How Do I Transition Into a Salesforce Admin Career?

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to David Simpson, Salesforce Administrator at the 1916 Company.

Join us as we chat about how he landed his first Salesforce Admin role and what advice he has for folks who are new to the ecosystem.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with David Simpson.

A career pivot from finance to Salesforce

If you didn’t catch David’s presentation about resolving Flow errors at Dreamforce, be sure to check out our earlier episode with him. Another thing that came up was his career pivot, and it was so interesting that I had to bring him back to talk about it.

David started out as an accountant before eventually becoming a financial systems analyst. He had to run a lot of reports and quickly discovered that the thing he was actually interested in was the Salesforce platform.

Soon enough, David became the part-time admin for his organization, but he quickly realized that if he wanted to just focus on Salesforce, he would need to find a new job.

What to look for in a job description

While David bulked up his credentials, he started looking for full-time Salesforce Admin roles to apply to. One piece of advice he has is to take a closer look at the job description and be clear about what you want.

“It's not uncommon now for admins to have developer skills or maybe dip their toe into the architect side of things,” he says, “but I focused mainly on positions that were only looking for admin-related work.”

David also was really specific about finding an organization that was already committed to Salesforce. He looked for green flags like job postings with specifics on certifications or Superbadges. Finally, it was important to him to join a Salesforce team as opposed to try to cut his teeth as a solo admin.

Find opportunities to grow as an admin

David’s advice for people new to the ecosystem is to get curious. Back when he was a part-time admin, he was laser-focused on opportunities because that was what his organization was asking him to do. 

“I should have given myself the benefit of the doubt,” he says, “and taken a little bit more risk in learning new things.” Reflecting now, he sees where he could have taken the initiative to try automations or enhance integrations and become a better admin in the process.

There are a lot more great tips from David about his pivot into a Salesforce Admin career, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday.

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Full show transcript

Mike:
Welcome to Salesforce Admins podcast. This week I'm joined by David Simpson, who you might remember from our pre-Dreamforce chat not that long ago. It was a little over a month ago, but this time we're diving into something that really hits close to home for a lot of Salesforce admins, and that is career change. The number one question I get in my inbox is how do I find a different career? What does it look like to interview as a first time Salesforce admin and questions like that? I'm telling you, we're going to dive into all of that with David because he's going to share how he went from spreadsheets as a staff accountant to automations as a Salesforce admin and what his transition looked like.
We get into certifications. We talk about job hunting. We talk about imposter syndrome, and I dig into what it looked like to be a brand new Salesforce admin on his first day at a new job. I think this might be the most comprehensive podcast interview about what it looks like to change careers that I've done since I've launched this show. If you're curious about how David did it, this is the episode for you. Give it a listen and let's get David on the podcast.
So, David, welcome back to the podcast.

David Simpson:
Thank you for having me back.

Mike:
It wasn't that long ago that we were talking, it was pre-Dreamforce about 45 days ago or so. I had you on the podcast to talk about the presentation you're giving at Dreamforce, and we've since wrapped up Dreamforce now and people are at home. Well, some people. I think some people stayed and probably went to Napa Valley and did wine tastings, which I wouldn't blame you. There's a lot of great vineyards and stuff out there. But one thing you brought up that I wanted to follow up on was your career trajectory, and we haven't talked about careers a whole lot, but let's just rewind a little bit and give one of those the last time on the Salesforce Admin podcast, because I've watched a lot of streaming things. Let's fill people in on what you do and where your career started and how you became a Salesforce admin.

David Simpson:
Sure. Previously on Salesforce Admins.

Mike:
Exactly.

