I work for Salesforce as a Consultant. I mostly end up working for companies as an Admin/BA. I'm very confident most companies post job postings for Salesforce Dev's because they don't understand the difference between the two. I get called a Salesforce Developer all the time and I don't write code.
More content... topics... a day in the life of a person with a sf career... what’s it like to work for google, What are some methods of study that worked for you, where do you find your motivation, living in the Bay Area as a tech guy, how remote jobs are taking over, what is it like to be a part of the Sf culture, what is Dreamforce like, what are all the types of jobs you can go after as a Salesforce geek, what do you see for the future of Salesforce(you touched on that, are their any other technologies one should learn that may enhance your Salesforce abilities
I've got a list of all the videos I wanna make and you hit the nail on the head. About 200 vids on it, including all these topics. Didn't think of the Dream force one though!
Admins are important if you have a large team in the double digits. We have a 14 Salesforce person team with a combination of architects, developers and Admins: 3, 4, 7 respectively. Out of the 7 admins, 2 are full time admins, doing admin stuff and first tier Sfdc support, the other five serve as second tier support, scrum masters, and RFE development with some light coding.
You changed my mind about the admin career path - 100% agree that anything an admin does a developer can do and often better. I had one of my developers learn Flow, and within a month he knew it better than I do. I would say that most developers are not very strong at requirements gathering and can struggle with solutioning if they haven't kept up with Salesforce products... Our org has legacy code that one developer built (before me!) to calculate business hours and SLAs because he didn't understand entitlements and milestones. Hence why the Salesforce Business Analyst role has been growing too.
I got the admin certification but couldn't land a Salesforce admin job. Had to do other jobs first for financial security... Hope I can continue my SF study soon and one day get into the ecosystem.
IMO, to stand out as an admin, you need to know how to translate business requirements to solution design; solving as much as possible with declarative tools, and only bringing in development when necessary.
Agree about the need for admins to stand out from the pack. We should learn at the very least enough coding to work effectively on an enterprise level team with developers and project managers. That's another trend we're seeing in Salesforce jobs (call for PM skills).
Amen, big rise to architects in the past few years! Note that vast majority of architect positions likely require some coding knowledge, even if it's just being able to work well with devs.
Thanks as always David! Next time you worry if what you say is going to be make people mad, please post it anyway - truth needs to be heard, this helped me make my decision much easier to focus on development!
Great post David. Additionally, given the increasing number of multi-cloud instances (i.e. Sales + Marketing, Sales + Commerce), as well as the introduction of Tableau, Mulesoft, etc. I see the growth of the Architect role to be even more in demand in the coming years.
Agree. David's Apex Academy is so fun and the best way to understand coding if you have no prior experience. Don't start with Trailhead. Start with David's class (my favorite) or some other intro to coding, if you have no coding experience. I had JavaScript experience but I STILL badly needed Apex Academy.
I had an interview and was told it wasnt program intensive and i am doing mostly data entry i was told etc. And i would be trained. I am not a programmer at all!
I started a new job as a SF Admin. The reason the company hired one in the first place was bc they needed someone to handle the minor admin stuff while the developers and managers dedicate their time to building. Before, developers and managers were doing everything. I got admin cert and app builder cert. on my first week, I was doing outbound change sets when that’s something you learn with the app builder cert. Admin cert teaches you the general aspects like a bachelor degree. But the other certs teach more specific things. In terms of flows, neither admin nor app builder cert delve too much into it. What I’m saying is if a company wants someone to do flows, they probably know that admins don’t have as much knowledge as devs. I read an article that highlight your related skills. If you have 5 years of hospitality but one 1 of SF. Really sell yourself on your hospitality skills. Also! Connect with your SF community!!!
Don´t freak out people. I agree with David. Just forget about that #awesomeadmin marketing stuff from Salesfore, it is so outdated and does not reflect today´s job market reality. Admins no longer exist per say, today you are either a developer (scope : apex, lwc and point and click) or a functional consultant/analyst (scope : need analysis, business processes mapping, workshop leads etc. and point and click). That´s at least the case here in europe. So if you are not interested in coding go the consultant role, the demand is still high (less than devs tho) but know your clouds (certs, certs, certs) and build great softskills.
Hmm. I just filled a role for a Business Analyst role requiring Salesforce focused. It’s true I have not seen any Salesforce admin roles. Thanks for the video. Love you using LinkedIn - it’s my virtual home. ☺️
Hi Jessica! May you add me on LinkedIn so I can ask you some questions? I tried searching your name and hundreds popped up haha. I'm JaLia Steward on there.
Great take, David! I think that your 2nd recommendation (learning the entire portfolio) is something that a lot of people gloss over. Salesforce products are really designed to work together, but they don't always do so seamlessly. Knowing how to knit these services together to create end-to-end solutions is something that's in high demand. As for the death of the Administrator role, it's a shame, and borne from modern hiring practices. Similar to how job postings for "full stack" developers have become a bit of a meme, it seems that SF admins are suffering a similar fate. It really is semantics in the end. In many cases, "developers" transition from other languages or frameworks and jump directly into writing code, when clicks will perform, scale, and be far more maintainable than a coded solution.
No Kidding. I worked for 4 certifications (1 on the way) for associate, admin, platform app builder and advanced admin (on the way) only to realize this crushing reality. Hits harder when you already took a 1.3 year career gap. I feel so lost tbh.
Talking to recruiters and they say Admins have been hit with a double whammy with lay-offs due to covid19. So not only are you competing in a shrinking market, but there is a flood of experienced Admins looking for work. Trying to break into the market as a newbie is a tough ask. Could it also be that Admins just aren't moving and dev work is expanding; especially in the current market and companies are going hard with digital transformations
Great point. COVID is yet another indicator of the fragility of the admin position. I wish I thought of that before recording this lol. It's true COVID contributes to this trend and it should be a red flag that the admin role is more disposable than others. This only accelerates the trend.
Hey, is SF Admin demand falling in other parts of the world as well. I am in UK, is it the case for UK as well that Admin demand is going down? Was looking to start a career in this field in UK, I guess am too late?
From what I hear from my international contacts, the same trend us happening. However I also hear that tech trends start in the US then gradually they move overseas.
I’m in my second year of BBA and was thinking of becoming a Salesforce Admin after I graduate. Should I go for something else if it’s scope isn’t that good in the near future?
as a Salesforce developer with multiple certifications ... I've been expected to solve EVERY issue / project that came up in my Orgs and actually have done my MOST Admin work on teams that actually have full-time admins
This is very interesting. I am the saleforce admin for my company. While there is a developer and saleforce specialist, they unfortunately do not want to do the tedious work and have transfered all their knowledge over to me. Overtime, i have gained the technical skills on top of my people skills (that these developer unfortuntely lack or doesnt care for). My question is, how can i, as the admin, excel in this position having both the general technical skill and people skill i have gained in this company?
Definitely dev. Realistically you're gonna constantly be checking if you can do something without code, so you'll be getting general admin skills as you learn to dev
you absolutely hit the nail on the head. When I moved to SF, from Siebel, I was surprised that 'admin' was a career. In Siebel world we let admins do only the basic things (user management, managing picklists, etc). As we see SF making it possible to do more and more complex things declaratively (e.g. Now Flow Builder can do pretty complex things there is no way we would let an admin create Flows because they are not knowledgeable about code vs Flows, overcoming Flow limitations, connecting to CI/CD, etc ). So last few projects I have seen admins only doing the most basic of tasks and even that has not been easy because we implement CI/CD in most projects and admin so far haven't been able to get their heads around how that works and devs have to always get involved in fixing new code commits.
