Are you ready to break into the Salesforce industry? In this article, we’ll reveal the top 5 obstacles preventing you from landing your first Salesforce entry-level role—and it’s not just about earning another certification!
We’ll dive into how the Talent Stacker Salesforce Career Development Program addresses these challenges head-on, providing you with a comprehensive strategy to secure roles such as Salesforce Administrator, Analyst, Consultant, and Developer. Our proven methodologies, developed and tested with over 12,000 individuals, guarantee a faster path to success than going it alone.
This isn’t guesswork or another article offering vague tips. Our advice is based on evidence and designed to help you skip the struggle. But don’t just take our word for it—hear from our successful members!
What We’ll Cover:
- Earning Your First Certification: Why you only need one to get started.
- Networking and Building Your Personal Brand: The importance of branding and how to stand out to hiring managers.
- Gaining Hands-On Experience: How to secure and demonstrate your value to potential employers.
- Mastering Interviews: Tips to showcase your expertise and land the job.
- Effective Job Applications: Strategies to get noticed by decision-makers, beyond just applying and hoping.
Don’t just take it from us! Be sure to take a look at some of the feedback from companies who have hired our members!
Hear from third-party reviews in the ecosystem below.
- Kaelan Moss of MinuteAdmin has us listed as the 2nd most recommended training in the world right behind Salesforce Trailhead!
- Leila is a Finance YouTuber and Talent Stacker alumni, hear her unscripted take here!
- Ike is a Salesforce product and services reviewer, have a look at his 5 minute honest review of the program!
- Amit Arora is a tech careers blogger and wrote his take here!
Obstacle #1 – A Salesforce Certification
Your 1st Salesforce Certification is typically the first hurdle to tackle and while it can be difficult for some it is likely the most clear hurdle to overcome. You have a set curriculum created by Salesforce, practice exams readily available and an easy to understand process to getting your first certification.
This 1st certification will show your commitment to a Salesforce career, and lets employers know that you have a base level of technical understanding. However, if you already have a certification but you aren’t getting interviews and job offers then there is an issue and it’s not that you need more certifications! It’s likely a combination of personal branding and the amount of quality preparation you’ve put into your interview skills.
You may have heard a common myth that you need 3-5 certifications to stand out, and if that number sounds daunting, I’ve got some great news for you. For entry level salesforce jobs, you may be surprised to find you really only need one! If you already have a few certifications, that’s not a bad thing, it can certainly give you an edge, but in my opinion and from the success of many of our members, there are many topics to focus on aside from getting as many certifications as possible.
So yes, that first certification is absolutely key, but before moving on to attempting the 2nd certification, let’s talk about what else we should be doing to have the biggest impact on getting a job offer!
How does the Salesforce Career Development Program help you get a certification?
As many people already know, Salesforce Certifications have a relatively clear path to success, you use Salesforce’s free training platform Trailhead to earn badges and learn the material. You then take some Practice Exams utilizing free online quizzes or professionally designed exams from Focus on Force. You might even have a Salesforce Mentor through the Trailblazer Mentorship Platform. Once you feel confident in your ability to pass the exam you get it scheduled and celebrate your success! The problem is preparing for a certification doesn’t make you job ready, however Talent Stackers approach is to make you job ready first, then my default you will pass the exam and be ready to start work with an employer! Talent Stacker’s focus is on getting you a job and starting a career, not getting a certification, this is why many of our members who join are already certified, because they know our value comes in getting you paid! However, we do help facilitate the certification process and this is how.
🚨 Important: Check these out without actually trying to do all the work. There is no pressure; you are just taking a look at what it’s like on the inside and experiencing the member journey. 🚨
📚 Study Group Deep Dive The Deep Dive sessions are designed to help you navigate the complex question structures you might encounter on the exam. Sometimes, questions can be quite tricky in their wording. These sessions equip you with tools to successfully tackle them. Jump into Week 3 with TS Trainer Anthony Here!
🆘 SOS! Admin Please Help Me! One of the best ways to prepare for the Salesforce Admin exam (and your first professional role) is to troubleshoot the real-world issues that users may run into. In this 11-week series, we work through user issues that not only come up in the real world, but also help us deepen our knowledge of the Admin role. We put on our Admin detective hats and address issues. Jump into Week 4 with TS Trainer Anthony Here!