David Simpson:
So, many years ago, I went to college for accounting, and my first job out of college was a staff accountant at a software company. After a few years of working in spreadsheets and doing the monotonous day-to-day that comes with being a staff accountant, I made a pivot to be a financial analyst, more specifically a financial systems analyst, and after I made that pivot, my supervisor at the time, he informed me that he was the administrator for our company's Salesforce instance, and that a lot of the work that I was doing, which was doing financial analytics for our professional service team, a lot of that data came out of Salesforce. Our professional service team would put opportunities into Salesforce, and we needed to make sure that those financials were clean.
So, he suggested that I become another admin with the company, and that I would learn about the general inner workings of Salesforce and be a point of contact for cleaning up that data, for troubleshooting issues and just all the things that come with being a junior level admin. So, he gave me a system administrator license. He recommended that I go into Trailhead to just learn the basics of being a Salesforce admin, the Salesforce ecosystem, custom objects. All those general items that you learn as an admin, and then I just kind of fell in love with it. It was such an interesting pivot from doing spreadsheets and reconciliations. I was able to kind of do problem solving and be an environment that I wasn't too familiar in, but I was also able to see how Salesforce works and how we can get this data to be reportable data.
So, the automation behind it or validation rules, just even something simple like setting up a page layout. It was all very interesting and new to me, so I just latched onto it a hundred percent, and then I further got sold on the whole experience after about a year or so, being a Salesforce admin, I went to my first Dreamforce in 2018 and I got my Salesforce administrator certification, and at that point, that kind of signaled to me that this is what I want to do full time. So, from that point on, it's all history. I went and unfortunately, the company I was with didn't have the resources for a full-time admin, so I did go to another company, but since then I have been an awesome admin just doing it every day. Custom objects, flows, you name it, admin work-wise, I do it.

Mike:
And I think career changes are hard. I went from sales to becoming an admin as well, and I think everybody kind of looks at like, well, what do I have to do? Or where do I have to go? Or what skills are required? And I think you, like me, kind of got fortunate you were with a company that was like, "Hey, we need these skills." And I'm assuming you probably did both jobs for a while, right?

David Simpson:
Yes. I was doing both jobs up until I left the company. It was essentially 50/50 financial systems analysis and then admin work.

Mike:
So, it's not like you just all of a sudden jumped in the pilot seat and took over the plane and away you go.

David Simpson:
Thankfully, that wasn't the case for me. I was able to kind ease myself into the admin role because I still had work to do on the financial side.

Mike:
Yeah. And I think that that works out as an incredibly lucky path.

David Simpson:
Yeah, definitely.

Mike:
One thing, so you mentioned they didn't have the budget for a full-time admin, which is the role you wanted to pursue. Did you consider just staying at that current position and kind of dividing your time, or was this something where you were like, "No, I really, this is, I'm going to commit?"

David Simpson:
It was something that I really wanted to commit on. In the beginning when I had first gotten a system administrator license and started doing basic admin work, I was completely on board with splitting my time between the two. I wasn't super confident in what I was doing as a Salesforce admin. I was still learning the ropes, but after I had gotten my first certification, that kind of sold it to me and locked in that this is what I want to do as a career. So, at that point, I did bring up my interest in being a full-time admin to the company, and they said, "Unfortunately, we just don't have the bandwidth to have a full-time admin whose only job is to be a Salesforce administrator." So, unfortunately, I did have to switch companies to go and find that.

Mike:
Okay, so let's pause there because that is the point that I think everybody has questions about, which is, so what did interviewing look like? What kind of prep did you do? You're going from career A to career B, and you kind of have some experience. I mean, what was that like? Because I'm assuming you sat in interviews for jobs you didn't get.

David Simpson:
Yeah, I won't sugarcoat it. It was a little tough. You're going into a new job where, yes, you do have experience, but you don't have a ton of experience. So, what I focused on was first the credential side of things. By the time I decided to make the jump to be a full-time Salesforce administrator, I did have, I believe, three certifications under my belt. I had the Salesforce administrator certification, the platform app builder, and then the CPQ specialist. So, I-

Mike:
Ooh, CPQ specialist. Wow.