Salesforce dev is more involved with biz decisions plus less technical (still very technical). Also note it is very platform specific. Both paths are good it's really what you are looking for in your career. Overall Salesforce devs can be paid more with less technical skills, but with the downside of being platform specific.
@@dvdkliu if you become a salesforce developer, will it be possible to later on switch to swe role outside salesforce platform? Won't we be restricted to this platform only....
David that is the best advice that I ever saw!! In South America, is happening the same, and I'm thinking to learn/spend more LWC than aura or apex why? because then you can open to other technologies(js, maybe in the future evergreen?) like React, node.js, unfortunately here there is no so much jobs in salesforce than US.
Agreed. Personally I'd start with Apex for the fundamentals but if your heart is in LWCs then go for it. As long as you ignore Visualforce you're good lol.
Why do I see all Admin Jobs when I search "Salesforce Administrator" in Palo Alto California? Did you intentionally keep scrolling until you found secondary dev postings?
I actually found out that the results change a lot every day. When I ran it earlier this week, buncha dev jobs on page 1. Last night, buncha dev jobs on other pages instead. Read the job descriptions and scroll as far as you need to develop your own opinion!
And when I run it right now I'm getting the first 5 out of 8 (all non promoted) jobs as dev jobs when searching for "Salesforce administrator" in Palo Alto. There's probably some part of the algorithm that changes your results based on your profile and activity, so, you need to read as many descriptions / pages as you can to get a non-biased sample size.
There are other paths I mention too not just the coding route, see the conclusion for more info! This is basically if you really don't want to code lol
@@dvdkliu I do really want to code. I vision is to become a Salesforce architect one day. When I make code adjustments at work and it works, I feel great. But every time I have to do it, I am not confident at all and it takes me so much time :(
I saw this coming a couple years ago. Companies don't believe in a admin-developer handoff. They want people who can do both. If companies demand developers then developers will dominate. Salesforce pushes #AwesomeAdmins and creating jobs, but if you look at Salesforce's own job listings it's mostly sales-related or developers.
What is your suggestion for someone that decided to transition to SF with 0 SF experience and knowledge, thinking, getting Admin Cert to familiarize with the platform, and work its way up? Thanks.
Really great video - I would add Salesforce Business Analyst, Salesforce Product Owner, Salesforce Manager and Salesforce Practice Lead. There are many different career paths emerging as teams get bigger and more complex.
It’s best to get into any IT job like desktop support with salesforce troubleshooting to gain experience. It’s easier to put that experience on your resume rather than just getting certified with no experience. Then you work in that role for a couple years. After that, apply for an actual salesforce role that will usually work 😀
BA I group similarly to the consultant path. It's basically doubling down on people skills. I think it's a good move for admins, get that PMP certification.
I strongly disagree. There will always be less Salesforce Admin jobs than salesforce developers. Moreover Companies have different titles for Salesforce administrators so you can simply depend on LinkedIn keyword search. Like consulting companies always give fancy titles for Admin jobs like Salesforce Analysts or Functional consultant etc
That's a pretty big issue too, probably worth it's own video thank you! 😂 Really interested to learn more about what other things you consider to be prime skills of admins!
David, I love your videos. They are brave and very dense with advice. Just one tiny note: "A generalist with people skills that works between stakeholders and developers" is usually a Business Analyst, and they have way more skills than "people skills", most notably industry, business and analytical skills. But I assume that you group all non-tech skills into the "People Skills" umbrella term, so I forgive you!
So are Administrator certs less valuable? I feel like ever since I got mine last week, it wasn't as a big achievement as it may have been two or three years ago.
Is there a case to be made for some organisations not being clear on what the Salesforce Admin actually does. A Salesforce Admin does actually ‘Develop’ the SF instance usually in a ‘No Code’ capacity. Maybe the job title or certification path should be ‘Salesforce Platform Development Administrator’ (I know does not exactly role of the tongue). Like a lot of things in life people tend to over-spec or purchase levels of products they are never going to need just to be on the safe side i.e. buying a sports car to take the children a mile down the road to school. I would be interested to know how many ‘Developers’ have taken up positions to find that they are predominantly doing Administrator tasks!
Personally have not seen many instances of developers doing only admin jobs, but have seen plenty of the reverse. The challenge is organizations cannot predict whether the next two years of projects will or will not need code, so they need to assume the worst.
@@dvdkliu I guess it depends on what percentage of the time someone with Salesforce development skills will be happy to undertake routine administration tasks! I think there has been a tendency in many software roles to try to creep in/ or combine roles in Job Descriptions in order to get the best pound of flesh from their staff. I think the old lines that segmented roles are slowly disappearing. I’m sure if companies could have their own way the Salesforce person would be the Administrator, Developer, Finance Officer and tea person :-)
Yup all true! In my experience most developers will spend at least 30% of their time on non coding tasks. Developers who prefer to code 100% of the time usual won't choose Salesforce
is lightning going to replace visual force slowly or quicly? will the Lightning web parts going to replace Aura. There is so many legacy stuff, not sure whether there is a need to spend time to learn something legacy.
Could you please make a detailed video on option 1 and option 2 mentioned by you? I'd suggest making a few videos with someone who is currently in those roles will be really helpful for folks like me who are still not sure whether to take the developer route or the consultant one! PS: I got myself admin certified and landed a Salesforce quality engineer job. I'm currently contemplating where to go from here.
I have around 7 years of experience as a Salesforce Administrator in the same company where I first joined as a graduate. I was a slow pork at the beginning but later on picked up admin activities and am doing pretty well but never tried to switch due to lack of confidence. When it comes to coding i never tried it since i was weak at understanding C at my university level.Now that I gained good experience, I am planning to switch for a better pay. I can also learn coding if needed since Iam quite matured . What do you suggest? I might have realised things little late but still have a positive vibe. Please advise me.
Hi David, I am new to your channel and I really found this video like an eye opening one. I am mostly a customer Experience professional with 5 years of experience on the business practitioner level of crm tools like salesforce and Adobe Experience manager. In order to increase my employability after a career break I want to do some good certifications in salesforce. If i plan to choose marketing cloud consultant having no prior hands on with it , will it be a good option? Some coaches say that it’s better to do an admin certification first and then marketing cloud. Please guide me.
How do you feel about getting additional certifications other than SF Admin and Adv Admin to stand out from the competition in the job market such as: Tableau Associate Slack Admin Project Mgmt or Scrum Master I am studying for the Admin exam now and plan on getting internship. Then I would take the Adv Admin exam then any of the other above certifications would follow.
@David K. Liu I am completely new to IT and switching fields from medical, don't know anything about IT, WHERE DO YOU THINK I SHOULD START? WHICH COURSE?
It was a great video, thank you for that! I have a question though, which kind of coding language do you recommend for somebody who doesn't really have any coding experience? Or let's say what's the most commonly used coding language in Salesforce senerio? Thank you!!!
@@dvdkliu Also...even if the actual job is just purely admin stuff or even support related, none of the companies only want a pure admin. Just to be safe,they want a developer in an off chance once in 6 months you may wanna make a code change or a change in a formula field
I subscribed to Plural Sight just to go through your tutorials. You are a great instructor. I thoroughly enjoy the structure and process of your tutorials. I have had a brief introduction to Salesforce but am looking to be a salesforce developer. I'm looking to take either the Salesforce Amin course or Platform Developer course in preparation for a certification. Would you recommend to bypass the Salesforce Admin Certification class and go right into Salesforce Platform Developer? Thanks.
Thanks! I normally recommend all developers start with the admin side however you can come back to it later if you have too much momentum going in development.
