It’s no secret that the Salesforce job market is oversaturated and highly competitive these days. Whether you are looking to transition into a new Salesforce career, or you are a seasoned professional, I bet you’ve applied to hundreds of jobs, obtained some new certifications, built a portfolio, and expanded your LinkedIn connections in hopes of getting just an ounce of traction in return.
That’s a lot of time and effort being put in, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information and activities. Here’s a pivotal question: How do you keep track of it all? More importantly, how do you know what’s working (or not working) in your job search?
Job Search Strategies
Cue in Salesforce – The very tool that you will utilize in your job is the same tool you can leverage in your job search for maximum efficiency. This post aims to uncover how harnessing the potential of Salesforce can not only organize your data but also refine your search strategy, allowing you to channel your energy toward the most effective activities that will help land your dream job faster!
Go Beyond Spreadsheets and the “Other things”
While spreadsheets have been a trusty companion for organizing information, they often fall flat when handling the multifaceted nature of a job search.
Tracking progress, managing contacts, and analyzing the effectiveness of various strategies becomes cumbersome and limited within spreadsheet confines. If you’re also managing some of your activities on sticky notes, emails, calendars, etc., you run the risk of losing data, missing dates, or not having a complete 360° view of where you are at any given time. You need more.
Leverage Salesforce: Redefine the Game
Salesforce isn’t just for businesses; it’s a game-changer in how you approach your job search. Part of your responsibility in a Salesforce role is to increase your users’ productivity, so why not leverage the same technology as your users?
One of the ways you can leverage Salesforce for your job search is with a free Developer org. You get access to a customizable tool where you can design a solution to address your specific pain points. You can take your solution to the next level by building automation to support your workflows and use other cool features of the platform to reduce redundancy to focus on what matters most: landing that dream job!
What is a Developer Org?
A Salesforce Developer org gives you access to a full-featured copy of Force.com, for free, that you can use indefinitely as long as you are logging in. Developer orgs not used after six months will expire. There are also some limitations to be aware of before you decide to get a Developer org.
Hands-On Experience: Build Confidence and Skills
One of the biggest challenges job seekers run into while job hunting is having the platform experience that companies are looking for. Certifications and Trailhead badges can only get you so far – the hands-on knowledge is where it’s at.
Customizing your Developer org to optimize your job search will allow you to take a real-life scenario and transform it into a scalable solution – exactly the kind of gems employers are looking for.
Before You Build, You Must Start Where You Are At
It may be tempting to jump in and start building right away, but before all that, you want to start by firstly understanding where you are at and where you want to go. One of the ways to help you do that is to follow the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) process. If you want to learn more about ALM, check out this Trailhead Unit. Scroll down to the last section before the quiz.
The first step in ALM is to plan your release. You want to begin with a solid plan. Take some time to think through and document your existing job search process:
- What information are you capturing?
- What’s your day-to-day job search process like? What can be improved?
- What tools are you currently using?
- Where are the gaps and pain points?
- Where are you spending the most time?
- Are there any tasks that are redundant or take a lot of time?
- What do you not have today that you wish you could have?
Pro tip: Get more hands-on experience by prioritizing your requirements, build a Minimum Valuable Product (MVP), and add enhancements afterwards. This will not only give you additional Application Lifecycle practice for continuous delivery, but you will also be able to have your solution up and running faster!
Job Search Solution Use Case Examples
The possibilities for what you can add to your solution are endless. If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed on how or where to get started, then check out these examples for some inspiration:
- Create a custom Job Search Optimizer App with only the tabs relevant to your job search
- Use Leads to nurture your networking activities
- Enable Campaign management to see the effectiveness of the events you’ve attended
- Build a custom object with a status path to track your job application pipeline
- Use Activities to manage your tasks like follow-ups or submission deadlines; use Events to remind you of upcoming interviews
- Upload copies of your resumes, cover letters, and other artifacts to Files
- Customize Opportunities for any freelance opportunities that may come your way while you’re looking for your next role
- Create email templates to send out Thank You emails and for follow-ups
- If you have a business email account with Google or Outlook, integrate your email to bring your applications together into Salesforce
Pro tip: Add some automation with Flow to fully embrace the power of the platform!
Don’t Forget the Metrics: Fine Tune Your Strategies
Now that you’ve customized Salesforce to store all of your important data and create a place to manage your activities, you can use all of this information as your canvas to create metrics that provide insights, empowering you to fine-tune your job search strategies.
Create reports and dashboards to see exactly where you are in your job search process at any given time. In your dashboard, you can have a glimpse of your top job opportunities, which activities have yielded the highest results, and what tasks you have coming due soon to help you plan your next steps and make the most of your time.
Are you applying for different types of roles? You can use your dashboard to group your job opportunities by role type to see which are getting you the most traction; allowing you to put your attention into finding and applying to those specific roles. This will help you sort through the pile and focus on quality vs. quantity.
Spending a lot of time connecting with people on LinkedIn? Use your dashboard to track your referrals. Is there a certain Salesforce event or certain people that have helped generate potential job leads? If so, you may want to focus more on attending those types of events and nurturing those relationships instead of “cold-calling” new ones.
Pro tip: Once you’ve built your dashboard, set up a daily subscription to receive your dashboard by email. This serves as a great reminder to log into Salesforce.
Showcase Your Solution: Portfolio and Interview Success
This is the part where all of your hard work pays off! Your Salesforce solution isn’t just a tool; it’s a portfolio piece. You have successfully taken the challenges of manually managing data and the job search process by designing and implementing a system using the Salesforce platform. Congratulations!
Grow Your Brand with Tangible Content
As you may have seen in a lot of social media posts as of late, it’s crucial to build your online brand for visibility in the job market so you can be seen for your expertise and demonstrate the value you bring. You can do this by creating content on social platforms like LinkedIn.
If you’ve been trying to figure out what content to post, you can highlight your building capabilities and problem-solving skills by showing off your new solution!
Create a Compelling Demo
When you get to the interview phase of your process, it helps to have a portfolio of your work, which you have now! Use your Job Search solution as a visual representation as you walk your interviewers through your job search journey.
Remember that documentation you developed at the beginning of this project? Start there to demonstrate your practical knowledge with how you took a real-life problem, and how you followed the Application Lifecycle Management process to identify your requirements, design your solution and build your custom app. Promote your skills even further by demonstrating your workflow automation with the Flows you’ve built, and that fancy dashboard you designed!
Here are some ideas to help you prepare for your demo:
- A brief overview of how you managed your processes before
- What were the pain points and obstacles
- How you solved issues and gaps using Salesforce
- Demonstrate your understanding of the Application Lifecycle Management process
- What results have you created since you implemented your solution
- Your Salesforce roadmap – upcoming features and enhancements now that MVP is complete
You have just shown them how you use technology to address critical pain points in the job search process and how to create more effective strategies with data.
Summary
In today’s competitive job market, efficiency and strategic focus are key. By encompassing the power of Salesforce, you not only streamline your job search but also elevate your brand and skill set, standing out as a candidate who doesn’t just apply for jobs but actively innovates in the pursuit of their career goals.
Celebrate your wins – cue the confetti with every application sent. Keep exploring new Salesforce features and possibilities. If you ever feel discouraged, just remember your journey doesn’t end here; it’s just the beginning of an exciting career path!
- Salesforce Ben: Is the Salesforce Job Market Saturated?
- Salesforce Geek: How to Create a Free Salesforce Developer Org
- Developer Edition Signup
- Developer Organization features, new licenses, and updates
- CloudSmiths: The Salesforce MVP