David Simpson:
Yeah. Yep. I haven't used it in a while, but it was a very challenging and interesting certification to take. I actually took the Salesforce-provided trainings for it, and it was a wealth of knowledge, but so I had these three certifications. I did lean a little bit heavier on that to say, listen, I may not have years of experience, but you can see here that I'm able to answer the tough questions. Additionally, I did focus on what projects and initiatives I was able to complete at my job while I was part-time being a Salesforce admin. So, I had done some work building a custom object for, funnily enough, our accounting team to log their calls to people for collecting payment. So, I made a point to mention that in my interviews. So, I used the certifications.
I used actual project and real-world experience, but something else that was a little kind of ace up the sleeve for my interview process was that I did have finance and accounting background. The job that ultimately hired me, while I did not do finance and accounting work for them, I was able to be a point of contact to help bridge the gap between the finance team and the Salesforce team. If they needed to pull financial data from Salesforce, I would be a person that they could go to, and I could confidently answer that because of my background.
So, when it comes to jumping from one career to a Salesforce career, I definitely recommend that people do lean into what they've done in the past and show how they can enhance a new job's day-to-day by focusing on those areas of expertise, but just in a Salesforce context. That's what really helped me because yes, I did unfortunately have a handful of interviews where I didn't get the job, and I think that ultimately came down to just pure raw Salesforce experience. But the job that did hire me, it was because I had a great rapport with their CFO, and I was able to talk the talk with finance as well as bridge that gap to the Salesforce side of things.

Mike:
Yeah, I mean, you stayed in finance. It's not like you went over to a fish distribution warehouse or something.

David Simpson:
Yes, exactly. [inaudible 00:10:41]-

Mike:
I tried to pick something that was the opposite of finance, and my brain went blank for a second, and I was like, "Oh, I just watched a show on cooking last night."

David Simpson:
I mean, those are pretty different. I can't think of a much more different thing, but yeah, I mean because the Salesforce department at that new job also heavily interacted with the finance department, that was a big benefit to me.

Mike:
I can feel people listening to this podcast right now, and they're like, ask this question, ask this question, ask this question. I got like a million. What were in ... Because we're going to get to your job, I promise you, but we're going to just stay in this middle ground here for a second. In some of the job search that you were looking for in some of the, I don't know even, it sounds so old of me to call it classified ads. I'm sure it was like LinkedIn listings or Indeed job boards or something. What were some of the things that you looked for in terms of the description that you either filtered in or filtered out in terms applying for?

David Simpson:
Yeah, so some of the things that I looked for in my job search was making sure that the job posting focused purely on admin work. I think nowadays we focus so much on being specialized in a number of different aspects of Salesforce. It's not uncommon now for admins to have developer skills or maybe dip their toe in the architect side of things, and that is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but I focused mainly on positions that were only looking for admin-related work, so building custom objects, administering users, building validation rules, just those general kind of things were the main items I was looking for when I was transitioning to my first full-time Salesforce job.
Additionally, I was looking to see what kind of qualifications and credentials they were looking for from an education side of things. If there was nothing about a Salesforce certification, then I erred on the side of caution and didn't apply there. I wanted a company that was fully bought into the Salesforce ecosystem, and that can be illustrated in a job posting by seeing that they're asking for the proper credentials. An extra little bonus, which was much more rare, was seeing your certain Trailhead status, or you have certain super badges. It's very rare for a job to ask for those sorts of things, but that's how you know you're working with a company that knows the Salesforce ecosystem and knows what they want.

Mike:
Yeah. And it's done its homework.

David Simpson:
Exactly. So, I was looking for those types of companies, just really people who were bought into the ecosystem, people who knew what they were looking for, knew what enhancements and long-term goals they had for their Salesforce org, and also was going to treat it with the level of attention and detail that is needed in a Salesforce org. There's many times where unfortunately, due to resourcing or staffing issues, Salesforce gets a little bit put by the wayside, and instead of having great initiatives and solutions deployed, it's just a bunch of band-aids, and then that comes back to the admin saying, "Oh, we can't deliver on something truly incredible because we're not given the time and the resources for it." So, I was looking for companies that really didn't have that mindset and were looking for true, awesome admins.

Mike:
Yeah. You were fortunate enough that you had worked in an org. Did you, at any one point in time in the interviewing process, think about preparing a developer org or a Trailhead org to showcase some of your skills?