Hi Judy, does Pluralsight have both admin as well as dev courses by David? When I checked, I could find 'The absolute beginners guide to coding' course by David, but nothing in the admin side. Do let me know if I missed something, thanks
@@dvdkliu Thanks for the reply David. I will try to find a suitable course there after I buy the subscription. And once done will jump onto your developer course 🤗
@@dvdkliu Thanks for the response. I noticed that further on into the video that you did make reference to this. In that context, maybe you can design a way to reach out to the existing employees being cross-trained, especially where the company is not encouraging them to develop their skills properly.
I am Frenchman's in France we are late compared with some other countries. I am looking for the trends to do the best choice so thank you for your advice. I wouldn't see that on my own in my country.
I'm about to get my Admin cert with zero previous CRM or SF experience, is it even worth it at this point? I mean if I'm not getting a job with it, why do it? Seems like you're saying unless I have coding skills, it's unlikely I'm getting a SF job with zero experience anytime soon. Maybe it might be better just to learn how to code. But the time it takes to pick up coding skills just extends the learning curve to an actual job. Even then, with a few certs and the ability to code, is it worth it? I know it wasn't your intention, I appreciate the honesty, but this video has completely disheartened me to pursuing a SF job. Background: Making a full career change from bartending.
At the end of the video I have a few recommendations that don't require coding, check it out and see if the other options sound viable to you. Realistically with just the admin cert you have very little strength in this market. You'll need to get more certs to stand out to employers. Development is another option that'll help. Salesforce IMO is def worth it but know I'm pretty biased here and haven't really analyzed other industries yet. The truth is each day it probably becomes less worth it as people discover the industry and jump in. Hopefully that is countered by the crazy demand for the product today.
Hi David, Thank you for your insight.I’m a Salesforce Admin/BA with 3 years of experience.At this point I have 3 certs-Admin,AppBuilder and Sales Cloud Consultant.My idea was to learn Coding enough to clear PD1 and then continue on my journey to CTA.Do you think it is wise to be in an admin analyst position whilst I clear my certs in the pyramid or is the scene risky for even experienced admins?Thanks in advance for your response.,
Well spotted David! I think it's a trend all over the world. Having said that, it may be because hiring managers don't realise the difference between an Admin and a Dev (and there are quite a few new customers hence quite a few hiring managers). I think that the person having the last word on an org should be a good old fashioned Admin - but maybe it's just me... :) Also, I think of Salesforce/SaaS as a declarative platform first and am always scared when I see Developer "having fun in prod", potentially generating tech debt... Again, I would prefer to see an Admin be the end-user police in prod but... To finish, I think that there are quite a few SMB in the Salesforce market that can't really afford a dedicated team but I understand you are not talking about them. Anyway, good video as usual. Thanks!
Hi David. Can I go directly to dev without taking admin courses? I have no background in code and Salesforce. I've joined Apex Academy btw and realised that it's dev course.
Very very informative and useful video. I am working as a Salesforce Administrator and trying to switch but only getting options where they ask for apex knowledge and neither I have any coding knowledge nor I have any technical degree( MBA)..pretty confused now! If I start learning java would that help me to learn apex? Or can you tell me what should be the stepping stone to learn apex?
Hi David. When I say demand. R you telling about only Unitedstates or other part of the world too. Coz I am from india. Do you think even in india the demand for admin is decreasing. Please reply
@@dvdkliu thanks for reply. I am looking to change my career from financial sales to sales operations. What do you suggest will be a better thing for me to learn. (software or any course).
I badly looking to move out of sales. It's draining my energy being in sales. If you can suggest some options will put some light on my future. And will be very thankful to you David. You are really being very practical n like your videos and can relate lot to u.
Thanks! If you're looking for high paying jobs at American companies there really is no other option than to code. It can be in any language, Salesforce or not. I'd personally try to find a new emerging language to specialize in and Salesforce wouldn't be top of that list. If you want great jobs within India I'm not too familiar with that market so can't comment there. Good luck!
Hey David , can you help me out with LWC roadmap , i have no clue where to start , should i learn HTML,CSS , JAVASCRIPT before learning LWC?. if yes which topics should i cover in Javascript?. what are the main topics in LWC to get a job , as these days almost all sf developer jobs requires good expertise in LWC as well. Please guide me. Thank you in advance.
I have been working as a Business Analyst for Enterprise solutions and now looking for a career change in Salesforce. Which career path should I choose in Salesforce. Since the number of Admin jobs have declined learning salesforce coding from scratch with take a lot of time. Can you suggest something please?
I put a lot of time and effort into my Salesforce Admin cert only to get discouraged after months of barely even getting interviews. I wouldn't really recommend the field to anyone at this point unless they know someone who can definitely help them get a job. Huge disappointment.
I'm starting to feel this way as well. Honestly, I feel like all this talk about tech being "so vast and versatile" is just that - talk. Bottom line is, in 2022/2023, if you don't have advanced coding/developer skills, then you're not getting hired.
i m beginner in salesforce and i m little bit confused in admin vs developer. So could you tell me sir , is it mandatory to learn admin for learning the developing skill. Is there any link bw developer and admin or i can start with developer only . please help me with this.
@@dvdkliu you described the situation at my place exactly. They hired an admin not too long ago and is now having to pay lots of consultant time to customize. And this is just on boarding sales; they still have service and marketing. I anticipate the realization that a Developer is what they need for the one head count the org is willing to pay for.
CI/CD within a squad that has SF developers does the trick for most of the work needed on the salesforce platform. Programmatic or point & click.. Thanks for the videos, they are all interesting.
Jr. Admin here. My (small) company initially "trained an admin in house" and hired contracted developers who code for job security rather than function to set up the org. They sold the company on managed packages that are "cheaper" than salesforce native products and now the org is held ransom to namespace and the $300/hour contractor in Canada who subcontracted a guy in India for $15/ hour to save us nothing on CPQ because we had to buy conga and docusign in addition... It's frustrating as an admin when you have to go to the C-suite and say "I cant even see where the problem is coming from, bust out another $1000 for the dude who refused to develop anything end user or admin dynamic". Moving forward If i had to choose between hiring a dev or admin I'd probably go dev just because they stand a better chance at mitigating this reality. It has been an painful lesson in practicality and nominal v actual cost of implementation for me as an admin. I walked into this org long after the implementation but I'm not sure I would've known any better how to hedge against the ever so sought after "afterwork". I know now though.
Thanks for True advice David. Just looking at pathfinder job fair. out of 33 company out there, but just 5 to 6 offer salesforce role. While admin every one of them. I am admin that is the problem for me. Thx
Hi David I am an HR person after a career break, I started learning salesforce admin for the past 2 months. I have been doing basic admin problems in trailhead too. My plan was to start applying for salesforce admin jobs. After seeing this video i am confused what to do, can you please suggest me. Thanks so much.
The Admin jobs might be disappearing for sure. Unfortunately Salesforce Admin is the preliminary exams for passing out Salesforce Consultant or Business Analyst. Hence the Admin exam becomes necessary for a Sales or any cloud consultant or BA. Also a developer who passed out the Admin exams has a complete understanding on Salesforce.
hi David sir myself prashant from india and iam from non IT background i want to build my career in sales force my Question is what is future of sales force ?right now it on peack point of growth but iam very confused on future security of sales force
What interim roles do you think Admin undergrades should take on that can transition into FT admin roles? I'm currently struggling to even get my CV noticed with no SF admin experience.
Loved the video but you don’t mention how large companies rely on SI’s for their Salesforce implementations. I see Admins play a role in the project implementation (they help shape the project with user stories, maintainability, knowledge transfer etc) Also there is always the threat of administration being outsourced to an SI. Admins need to evolve more into product owners unless they want to be a consultant/freelancers.
