

1)      Register a DEV ORG for your practice

Anyone interested in learning salesforce must have a DEV account in order to play around the platform. This is life-time free of cost salesforce instance that allows you to learn and practice things.

With this org, you can do following things:

a)       Build new features and functionalities (like Custom app, fields, validation rules, security settings)

b)      Create and execute APEX Code & visualforce pages (If you are developer)

c)       Access the salesforce community (http://developer.force.com/)  to get hands on never-ending supply of salesforce documentations, produced by salesforce & the community.

You can also register for various salesforce training sessions using this credentials in this community.

d)      Create packages for your code for appexhange.

e)      Installing packages created by other companies from appexchange.

f)        And much more…

2)      Learn, Practice, Learn, Practice….

Once your dev account is created, its time to get started on practicing your learnings on this account. There are various resources that can help to get started on learning salesforce, few of them are:

a)       Salesforce Fundamental PDF – This pdf is very good starting point to learn salesforce. This pdf will help you create a Recruiting app with the help of examples and easy walkthroughs.  Make sure you implement all the exercises that you learn in this pdf.

b)      Salesforce Trailhead – trailhead.salesforce.com is an interactive learning tool developed & maintained by Salesforce. Its very similar to Code Academy in that it has modules  you’ll work through using your admin org. Along the way, you’ll learn the basics of Salesforce while earning points and badges. It’s phenomenal (and totally free).

c)       Salesforce YouTube Channel— This is also a very great resource of learning salesforce from various videos uploaded by Salesforce.

3)      Join a meetup group and start networking – There are over 200 user groups around the world that allows you to meet, learn and make some networking with other local salesforce talent. Try to meet other people and learn from their experiences. Bigger network you have, easier it would be to get a job.

4)      Be Active on social networking Sites – Salesforce groups are there in almost every networking website like Linkedin or Facebook. Be a member of them to keep updated on what is happening, what new is coming. Also become friends with various salesforce talent around the globe. Follow people and blogs that are interesting to you. I have learned a lot from following blogs from various salesforce experts like Bob Buzzard and Ankit Arora.

5)      Volunteer – Once you get hold of salesforce customizations(for developers) and configurations, I would advise you to be part of salesforce developer forums and start contributing in them. Some of the good salesforce communities are:

a)      Salesforce Developer forums : https://developer.salesforce.com/forums/

b)      Stackexchange : http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/

Be part of these forums. See what are the issues other people are getting. Try to help them with replying the solutions to them. That way, you will learn real-time issues that any book can not teach you.

I hope this help you guys to get started on salesforce. Happy learning. I am looking forward to meet you guys in salesforce communities. Any questions you have, feel free to reach me at rohit@applikontech.com and I will try my best to answer those questions as soon as possible.