David Simpson:
When I was first applying for a full-time Salesforce admin, that thought did not cross my mind. That said, this was many years ago in, I think it was 2019. That said, a little over a year ago, I did get a new job at my current position, and during that job search, I did have a Salesforce developer org that I had built out, and I recreated some of my most interesting and complex solutions in that developer org, and then basically in every single job interview I had, I said, "Do you want to see my dev org? I've built some awesome flows."
And most of the time they said no. But every once in a while they'd say yes, and then I get to show off my screen flow that I worked really hard on. So, nowadays, yes, I do have my dev org. I'll bring up Trailhead every now and then, or I did back then when I was in the job hunt, but really, I like to showcase the dev org whenever possible because it is something that I'm actively developing in. Even now that I have a job and I'm in a job I love, I still whatever I do at my normal job, if I say, "Oh, that's pretty interesting," I go and I rebuild it in the dev org. But of course, without confidential information.

Mike:
Right. No. Oh, man. I'm the same way. I was crushed, I want to say a year and a half ago I was prepping for Dreamforce and the dev org that I'd had since 2006. I forgot to log in and it expired.

David Simpson:
Oh, no. Oh, that's horrible.

Mike:
And it was just more of like, it was just such an awesome little relic of stuff that I had built and things that I had tried out, and I have another one, but it's not as old and it doesn't have as much. There wasn't anything cool in it, but it was cool because it was stuff that I had built when I was, it had my first workflow in it.

David Simpson:
It shows a timeline of how you've grown.

Mike:
Yeah, I mean, very much so. I'd let nobody in there because they'd be like, "What were you doing?" Well, I was a kid with crayons back then.

David Simpson:
Yeah, you got to make mistakes in order to get better.

Mike:
Absolutely. Okay. So, I mean, we could do a whole podcast on interviewing and everybody in the comments will be like, "You should." Let's go to day one of the new job. So, you've transitioned, you're no longer 50/50. The company's bought in. Dave's our new Salesforce admin. Day one, outside of all of the HR paperwork and stuff, what did you do on day one?

David Simpson:
First, I quietly panicked because I was afraid I was not going to be able to live up to expectations. But after that calmed down, I of course met the team. I was very fortunate to work with a team of several people in the Salesforce space. There was two developers, there was another admin. There were two architects, and of course the Salesforce manager. So, they showed me around the org and they showed me some of the details of what they had built, what they're currently building, how they take in tickets.
It was just essentially getting a feel for the Salesforce ecosystem that was there. And then from that point, once I was left my own devices, I just continued to do some more digging. I looked, okay, they're using cases. How are they using cases? Where is the queue that stuff that we get asked to do comes in? What does their account object look like? Because the account object is always one of the busiest objects in the Salesforce ecosystem. How many validation rules do they have? I was really just trying to take the little experience that I had from my previous job and then look at those same areas in this new job. So, essentially just getting a feel for the org.

Mike:
So, you joined a team of people?

David Simpson:
Yes. Yes.

Mike:
What was that like?

David Simpson:
It was a fantastic experience. I still keep in touch with all of them to this day, despite the fact that I haven't worked with them for a few years now. They were all super friendly and super helpful, and I think that was something that really helped me to continue this admin career path is that I got paired with such great people in this team, and it wasn't just the Salesforce team that was super friendly and helpful. Everybody in the company was, but these people took me in and they knew that I had limited experience, and they said, "It's okay. Let's show you the ropes of what you don't know and make sure that you are as successful as possible."
That company was actually where I learned how to build flows. The Salesforce architect there, Nick, he sat down with me one day for two hours and he said, "Okay, we're going to build a screen flow and this needs to be triggered from a button and it needs to grab all these records. Let's see you build it." And then he walked me through it step by step, and it was just such an incredible experience, and I'm super grateful for it because now I use flows every single day in my job and I talk about flows. I talked about it at Dreamforce that just recently ended. I have a YouTube channel where I talk about flows. So, it was just such a good experience and I'm forever grateful for them.

Mike:
Would you advise newer admins when they're joining an organization to join as part of a team rather than trying to be a solo admin?

David Simpson:
Yes, most definitely. I think a team is one of the best things that you can have as a Salesforce admin outside of a good clean org, and of course, knowledge [inaudible 00:20:22]-

Mike:
Oh, a clean org. You mean the first day you get one?