Great analysis for admin role. Anyone who has a bit interest in tech can easily become the company's sf admin. Either business consultant or sf developer ( who would be better admin then who created things... lol). In small company as you have said is absolutely right. However in big companies. 1000+ of users, permission, roles, reports, dashboards, business flows/process, 3rd party integration, management and people skills and motivation, day to days system monitoring and performance evolution, training to users ( no one normally want to spend hours to read and learn from trailhead until he/she is company's sf admin or dev or else. Other have tons of work to leverage their skills. I am just a curious if admin role is vanish then who will take those responsibilities? Admin responsibilities is super easy and polished. Should developer take those or consultant ? Just curious 🤔 👀 😏
It'll never completely vanish, just the proportion of jobs will go down. I know a lot of orgs current that have 0 admins and split the typical admin responsibilities to biz stakeholders and devs.
Hi David I have been watching all your videos and find every video extremely useful. I am appearing for Admin exam tomorrow. I have completed Focusonforce 6 practice exams (and cleared all) and done some random practise tests online. Is there any last minute resource you could recommend for me to gather more insights.. Your big fan..
@@dvdkliu Thanks David. I have been watching all of your videos religiously after I went to this Veterans SalesForce introduction conference. Maybe you know about the programs that SalesForce and Hiring our Heroes are doing? They recommended for those with zero SalesForce experience to start with the admin cert. They said that we only need one cert for this fellowship with SalesForce. It doesn't matter what cert but they highly recommended the admin cert due to it be the easiest one and a good introduction cert. I have some cloud and security experience within the IT world. They also said that zero experience is okay with this fellowship since they are walking the military/veteran through the process of daily operations and such with the potential hiring managers and team leads. It was something along those lines. They also said that SalesForce positions are in high demand and they are having a hard time filling these roles in due to lack of people with SalesForce experience. They emphasized this heavily in the call. They brought up that 1000 military/veterans in last years cohorts were 100% hired after the fellowship. Over 300 companies were involved with this fellowship and they were asking for more bodies to fill in more roles. Have you heard anything about this internally on your side before? I appreciate what you are doing!
Oh I was planning on getting two certs for this fellowship. The modules for developer won't unlock on Trailhead till I get the admin cert. Thanks again David.
Thanks! I definitely recommend the admin side to start. The market is getting competitive as the supply of admins is sky high, but, this program has special connections to help veterans. Definitely recommend it!
@@dvdkliu Thanks David! If you ever see a big Korean fella who seems out of place, that would be me giving you a hug. Please keep sharing this gold with the world!
Finding it really tough to actually follow through and learn Salesforce on my own via Trailhead. TH-cam videos just assumes that I know it already and I am stuck somewhere. Where is the start? Does anyone know how it actually is worked out?
Agree with you. But I was expecting to see a lot of jobs specifically called "Lightning Administrator" in 2020. Yet to see it though. Something in me says 2021 is for going to see a lot of traction for Lightning Admins.
what? i am about to start studying for the admin test. How do you become a developer? can someone without much computer knowledge and math learn developing skills?
Hey.... Can anyone tell me about the scope of jobs in SFDC CPQ in EMEA region ? I am currently working in Oracle CPQ but don't see much opportunities in EMEA.
When you can pay your developer to do both code and do Admin work,why pay extra for a pure admin who can't code. That's the logic that hiring managers use
A Salesforce Developer is not really a true coder, and is next to ineffective when comparing it to a true pure breath programmer. The bosses don't know the difference.
@@crumblycisco Believe me....when your app needs higher customisation,you need a lot of coding in addition to our of the box ffeatures that Salesforce provides. I am a Salesforce developer and I have used HTML,CSS and JavaScript in my code. Have even used jQuery in some places
@@crumblycisco it depends on the company and the implementation. Some companies do require code but Salesforce is making it difficult to be a pure coder when stuff like Flows is trying to replace Apex and triggers.
They want to pay admin salaries, but get developer skills. That's what I see a lot of.
Yes! Unfortunately this is possible because the supply of admins is really high these days. Supply and demand
basically.
@@SK-ne4bf whats disappearing?
@@applecrazy1 SF Classic
@@SK-ne4bf what?
I work for Salesforce as a Consultant. I mostly end up working for companies as an Admin/BA. I'm very confident most companies post job postings for Salesforce Dev's because they don't understand the difference between the two. I get called a Salesforce Developer all the time and I don't write code.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Nearly two years after this video was posted, it's great to hear from someone in the trenches.
Thank you for being real and talking about the things other won’t. Incredible advice from someone so ingrained in the ecosystem.
Thanks Tanya!!!!!
On the flip side .....your team needs technical admins.
David... You are WRONG
More content... topics... a day in the life of a person with a sf career... what’s it like to work for google, What are some methods of study that worked for you, where do you find your motivation, living in the Bay Area as a tech guy, how remote jobs are taking over, what is it like to be a part of the Sf culture, what is Dreamforce like, what are all the types of jobs you can go after as a Salesforce geek, what do you see for the future of Salesforce(you touched on that, are their any other technologies one should learn that may enhance your Salesforce abilities
I've got a list of all the videos I wanna make and you hit the nail on the head. About 200 vids on it, including all these topics. Didn't think of the Dream force one though!
Admins are important if you have a large team in the double digits. We have a 14 Salesforce person team with a combination of architects, developers and Admins: 3, 4, 7 respectively. Out of the 7 admins, 2 are full time admins, doing admin stuff and first tier Sfdc support, the other five serve as second tier support, scrum masters, and RFE development with some light coding.
You changed my mind about the admin career path - 100% agree that anything an admin does a developer can do and often better. I had one of my developers learn Flow, and within a month he knew it better than I do.
I would say that most developers are not very strong at requirements gathering and can struggle with solutioning if they haven't kept up with Salesforce products... Our org has legacy code that one developer built (before me!) to calculate business hours and SLAs because he didn't understand entitlements and milestones. Hence why the Salesforce Business Analyst role has been growing too.
I got the admin certification but couldn't land a Salesforce admin job. Had to do other jobs first for financial security... Hope I can continue my SF study soon and one day get into the ecosystem.
I recommend getting more certs, 1 doesn't stand out these days!
@@dvdkliu which other Certs do you recommend?
@@vd7547 app builder, advanced admin, sales cloud
3 years later any update?
IMO, to stand out as an admin, you need to know how to translate business requirements to solution design; solving as much as possible with declarative tools, and only bringing in development when necessary.
That makes you an admin who is also a developer
Agree about the need for admins to stand out from the pack. We should learn at the very least enough coding to work effectively on an enterprise level team with developers and project managers. That's another trend we're seeing in Salesforce jobs (call for PM skills).
So true. Admins are almost always project managers these days
Agreed, but I see rather a swift to high demand on architects while coding is outsourced. Understanding Business value is more important than coding.
Amen, big rise to architects in the past few years! Note that vast majority of architect positions likely require some coding knowledge, even if it's just being able to work well with devs.
Yes, exactly.
Thanks as always David! Next time you worry if what you say is going to be make people mad, please post it anyway - truth needs to be heard, this helped me make my decision much easier to focus on development!
Thank you Jiyaad!
Great post David. Additionally, given the increasing number of multi-cloud instances (i.e. Sales + Marketing, Sales + Commerce), as well as the introduction of Tableau, Mulesoft, etc. I see the growth of the Architect role to be even more in demand in the coming years.
Great point!
Salesforce is doing a great job of improving the architect training and certifications
Very true!
Starting to prepare my developer cert after getting the sales cloud cert. Your Apex Academy is gold!
Thank you David good luck!
Agree. David's Apex Academy is so fun and the best way to understand coding if you have no prior experience. Don't start with Trailhead. Start with David's class (my favorite) or some other intro to coding, if you have no coding experience. I had JavaScript experience but I STILL badly needed Apex Academy.
