How to Kickstart Your Salesforce Admin Career

What do you want to be when you grow up? It's not often you hear kids answering, "a Salesforce Admin." Like many career paths, a lot of people stumble upon the option later in their career. Maybe you're transitioning into tech and see Salesforce as a big player. Or maybe you're a sales manager who loves the CRM and you love administering it.

Whatever the case, we understand why the position is attractive: it's a job that can be done remotely, there are companies of all sizes and industries to work for, and as of January 2023 the average salary for a Salesforce Admin is over $79,000 USD.

However, the Salesforce ecosystem is so large it can be daunting to get your feet wet, let alone dive right in. That's why we put a list of resources to get started — from training to landing a job.

Learning Resources

There are a lot of free training sources — both by Salesforce and third parties. Plus, there are other paid courses with more individualized instruction.

The best place to start learning Salesforce is with their free, training site called Trailhead. You can filter learning modules by Role: Admin. If you're just starting out, check out the Admin Beginner trail, and then move on to the Admin Intermediate trail. Trailhead also has Communities where you can join groups based in your local area, or by function, feature, cloud, etc. Since the Salesforce ecosystem (sometimes referred to as Ohana) is so large, other users can help answer your questions!

If you'd like more one-on-one mentoring, apply for a free Salesforce program called Pathfinders. Mentors are able to give advice, help with training, and also assist with getting a job.

If live events are more your style, attend TrailblazerDX or a World Tour near you. These events are better suited for Admin roles and have lots of educational content, as well as announcements about future products or product improvements.

For information outside of Salesforce, Salesforce Ben has instructional blog posts, as well as news of what's happening in the Salesforce ecosystem. The company also offers paid courses. Supermums wants to empower moms (and dads!) by offering paid training, along with support groups after the courses.

Building Your Resume

You're starting to get your bearings, and now you're ready to start your job search. What can you put on your resume to get interviews — especially if you don't have a lot of hands-on experience?

Getting Salesforce certifications is probably the first thing you should do. Look for Certification Days, which is an event that features a half-day of free, preparatory webinars. As of February 2023, you only need to complete one maintenance module per year to maintain your certification, but check the link for any updates to this requirement. A lot of job openings will require this cert, but not all. If you have no other way to prove you know your stuff, this is the way to do it. 

If you have worked on any projects (even a little bit) — list them on your resume! As we mentioned earlier, a lot of people get wrangled into the Admin position from some other way. Were you a developer who had an Admin ask you to help out? Put it down! Were you in RevOps but needed to set your own profile settings and creating reports? List it! Even if your previous job titles don't relate, create a special section on your resume to detail your contributions to a Salesforce project. If you don't currently have any Admin experience, there's a lot of non-profit companies that look for volunteer work you can start with.

We also suggest playing around with AppExchange apps. 91% of Salesforce customers use an AppExchange app. While you can't predict exactly which apps your future employer will use, if you're aware of what types of solutions are out there and what problems they solve, the easier it will be for your to hit the ground running when such a situation arises.

Finding a Job

Your resume is ready to go and you want to send it out... where can you find job postings?

There's a certain Trailhead Community that is specifically for job posts. Similarly, you can look at the local Trailhead Communities as companies tend to post jobs looking for people in their area. 

For external, third-party sources, there are job boards on Salesforce Ben, Supermums, and Mason Frank to name a few. And as always, you can search traditional sources like LinkedIn or ZipRecruiter for Salesforce Admin positions.

Before you start getting interviews, look up common interview questions to make sure you're prepared.

Once you get the basics, you can always get more advanced training or start niching down. There are other resources you can learn from based on industry, Salesforce cloud, or for specific features (Flows, profile permissions, reports, etc.). For those topics, we suggest looking at MVPs that specialize in what you're interested in. With that, you're ready to land your first Admin job. Good luck, and go get 'em!