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, some people stumble upon the option of becoming a Salesforce admin later in their career. Some are drawn to the admin role after learning to use the CRM for a role in sales, marketing, or support. 

No matter the reason, one thing is certain: A Salesforce admin 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 was 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 together this list of resources to get started — from training to landing a job.

Salesforce Training Resources

There are a lot of free training resources for Salesforce admins — both by Salesforce and from 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 vast, 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.

What Should a New Salesforce Admin List on His/Her Résumé?

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

Getting Salesforce certifications is 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. Many job openings will require this certification, 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 résumé! As we mentioned earlier, a lot of people get wrangled into the Admin position from some other way. Experience might include:

• Being a developer who had an Admin ask you to help out with a project
• Creating your own profile settings and reports for RevOps
• Volunteering as a part-time Salesforce Admin for non-profits

Even if your previous job titles don't relate, create a special section on your résumé to detail your contributions to a Salesforce project.

You can also play 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 Salesforce Administrator Job

Your résumé is ready to go and you want to send it out... where can you find job postings for companies looking for a Salesforce admin?

• This Trailhead Community that is specifically for job posts
• Local Trailhead Communities as companies tend to post jobs looking for people in their area
• Salesforce Ben
• Supermums
• Mason Frank
• Traditional job posting sources like LinkedIn or ZipRecruiter

Common Salesforce Administration Interview Questions

Before you start getting interviews, be prepared to answer questions in a few different categories. Here are some possibilities to get you started. 

Salesforce knowledge questions:

• How do you create a report?
• Can you explain the difference between a role, a profile and a permission set?
• What are the different types of relationships between objects?

Situational Salesforce questions:

• I want to upload 10,000 records, what tool should I use?
• I want to do a rollup between objects with a lookup relationship. How would you go about this? One possible answer is with our free app, Rollup Helper!

General job questions you should tailor your answer for a Salesforce Admin role:

• How do you manage projects between multiple departments?
• How do you stay educated about updates in Salesforce?
• Describe a time you made a mistake and what you learned or how you fixed it.

If you don't know the answers to these questions currently, then you know where to start studying!

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!

Before you start your first Admin job, get ahead of the game and find out the top seven challenges Admins face, and how our apps solve them.