@@cpotochny Fun Fact. I understood the Flow logic too after completing the first two courses of Davids Apex Acadmey. I am hooked now!
I have been hesitating to committing to learn to code but this helps put things in perspective. Need to start planning my strategy
Go get it Vanessa!
I am also planning. Please let me know any good resource
Thx
In other news Admin jobs are at an all time high apparently. th-cam.com/video/x3rI25uOJeU/w-d-xo.html
I had an interview and was told it wasnt program intensive and i am doing mostly data entry i was told etc. And i would be trained. I am not a programmer at all!
I started a new job as a SF Admin. The reason the company hired one in the first place was bc they needed someone to handle the minor admin stuff while the developers and managers dedicate their time to building. Before, developers and managers were doing everything. I got admin cert and app builder cert. on my first week, I was doing outbound change sets when that’s something you learn with the app builder cert.
Admin cert teaches you the general aspects like a bachelor degree. But the other certs teach more specific things. In terms of flows, neither admin nor app builder cert delve too much into it. What I’m saying is if a company wants someone to do flows, they probably know that admins don’t have as much knowledge as devs.
I read an article that highlight your related skills. If you have 5 years of hospitality but one 1 of SF. Really sell yourself on your hospitality skills.
Also! Connect with your SF community!!!
How much did you pay in total for the courses?
Don´t freak out people. I agree with David. Just forget about that #awesomeadmin marketing stuff from Salesfore, it is so outdated and does not reflect today´s job market reality. Admins no longer exist per say, today you are either a developer (scope : apex, lwc and point and click) or a functional consultant/analyst (scope : need analysis, business processes mapping, workshop leads etc. and point and click). That´s at least the case here in europe. So if you are not interested in coding go the consultant role, the demand is still high (less than devs tho) but know your clouds (certs, certs, certs) and build great softskills.
+100!
Insanely helpful! I am now getting my Developer Certification.
did you get it?
Thank you for confirming what I do feel here (outside of the US) as well. And thank you for the free week of your Apex Academy. Just in time!
Cheers!
Hmm. I just filled a role for a Business Analyst role requiring Salesforce focused. It’s true I have not seen any Salesforce admin roles. Thanks for the video. Love you using LinkedIn - it’s my virtual home. ☺️
Cheers Jessica 😋😋😋
Hi Jessica! May you add me on LinkedIn so I can ask you some questions? I tried searching your name and hundreds popped up haha. I'm JaLia Steward on there.
@@LiaStew yep! Just sent you a request!
Hi Jessica, I would like to connect with you on LinkedIn but couldn’t locate you as Jalia said. Thank you!
What do you think if a consultant continues to do for example project manager job? Or grow to have bigger pictures for management consultant?
Only if you have top tier people skills. Otherwise I don't consider a good long term option
@@dvdkliu so yo think developer is the best choice?
If you've got the heart to learn then yes! Got a personality test vid somewhere for this
@@dvdkliu Great, thanks David!! Could we connect on LinkedIn?
Sure!
Great take, David! I think that your 2nd recommendation (learning the entire portfolio) is something that a lot of people gloss over. Salesforce products are really designed to work together, but they don't always do so seamlessly. Knowing how to knit these services together to create end-to-end solutions is something that's in high demand.
As for the death of the Administrator role, it's a shame, and borne from modern hiring practices. Similar to how job postings for "full stack" developers have become a bit of a meme, it seems that SF admins are suffering a similar fate. It really is semantics in the end. In many cases, "developers" transition from other languages or frameworks and jump directly into writing code, when clicks will perform, scale, and be far more maintainable than a coded solution.
You're too smart to be on TH-cam LOL
@@dvdkliu I like your content. 😅😕
No Kidding.
I worked for 4 certifications (1 on the way) for associate, admin, platform app builder and advanced admin (on the way)
only to realize this crushing reality. Hits harder when you already took a 1.3 year career gap. I feel so lost tbh.
Talking to recruiters and they say Admins have been hit with a double whammy with lay-offs due to covid19. So not only are you competing in a shrinking market, but there is a flood of experienced Admins looking for work. Trying to break into the market as a newbie is a tough ask.
Could it also be that Admins just aren't moving and dev work is expanding; especially in the current market and companies are going hard with digital transformations
Great point. COVID is yet another indicator of the fragility of the admin position. I wish I thought of that before recording this lol. It's true COVID contributes to this trend and it should be a red flag that the admin role is more disposable than others. This only accelerates the trend.
Unless you’re in an IT department with a large company or university, most teams will have devs switching btw admin and dev tasks
Hey, is SF Admin demand falling in other parts of the world as well. I am in UK, is it the case for UK as well that Admin demand is going down? Was looking to start a career in this field in UK, I guess am too late?
From what I hear from my international contacts, the same trend us happening. However I also hear that tech trends start in the US then gradually they move overseas.
@@dvdkliu I see. What would you recommend as to take up as a career choice as we have missed the Salesforce boat
At the end of the video I have three recommendations!
I’m in my second year of BBA and was thinking of becoming a Salesforce Admin after I graduate. Should I go for something else if it’s scope isn’t that good in the near future?
as a Salesforce developer with multiple certifications ... I've been expected to solve EVERY issue / project that came up in my Orgs and actually have done my MOST Admin work on teams that actually have full-time admins
This is very interesting. I am the saleforce admin for my company. While there is a developer and saleforce specialist, they unfortunately do not want to do the tedious work and have transfered all their knowledge over to me. Overtime, i have gained the technical skills on top of my people skills (that these developer unfortuntely lack or doesnt care for). My question is, how can i, as the admin, excel in this position having both the general technical skill and people skill i have gained in this company?
Either go a consultant / BA route or hybrid dev route at this point!
Learn coding
Would you advise to go from admin straight to dev, or get other certs in between?
Definitely dev. Realistically you're gonna constantly be checking if you can do something without code, so you'll be getting general admin skills as you learn to dev
That said make sure to check out my "which certs should you get" vid as some certs are higher value than PD1
you absolutely hit the nail on the head. When I moved to SF, from Siebel, I was surprised that 'admin' was a career. In Siebel world we let admins do only the basic things (user management, managing picklists, etc). As we see SF making it possible to do more and more complex things declaratively (e.g. Now Flow Builder can do pretty complex things there is no way we would let an admin create Flows because they are not knowledgeable about code vs Flows, overcoming Flow limitations, connecting to CI/CD, etc ). So last few projects I have seen admins only doing the most basic of tasks and even that has not been easy because we implement CI/CD in most projects and admin so far haven't been able to get their heads around how that works and devs have to always get involved in fixing new code commits.
Hello, I am currently in the process of transitioning into SF from Siebel, and I would appreciate your advice. Thanks in advance!
I just transitioned from software engineering into salesforce development. Very glad that I did.
One of the best possible transitions IMO. You are in high demand right now!
I don't see how swe is different. Both develop software
Salesforce dev is more involved with biz decisions plus less technical (still very technical). Also note it is very platform specific. Both paths are good it's really what you are looking for in your career. Overall Salesforce devs can be paid more with less technical skills, but with the downside of being platform specific.
@@dvdkliu if you become a salesforce developer, will it be possible to later on switch to swe role outside salesforce platform? Won't we be restricted to this platform only....
Devs have the easiest transition out since coding is a universal language
David that is the best advice that I ever saw!! In South America, is happening the same, and I'm thinking to learn/spend more LWC than aura or apex why? because then you can open to other technologies(js, maybe in the future evergreen?) like React, node.js, unfortunately here there is no so much jobs in salesforce than US.
