How To Prepare Yourself For A Salesforce Industry Emergency?

Stock markets have experienced a big shift. Schools, universities, and offices are closed. Malls, social gatherings, and conferences have suddenly become a thing of the past. The months ahead will probably be quite dynamic and volatile and recession is possibly ahead of us. It is times like these that get us to think – how prepared we are for the inevitable crash of our economies before us?

Gone are the days when companies like Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft could boast on their achievements and stupendous success. Every company has a rise and a fall. Prominent companies like Kodak, Compaq Computers, Enron, Polaroid, Lehman Brothers, Reader’s Digest Association, Thomas Cook, and more have seen their best and worst days.  And Salesforce would be no exception.

There is no denying the fact that Salesforce is one of the most promising companies for a while now. But like with every company, there will come a day when discussions about the CRM giant will only make us go down the memory lane. Therefore, it is important that you should prepare yourself for the “worst” and make an industry shift today.

Here are my recommendations:

Salesforce Administrators

Believe it or not, this community of Salesforce professionals could be the worst hit in the near future. During the transition phase, Salesforce administrators are likely to struggle because of the following reasons:

Non-transferable hard skills: Hard skills are an integral part of the skill set that is required for a job. It includes the expertise required for an individual to successfully plan and execute a job. 

These skills are acquired through training and formal education programs including short-term training classes, online courses, college courses, apprenticeships, certification programs, and on-the-job training.

It is worthwhile to note here that the hard skills (sharing rules, process builder, etc.) of a Salesforce Administrator are usually non-transferrable in nature.

Ample availability of professionals with soft skills: Soft skills that are the specialty of a Salesforce Admin are found in almost every professional of all industries and niches. Soft skills (creativity, persuasion, adaptability, collaboration, emotional intelligence, etc.) are personality traits and attributes that impact productivity and interpersonal interactions. 

Unlike hard skills that are learned, soft skills such as positivity, time management, critical thinking, conflict resolution, motivation, teamwork, work ethics, and attitude are similar to insights or emotions that allow people to “read” others. These harder to measure and evaluate skills are much harder to learn, at least in a typical and traditional classroom.

On top of this, Salesforce Admins are the majority of the industry that, in turn, increases the level of competition.

Here’s what to prepare:

1. Don’t restrict your professional career to just Salesforce Administration. It is high time that you brush your existing skills and redefine your approach by becoming a Salesforce Consultant. This will not only enhance your career prospects, but it will also help you stabilize your career in the ever-evolving Salesforce ecosystem. 
2. One of the best options before you would be to empower yourself by going towards the management path. For this, you can try reading out management books, improving your existing skills, and working on your weaknesses to become a ‘complete package.’
3. In addition to this,  you must invest more time and effort to learn multiple integration tools like Dell Boomi, Mulesoft, Jitterbit etc.

Salesforce Quality Analysts

Salesforce Quality Analysts tend to enjoy a stable and strong career graph. Entrusted for a wide range of services including but not limited to the automation of complex CRM workflows and the validation of built-in communication tools for CRM users, Salesforce Quality Analysts make good money and thus have larger safety nets.

It is important to stay updated with the latest CRM trends in the segments of testing activities (vulnerability and security scanning, security auditing, and ethical hacking), role-based access control validation, and CRM and its multilevel (including functional, interface, safety, operational) requirements.

Salesforce Developers

Undoubtedly, Salesforce Developers tend to have the strongest career security of all the main Salesforce paths during a transition phase. This is primarily because:

1. There is a global shortage of good programmers.
2. Developers tend to make good money and thus have larger safety nets.
3. Coding skills translate across every programming language.

However, nothing is guaranteed forever. Therefore, developers should still prepare for the worst:

• Double down on your JavaScript skills as you spend more time and effort building more in the Lightning Framework. If you have not been doing this, it is time to do it now and consistently keep doing it. Remember, practice makes a man perfect.
• Emphasize on programming fundamentals such as design patterns, developing understanding, generating algorithms, analysis, implementation (commonly referred to as coding) of algorithms, and verification of requirements of algorithms including the consumption and correctness of resources. 
• Spend the majority of your time understanding end-to-end integration architecture.

If you have been thinking about building apps, components, or lightning solutions for AppExchange, this is just the right time to get started.

I would suggest you read the article 7 checkpoints for Salesforce Developers and refer to the article Territory Management in Salesforce.

Technical Architects

Like Salesforce Developers, Technical architects are also well positioned to effectively overcome industry shifts. This is simply because the skillset of technical architects already includes a wide range of non-Salesforce technologies. Furthermore, architects command big paychecks and thus tend to have larger safety nets. However, it is important for technical architects to prepare for industry changes, including but not limited to:

• Get your hands dirty with out-of-the-box technologies.
• Follow the Salesforce Certified Technical Architect (CTA) path as not all architect job titles are equal.
• It is equally important for you to expand your skills by working on larger and larger deployments.

Irrespective of how secure you feel with your job, it is important to always plan and prepare for the long term.

At Cloud Analogy, we always emphasize on encouraging our teams of Salesforce Administrators, Salesforce Developers, Salesforce Consultants, and Salesforce Technical Architects to stay relevant and ahead of the times. At Cloud Analogy, we help you understand and leverage CRM so it becomes easy for you to identify opportunities, explore new markets, mitigate risks, and increase operational efficiencies. You can rely on our skillful teams to leverage the best of CRM. 

And when you work with Cloud Analogy, you’ll join hundreds of happy and satisfied customers from all over the world. Whatever business niche you’re in, let us show you our innovative and customer-centric approach to CRM. And when it comes to project management, you won’t find a more resourceful and committed team.