🛠️ Admin Build Along In this 13-week program, we will work together to build an org for a predetermined business from start to finish. You will see how all the pieces you have been studying fit together and in the end, you will have a demo org to show your skills to potential employers! Many Talent Stackers say that completing the Build Alongs have been the key to their certification success. Jump into Week 4 with TS Trainer Alex Here!
Obstacle #2 – Your Networking and Personal Branding
Did you know that Salesforce hiring is still strong? This includes Business Analysts, Admins, Project Managers, Support Specialists and Developers! With all of these roles needing to be filled there is only one place you need to be, LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the heartbeat of the Salesforce careers ecosystem. It’s where recruiters, hiring managers, and professionals connect. Think of it as the foundation of your professional presence.
I want to acknowledge the significant percentage of you who checked out as soon as I mentioned LinkedIn, and first of all, I don’t blame you. Most of us are trying to do less on social media, not looking for ways to do more. But if I could keep your attention for just a few more minutes, you might discover something game-changing. Imagine a strategy that could multiply your efforts and get you results faster than you ever dreamed of, far beyond the usual job search methods. This could be the key to unlocking those opportunities you’ve been hoping for.
Are You Skeptical? To show you how serious I am about this, imagine you had to choose between creating a resume, a CV, or an outstanding LinkedIn profile to land a Salesforce job. I would tell you to focus on LinkedIn. This isn’t just my opinion—it’s backed by hundreds, if not thousands, of success stories within the Talent Stacker ecosystem. Your resume and CV are important, of course, but the foundation of your professional presence should be your LinkedIn profile. It’s the key to unlocking the opportunities you’re seeking
We have coached 5000+ individuals to use LinkedIn as their primary resource for landing jobs and attracting the attention of decision makers at companies. How does the Talent Stacker Salesforce Career Development Program help you with your personal branding?
💼 Success Story: Josie 🔊 Listen to Josie’s story! She leveraged LinkedIn to uncover job opportunities and landed her first Salesforce job! Click here to hear more about her journey! For a full list of inspiring member stories, click here! 🌟
🤝 Ready to take your LinkedIn Profile to 100% be sure to grab the Free LinkedIn Optimization Guide here!
Obstacle #3 – Hands On Experience
If you’re looking to land a job in the Salesforce ecosystem, experience is going to be a requirement for most jobs. But suddenly you are faced with the classic catch 22, you don’t have any experience, but you can’t get a job to get the experience. So how will you ever get a job? This is the area where most aspiring Salesforce professionals fall flat and where Talent Stacker thrives. You begin to realize that certifications alone are not enough, ALL employers want real world experience! But how do you get experience if you can’t land a job?
Luckily, there are many other ways to go about getting enough experience to land yourself a job. Many of these junior Salesforce roles can start at a salary of $70,000 to $80,000+. Of course we have publicly available content like our Real World Requests Series on Youtube that can help you better understand the real world scenarios but let’s take a look at how the Talent Stacker Salesforce Career Development Program overcomes this major obstacle definitively!
How does the Talent Stacker Salesforce Career Development Program make sure you have Real World Experience?
You’ll hear a lot of Salesforce influencers tell you to get volunteer experience, myself included, but that’s a process. You need to find companies looking for volunteers, apply and interview for those roles and convince companies to let you work for free. Then you have to cross your fingers and hope that the experience you get is quality and not just sending emails that never get responses, or entering data in the system and never getting hands-on experience with the platform.
We guarantee you a quality volunteer project led by a seasoned Salesforce Consultant who will help guide you and your team of 2-3 other certified members through the project deliverables. On these projects you will gather requirements, document solutions, complete a major implementation or enhancement in a real Salesforce environment and prepare training materials for end users. Does that sound like an incredible experience to add to your LinkedIn Profile, talk about in interviews, build your confidence and sharpen your skills? Yes it does! Now when you hop on that next interview and the interviewer asks the fated question “tell us about your hand-on experience with the platform” or “tell us about a situation where you had to overcome a hurdle in Salesforce” you will actually have a real answer, no fluff, just real stories about your amazing experience!
Have a quick look at this Project Demo one of our project teams built when implementing Salesforce for the Talent Stacker Program! You’ll be capable of this and more after completing the Talent Stacker Salesforce Career Development Program!