Agreed. Personally I'd start with Apex for the fundamentals but if your heart is in LWCs then go for it. As long as you ignore Visualforce you're good lol.
Wait which specific coding languages should I focus on to become a Salesforce Developer? Can I just take Udemy Courses or should I do a bootcamp?
Take my course silly 😁
Why do I see all Admin Jobs when I search "Salesforce Administrator" in Palo Alto California? Did you intentionally keep scrolling until you found secondary dev postings?
I actually found out that the results change a lot every day. When I ran it earlier this week, buncha dev jobs on page 1. Last night, buncha dev jobs on other pages instead. Read the job descriptions and scroll as far as you need to develop your own opinion!
And when I run it right now I'm getting the first 5 out of 8 (all non promoted) jobs as dev jobs when searching for "Salesforce administrator" in Palo Alto. There's probably some part of the algorithm that changes your results based on your profile and activity, so, you need to read as many descriptions / pages as you can to get a non-biased sample size.
I can't agree more with you on this from my own job search experience. That's why I took advantage of your free week Apex academy :D Thank you!
Cheers Shushant & Aakriti!
Is that help. If you don't know about code?
What other jobs can a salesforce admin do? Or what alternatives?
Anything people oriented really. Project management, end user training, user support, requirements gathering, consulting, etc
Sad but true. Sigh.... guess I’ll have to start learning to code. Just need some motivation to not be scared of code.
There are other paths I mention too not just the coding route, see the conclusion for more info! This is basically if you really don't want to code lol
@@dvdkliu I do really want to code. I vision is to become a Salesforce architect one day. When I make code adjustments at work and it works, I feel great. But every time I have to do it, I am not confident at all and it takes me so much time :(
Gotta start somewhere! Practice twice as much as anyone else!
@@dvdkliu thanks! You are amazing
I saw this coming a couple years ago. Companies don't believe in a admin-developer handoff. They want people who can do both. If companies demand developers then developers will dominate. Salesforce pushes #AwesomeAdmins and creating jobs, but if you look at Salesforce's own job listings it's mostly sales-related or developers.
Thank you for sharing!
What is your suggestion for someone that decided to transition to SF with 0 SF experience and knowledge, thinking, getting Admin Cert to familiarize with the platform, and work its way up? Thanks.
Check out my Learn Salesforce Fast video in my channel!
Really great video - I would add Salesforce Business Analyst, Salesforce Product Owner, Salesforce Manager and Salesforce Practice Lead. There are many different career paths emerging as teams get bigger and more complex.
Thanks!
Hello David, I am interested in taking your developer course. How does it work? Is it a membership pay plan? Thanks!!!
It's a pay plan I believe $29/mo. Hot take if you check out some of my links in the vid I tell ya how to get it free!
I believe this. I’m an analyst and have been thrown the Salesforce admin role.
Good luck Scott!!
@@dvdkliu thank you
It’s best to get into any IT job like desktop support with salesforce troubleshooting to gain experience. It’s easier to put that experience on your resume rather than just getting certified with no experience. Then you work in that role for a couple years. After that, apply for an actual salesforce role that will usually work 😀
Valid points, David. What about a BA career path? I get a number of recruiter calls asking about BA skills.
BA I group similarly to the consultant path. It's basically doubling down on people skills. I think it's a good move for admins, get that PMP certification.
I strongly disagree. There will always be less Salesforce Admin jobs than salesforce developers.
Moreover Companies have different titles for Salesforce administrators so you can simply depend on LinkedIn keyword search. Like consulting companies always give fancy titles for Admin jobs like Salesforce Analysts or Functional consultant etc
My experience is that most developers don't know the declarative side. Also I don't think that the prime value of an admin is people skills.
That's a pretty big issue too, probably worth it's own video thank you! 😂 Really interested to learn more about what other things you consider to be prime skills of admins!
@@dvdkliu Their viewpoint.
Thank you yes very great skill!!
@@dvdkliu Hi David. I wasn't really thinking of it in terms of skills but value. 😊
Oh ok that is a very good value lol!!!
David, I love your videos. They are brave and very dense with advice. Just one tiny note: "A generalist with people skills that works between stakeholders and developers" is usually a Business Analyst, and they have way more skills than "people skills", most notably industry, business and analytical skills. But I assume that you group all non-tech skills into the "People Skills" umbrella term, so I forgive you!
Ha ha ha yup I wish I used that term instead!
So are Administrator certs less valuable? I feel like ever since I got mine last week, it wasn't as a big achievement as it may have been two or three years ago.
Yup, everyone has that cert these days. It carries almost no value except it's a basic entry ticket
Is there a case to be made for some organisations not being clear on what the Salesforce Admin actually does. A Salesforce Admin does actually ‘Develop’ the SF instance usually in a ‘No Code’ capacity. Maybe the job title or certification path should be ‘Salesforce Platform Development Administrator’ (I know does not exactly role of the tongue). Like a lot of things in life people tend to over-spec or purchase levels of products they are never going to need just to be on the safe side i.e. buying a sports car to take the children a mile down the road to school. I would be interested to know how many ‘Developers’ have taken up positions to find that they are predominantly doing Administrator tasks!
Personally have not seen many instances of developers doing only admin jobs, but have seen plenty of the reverse. The challenge is organizations cannot predict whether the next two years of projects will or will not need code, so they need to assume the worst.
@@dvdkliu I guess it depends on what percentage of the time someone with Salesforce development skills will be happy to undertake routine administration tasks! I think there has been a tendency in many software roles to try to creep in/ or combine roles in Job Descriptions in order to get the best pound of flesh from their staff. I think the old lines that segmented roles are slowly disappearing. I’m sure if companies could have their own way the Salesforce person would be the Administrator, Developer, Finance Officer and tea person :-)
Yup all true! In my experience most developers will spend at least 30% of their time on non coding tasks. Developers who prefer to code 100% of the time usual won't choose Salesforce
is lightning going to replace visual force slowly or quicly? will the Lightning web parts going to replace Aura. There is so many legacy stuff, not sure whether there is a need to spend time to learn something legacy.
Yes Visualforce is already dead IMO
Could you please make a detailed video on option 1 and option 2 mentioned by you?
I'd suggest making a few videos with someone who is currently in those roles will be really helpful for folks like me who are still not sure whether to take the developer route or the consultant one!
PS: I got myself admin certified and landed a Salesforce quality engineer job. I'm currently contemplating where to go from here.
Maybe in the future!
I have around 7 years of experience as a Salesforce Administrator in the same company where I first joined as a graduate. I was a slow pork at the beginning but later on picked up admin activities and am doing pretty well but never tried to switch due to lack of confidence. When it comes to coding i never tried it since i was weak at understanding C at my university level.Now that I gained good experience, I am planning to switch for a better pay. I can also learn coding if needed since Iam quite matured . What do you suggest? I might have realised things little late but still have a positive vibe. Please advise me.
Check links in video description
I'm interested in Salesforce does it involve coding bcoz I'm nt that good at coding is Salesforce admin good ?
@Texasgirlinacrazyworld :(
I am from UK. Is it possible to apply for admin jobs in America and work from home remotely?
That is extremely rare due to the nature of the admin job - very people oriented.
Hi David, I am new to your channel and I really found this video like an eye opening one. I am mostly a customer Experience professional with 5 years of experience on the business practitioner level of crm tools like salesforce and Adobe Experience manager. In order to increase my employability after a career break I want to do some good certifications in salesforce. If i plan to choose marketing cloud consultant having no prior hands on with it , will it be a good option? Some coaches say that it’s better to do an admin certification first and then marketing cloud. Please guide me.