David Simpson:
Oh, yeah, exactly. But yeah, a team is so important. Not only do you have other people that you can bounce ideas and problems off of, but just being able to work together and help lift each other up is such a good blessing in a Salesforce org. I think it's not only going into a job that has a team, but going into a job that has a team that is friendly, helpful, and inviting. Because I have had experience at a different position where unfortunately the team wasn't as welcoming, and that was really difficult to do good work because I couldn't ask questions. I couldn't troubleshoot certain things properly, and then when I eventually made a mistake, it was coming down on me pretty hard, but this first company here, it was just nothing but super niceness.

Mike:
So, having worked as part of a team, are you looking at your other team members in terms of where you want to grow your career or your skills and where are those?

David Simpson:
Yeah, definitely. So, working with a team and working with a team of a variety of skill sets, such as like an architect or a developer, it really does help kind of narrow down what I want to do. The architect route is something that is certainly interesting to me. I feel like it's a slight natural progression from being an advanced administrator and doing all these complex flow work, but I've seen what developers do with Apex, and while I think it's incredibly interesting and incredibly impressive, it's not something that's necessarily for me. So, you do get those different perspectives working in a team of people that you wouldn't get all by yourself because you're just kind of in the silo trying to figure everything out yourself.

Mike:
Well, and sometimes working in a silo, you have to do all those things. You just don't know that you're doing them, and then what part of it you're doing well.

David Simpson:
Yeah, exactly.

Mike:
I mean, I'd like to think I was an architect by drawing diagrams, but then I've seen architectural diagrams and I've realized I was just scribbling.

David Simpson:
Yeah, you don't know until you see it firsthand.

Mike:
Yeah. Well, and sometimes the only exposure, for me, the only exposure was talking with other people at user groups, and that's often limited as opposed to having them as coworkers.

David Simpson:
Yeah. You really do get the benefit of just day-to-day exposure with working in a team. So, I'm incredibly grateful for that exposure and that opportunity.

Mike:
So, last question, and maybe it's the hardest, I don't know, but if you had to rewind the clock and do it all over again, what's one thing you would do differently?

David Simpson:
Great question. I think that if I were to rewind time and do stuff differently, I think back when I was still that part-time admin and I was still just getting my feet wet, I think I probably would've taken a little bit more risk in learning new things because I was just told to handle this one aspect of Salesforce at the very beginning, as I'd mentioned earlier on, I was working with opportunities and our professional service team. I really only focused on that kind of area, but if I could do it all over again, I probably would've asked more questions and said, "Hey, how does this third-party integration work? Can I do some enhancements on it? I might break something, but can I give it a shot?"
Or, "Why doesn't this process work the way as intended? Can you let me try this automation?" I eventually got those skill sets over the years, especially with automation, but it took a little bit longer than expected because I was just afraid to take that leap very early on, and I should have given myself the benefit of the doubt that I could have figured it out that early on, and I think that would've made me a stronger admin from the get-go.

Mike:
Yeah, I could see that. The benefit of hindsight is hindsight, right?

David Simpson:
Yes.

Mike:
The ability to look back and boy, if I had to do the same thing, I don't know what I would do differently other than probably be less hard on myself.

David Simpson:
Yeah, that too. You need to be forgiving of yourself because as an admin, especially a newer admin, you will make mistakes. You'll accidentally use the wrong tools or the wrong process. I mean, look to the admin certification where you have to separate between sharing rules and field level security profiles, permission sets. You're going to grab the wrong thing or do the wrong process, and it might not be the end of the world, but you should give yourself some leeway that you will make those mistakes and you'll learn from them.

Mike:
Yep. Well, I think that's a great way to end this podcast. David, thanks for coming on, and given is probably one of the most comprehensive overviews of switching careers that I think I've talked to in a while, so I appreciate it.

David Simpson:
Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for having me on again.

Mike:
So, big thanks to David Simpson for sharing his journey with us presenting at Dreamforce. It was amazing last week to see his presentations. I really appreciated how honest he was about the highs that he had, the hesitations and everything in between. So, whether you're just starting out or you're thinking of making your own pivot, there's a lot to take away from his story. And hey, if you found it helpful, pass this podcast along to somebody that might need to hear it. And until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.