Obstacle #4 – Interview Preparation
Did you know that 85% of job applicants don’t put any real effort into preparing for interviews? They look up the top 10 questions for the role, check out Glassdoor for company reviews and then just hope all goes well if they dress nice and sound confident. So it’s no surprise when we hear stories about individuals getting rejected during the interview process or applying for 500 jobs but not getting any offers! The biggest issue is that most individuals don’t know how to prepare, they don’t know what strategies to implement to dominate interviews. It’s incredible that you can be so close to a new career and an offer on the table and it all crumbles at the last moment, this can cause individuals to give up or start to feel like they aren’t capable. It’s not true though, it’s just a barrier to overcome and with the proper guidance you can enjoy interviews and start deciding between multiple offers like Daniel, Akhilaa and Jiyaad did!
How does the Salesforce Career Development Program position you to Dominate Interviews?
The interview process can be challenging but we want you to be well prepared! We actually have top interview experts working for Talent Stacker to coach our members to be fully prepared for interviews. So what steps do we take to make sure you are ready for your moment?
- Virtual Interview Preparation Guide – 95%+ of interviews are completely virtual now, this means that you need to prepare your video, audio, background, body language and environment for this interview. This gives you an incredible opportunity to standout from other candidates in your own environment and proves your ability to work remotely and with technical devices/platforms. We teach you to take advantage of this massive opportunity!
Live Interview Events – we host regular live events so that you can ask questions, share experiences and get targeted coaching! All events are recorded and shared so you will instantly have access to an array of content from these private events!
1:1 Mock Interview Sessions – If you opt for the 1:1 interview package you will get access to a mock interview and feedback session with our in house interview expert who will coach you to perfect the process! Every member gets access to our mock interview archive where you can see the interview and feedback sessions from our members who have already landed jobs as well as a breakdown of their background to find individuals that align with your prior experience and industry!
We teach you to handle Phone Screening calls from recruiters, how to answer questions like “what are your salary requirements” and how to convey your guaranteed volunteer experience in a way that turns heads. You will understand how to tell amazing stories based on your experience so instead of studying the top 20 questions for Salesforce jobs you can tell amazing stories that will answer almost any question. Not to mention we teach strategy on avoiding the fated Technical Interview Questions and how to sound amazing in the situations where they do come up!
Take a look at what our members have to say about the interview preparation content and events hosted in the Talent Stacker Salesforce Career Development Program!
📖 Top 20 Salesforce Entry Level Interview Questions Take a look at one of our latest resources on Interview Prep and the Top 20 Questions & Answers you’ll see!
Obstacle #5 – How to Search For Jobs
Once you’ve completed all the above steps, it’s easy to get over confident with your job search. I mean, it’s not hard to apply for jobs, right? You just click “apply now” upload your resume and cross your fingers… well when I put it that way it almost sounds like a lost cause doesn’t it? I mean you just submit an application into the abyss and hope someone calls? There has to be a better way… good news, THERE IS!
While it’s easy to apply for jobs, the strategies you need to utilize in order to turn the heads of hiring managers needs to factor into everything you do, you want to be noticed, you want application reviewers to find your application and invite you to interview, not just hope they do, be sure that they do!
How does the Salesforce Career Development Program position help me to apply for jobs more meaningfully and get interviews?
At Talent Stacker we take a targeted approach to getting the attention of decision makers at companies. We of course want to apply for the role but we also want to make sure they see us, but how on earth do we do this? In the program we teach on the following topics so that you stand out far from the competition!
- Overcoming the 3+ years experience needed that seems to be a requirement even for entry level roles.
- Reading between the lines on Job Descriptions to find 5x as many jobs that you’re qualified for.
Better utilizing tools like LinkedIn Jobs and Indeed.com to find the jobs that you’re a fit for. - Sending meaningful messages to decision makers via email and social platforms like LinkedIn.
- Writing engaging Cover Letters
Communicate with interview follow-up emails that make interviewers want to give you a shot! - Keep in mind many of our members land jobs that they don’t even apply for, because their personal brand is so strong.
With the strategies taught in the Talent Stacker Salesforce Career Development program it is no surprise that our members land jobs more consistently, more quickly and with more success than anyone else! We simply take a comprehensive approach to all aspects of the Salesforce job placement process, with all of our staff being Salesforce professionals fully dedicated to your success! If you would like more information, the details of every aspect of the program including far more free content and to lock in your chance to enroll please join Informational Wait-List using the form below!