Personally I'd go admin as it has more options (but more competition). If on the fence, choose the one more interesting to you
How do you feel about getting additional certifications other than SF Admin and Adv Admin to stand out from the competition in the job market such as:
Tableau Associate
Slack Admin
Project Mgmt or Scrum Master
I am studying for the Admin exam now and plan on getting internship. Then I would take the Adv Admin exam then any of the other above certifications would follow.
Got an entire vid on this one, good topic! Check it out!
How do you know if you have enough knowledge of coding to apply for the hybrid admin/developer jobs?
Let the employer figure that out LOL
@David K. Liu I am completely new to IT and switching fields from medical, don't know anything about IT, WHERE DO YOU THINK I SHOULD START? WHICH COURSE?
I've got a video called LEARN SALESFORCE FAST I recommend!
Is it worth to take up a free course for Salesforce admin certification? How's the job market for this role in 2022?
Depends how valuable your time is 🤣 if you're trying to get a remote admin job it's gonna be tough
@@dvdkliu Thanks for the reply. Then suggest an entry level non-tech(no coding) career who's getting the foot into the IT
It was a great video, thank you for that! I have a question though, which kind of coding language do you recommend for somebody who doesn't really have any coding experience? Or let's say what's the most commonly used coding language in Salesforce senerio? Thank you!!!
This should help! www.sfdc99.com/2020/03/01/step-by-step-guide-to-becoming-a-salesforce-developer-in-2020/
@@dvdkliu Thanks a lot!!!!!!
I am a Salesforce developer myself. Honestly, I have never come across job offerings where they ask only pure Admins.
True that!
@@dvdkliu Also...even if the actual job is just purely admin stuff or even support related, none of the companies only want a pure admin. Just to be safe,they want a developer in an off chance once in 6 months you may wanna make a code change or a change in a formula field
Hello David
Awesome video! I am new to salesforce. Please what site would you recommend I use to start learning for the Admin certification
Thanks!!! Check this out! www.sfdc99.com/ultimate-salesforce-certifications-guide/
What about the Sevice Cloud? I think there is strong demand there.
How did you notice that?
I subscribed to Plural Sight just to go through your tutorials. You are a great instructor. I thoroughly enjoy the structure and process of your tutorials.
I have had a brief introduction to Salesforce but am looking to be a salesforce developer. I'm looking to take either the Salesforce Amin course or Platform Developer course in preparation for a certification. Would you recommend to bypass the Salesforce Admin Certification class and go right into Salesforce Platform Developer? Thanks.
Thanks! I normally recommend all developers start with the admin side however you can come back to it later if you have too much momentum going in development.
Hi Judy, does Pluralsight have both admin as well as dev courses by David? When I checked, I could find 'The absolute beginners guide to coding' course by David, but nothing in the admin side. Do let me know if I missed something, thanks
No admin stuff by me but others do!
@@dvdkliu Thanks for the reply David. I will try to find a suitable course there after I buy the subscription. And once done will jump onto your developer course 🤗
I noticed Salesforce Admin salaries are very low compared to developers.
It takes a lot more skill to know code and to be able to translate requirements into code
I feel this is a combination of companies creating hybrid positions plus companies that cross-train existing employees pushing Admin support around.
Great point! I see a lot of that!
@@dvdkliu Thanks for the response. I noticed that further on into the video that you did make reference to this. In that context, maybe you can design a way to reach out to the existing employees being cross-trained, especially where the company is not encouraging them to develop their skills properly.
Honest and great video ! Ps - Love your T-shirts in your videos.
Thanks lol
Excellent.Do you need Java skills or Python skills will suffice?
Neither required!
So just to confirm, to get the developer certification and job, one need to take up admin exam and be certified? Is it mandatory?
It's highly, highly recommended. Nothing is impossible though!
You need to understand that a developer is expected to know admin stuff plus coding...It's like you need to know numbers to do math
I am Frenchman's in France we are late compared with some other countries. I am looking for the trends to do the best choice so thank you for your advice. I wouldn't see that on my own in my country.
I'm about to get my Admin cert with zero previous CRM or SF experience, is it even worth it at this point? I mean if I'm not getting a job with it, why do it? Seems like you're saying unless I have coding skills, it's unlikely I'm getting a SF job with zero experience anytime soon. Maybe it might be better just to learn how to code. But the time it takes to pick up coding skills just extends the learning curve to an actual job. Even then, with a few certs and the ability to code, is it worth it?
I know it wasn't your intention, I appreciate the honesty, but this video has completely disheartened me to pursuing a SF job.
Background: Making a full career change from bartending.
At the end of the video I have a few recommendations that don't require coding, check it out and see if the other options sound viable to you. Realistically with just the admin cert you have very little strength in this market. You'll need to get more certs to stand out to employers. Development is another option that'll help.
Salesforce IMO is def worth it but know I'm pretty biased here and haven't really analyzed other industries yet. The truth is each day it probably becomes less worth it as people discover the industry and jump in. Hopefully that is countered by the crazy demand for the product today.
Hi David,
Thank you for your insight.I’m a Salesforce Admin/BA with 3 years of experience.At this point I have 3 certs-Admin,AppBuilder and Sales Cloud Consultant.My idea was to learn Coding enough to clear PD1 and then continue on my journey to CTA.Do you think it is wise to be in an admin analyst position whilst I clear my certs in the pyramid or is the scene risky for even experienced admins?Thanks in advance for your response.,
You'll be fine as an experienced admin. Especially as you build dev skills which is essential for Architect
Thanks David!
Well spotted David! I think it's a trend all over the world.
Having said that, it may be because hiring managers don't realise the difference between an Admin and a Dev (and there are quite a few new customers hence quite a few hiring managers). I think that the person having the last word on an org should be a good old fashioned Admin - but maybe it's just me... :)
Also, I think of Salesforce/SaaS as a declarative platform first and am always scared when I see Developer "having fun in prod", potentially generating tech debt... Again, I would prefer to see an Admin be the end-user police in prod but...
To finish, I think that there are quite a few SMB in the Salesforce market that can't really afford a dedicated team but I understand you are not talking about them.
Anyway, good video as usual. Thanks!
Thank you Fabrice!
Hi David. Can I go directly to dev without taking admin courses? I have no background in code and Salesforce. I've joined Apex Academy btw and realised that it's dev course.
You technically can but it's recommend some admin trailhead first. Doesn't have to be a lot
Very very informative and useful video. I am working as a Salesforce Administrator and trying to switch but only getting options where they ask for apex knowledge and neither I have any coding knowledge nor I have any technical degree( MBA)..pretty confused now! If I start learning java would that help me to learn apex? Or can you tell me what should be the stepping stone to learn apex?
See the links in my vid description!
Hi David. When I say demand. R you telling about only Unitedstates or other part of the world too. Coz I am from india. Do you think even in india the demand for admin is decreasing. Please reply
India has near zero demand for admins. Mainly because offshore is almost 100% developers.
@@dvdkliu thanks for reply. I am looking to change my career from financial sales to sales operations. What do you suggest will be a better thing for me to learn. (software or any course).
I badly looking to move out of sales. It's draining my energy being in sales. If you can suggest some options will put some light on my future. And will be very thankful to you David. You are really being very practical n like your videos and can relate lot to u.
Thanks! If you're looking for high paying jobs at American companies there really is no other option than to code. It can be in any language, Salesforce or not. I'd personally try to find a new emerging language to specialize in and Salesforce wouldn't be top of that list. If you want great jobs within India I'm not too familiar with that market so can't comment there. Good luck!
@@dvdkliu thanks.
Hey David , can you help me out with LWC roadmap , i have no clue where to start , should i learn HTML,CSS , JAVASCRIPT before learning LWC?. if yes which topics should i cover in Javascript?. what are the main topics in LWC to get a job , as these days almost all sf developer jobs requires good expertise in LWC as well. Please guide me. Thank you in advance.
Yea that's the right path. LWC is new enough that there's not a ton of good info on it aside from Trailhead
Your youtube channel is like GOLD. You should get more subscribers :)
Thank you hope so!!
Thank you for sharing this. What do you think about Salesforce admin + QA?
QA is pretty rare in the Salesforce world, not a big value add there
I have been working as a Business Analyst for Enterprise solutions and now looking for a career change in Salesforce. Which career path should I choose in Salesforce. Since the number of Admin jobs have declined learning salesforce coding from scratch with take a lot of time.
Can you suggest something please?
Later in the video I recommend career paths!
I put a lot of time and effort into my Salesforce Admin cert only to get discouraged after months of barely even getting interviews. I wouldn't really recommend the field to anyone at this point unless they know someone who can definitely help them get a job. Huge disappointment.
I'm starting to feel this way as well. Honestly, I feel like all this talk about tech being "so vast and versatile" is just that - talk. Bottom line is, in 2022/2023, if you don't have advanced coding/developer skills, then you're not getting hired.
What are you doing with your career now?
i m beginner in salesforce and i m little bit confused in admin vs developer.
So could you tell me sir , is it mandatory to learn admin for learning the developing skill.
Is there any link bw developer and admin or i can start with developer only .
please help me with this.
Yup gotta learn the admin stuff no matter what!
Thank you for your honesty; I see the same trend.
Thanks!
@@dvdkliu you described the situation at my place exactly. They hired an admin not too long ago and is now having to pay lots of consultant time to customize. And this is just on boarding sales; they still have service and marketing. I anticipate the realization that a Developer is what they need for the one head count the org is willing to pay for.
Yes so true thanks for sharing! I see the same thing happening here over and over again!
Yep - this video is spot on (I’m a Salesforce consultant and see this every week).
Sir is it fact sf admin job disappear ing . If I did Salesforce developer then job sure or not
CI/CD within a squad that has SF developers does the trick for most of the work needed on the salesforce platform. Programmatic or point & click..
Thanks for the videos, they are all interesting.
Thanks!!
Jr. Admin here. My (small) company initially "trained an admin in house" and hired contracted developers who code for job security rather than function to set up the org. They sold the company on managed packages that are "cheaper" than salesforce native products and now the org is held ransom to namespace and the $300/hour contractor in Canada who subcontracted a guy in India for $15/ hour to save us nothing on CPQ because we had to buy conga and docusign in addition... It's frustrating as an admin when you have to go to the C-suite and say "I cant even see where the problem is coming from, bust out another $1000 for the dude who refused to develop anything end user or admin dynamic". Moving forward If i had to choose between hiring a dev or admin I'd probably go dev just because they stand a better chance at mitigating this reality. It has been an painful lesson in practicality and nominal v actual cost of implementation for me as an admin. I walked into this org long after the implementation but I'm not sure I would've known any better how to hedge against the ever so sought after "afterwork". I know now though.
Thanks for True advice David.
Just looking at pathfinder job fair. out of 33 company out there, but just 5 to 6 offer salesforce role. While admin every one of them.
I am admin that is the problem for me.
Thx
Best of luck!
Hi David
I am an HR person after a career break, I started learning salesforce admin for the past 2 months. I have been doing basic admin problems in trailhead too. My plan was to start applying for salesforce admin jobs. After seeing this video i am confused what to do, can you please suggest me. Thanks so much.
Keep going, just know long term you'll have to go one of the three routes I mention
@@dvdkliu Thanks
The Admin jobs might be disappearing for sure. Unfortunately Salesforce Admin is the preliminary exams for passing out Salesforce Consultant or Business Analyst. Hence the Admin exam becomes necessary for a Sales or any cloud consultant or BA. Also a developer who passed out the Admin exams has a complete understanding on Salesforce.
hi David sir myself prashant from india and iam from non IT background i want to build my career in sales force my Question is what is future of sales force ?right now it on peack point of growth but iam very confused on future security of sales force
Demand will be strong for a while, supply may catch up eventually!
Super helpful to navigate the Salesforce career paths
Thanks!
What interim roles do you think Admin undergrades should take on that can transition into FT admin roles? I'm currently struggling to even get my CV noticed with no SF admin experience.
Loved the video but you don’t mention how large companies rely on SI’s for their Salesforce implementations.
I see Admins play a role in the project implementation (they help shape the project with user stories, maintainability, knowledge transfer etc)
Also there is always the threat of administration being outsourced to an SI.
Admins need to evolve more into product owners unless they want to be a consultant/freelancers.
Yup you are right, admins need to evolve to PMs or consultants!
@@dvdkliu This is very true! I learned this about 4 years ago. Where do I want to go with my career and I saw 2 paths - business vs developer.
Hi,what is an SI?
Basically consultants. I believe it stands for systems integrators but different regions use different names for this
Great analysis for admin role. Anyone who has a bit interest in tech can easily become the company's sf admin. Either business consultant or sf developer ( who would be better admin then who created things... lol). In small company as you have said is absolutely right. However in big companies. 1000+ of users, permission, roles, reports, dashboards, business flows/process, 3rd party integration, management and people skills and motivation, day to days system monitoring and performance evolution, training to users ( no one normally want to spend hours to read and learn from trailhead until he/she is company's sf admin or dev or else. Other have tons of work to leverage their skills. I am just a curious if admin role is vanish then who will take those responsibilities? Admin responsibilities is super easy and polished. Should developer take those or consultant ? Just curious 🤔 👀 😏
It'll never completely vanish, just the proportion of jobs will go down. I know a lot of orgs current that have 0 admins and split the typical admin responsibilities to biz stakeholders and devs.
Hi David
I have been watching all your videos and find every video extremely useful. I am appearing for Admin exam tomorrow. I have completed Focusonforce 6 practice exams (and cleared all) and done some random practise tests online.
Is there any last minute resource you could recommend for me to gather more insights..
Your big fan..
Good luck!!!!!
Hey @yashasvi, how did the test go? Was focusonforce worth it? Any suggestions on learning and practice material?
@@Krishnasaish1 I passed. FoF exams are truly worth. I would highly recommend those
@@yashasvitalwar4246 great! Congratulations 🎉
How does this info hold for today for admin?
Same!
@@dvdkliu Thanks David. I have been watching all of your videos religiously after I went to this Veterans SalesForce introduction conference. Maybe you know about the programs that SalesForce and Hiring our Heroes are doing? They recommended for those with zero SalesForce experience to start with the admin cert. They said that we only need one cert for this fellowship with SalesForce. It doesn't matter what cert but they highly recommended the admin cert due to it be the easiest one and a good introduction cert. I have some cloud and security experience within the IT world. They also said that zero experience is okay with this fellowship since they are walking the military/veteran through the process of daily operations and such with the potential hiring managers and team leads. It was something along those lines.
They also said that SalesForce positions are in high demand and they are having a hard time filling these roles in due to lack of people with SalesForce experience. They emphasized this heavily in the call. They brought up that 1000 military/veterans in last years cohorts were 100% hired after the fellowship. Over 300 companies were involved with this fellowship and they were asking for more bodies to fill in more roles.
Have you heard anything about this internally on your side before?
I appreciate what you are doing!
Oh I was planning on getting two certs for this fellowship. The modules for developer won't unlock on Trailhead till I get the admin cert. Thanks again David.
Thanks! I definitely recommend the admin side to start. The market is getting competitive as the supply of admins is sky high, but, this program has special connections to help veterans. Definitely recommend it!
@@dvdkliu Thanks David! If you ever see a big Korean fella who seems out of place, that would be me giving you a hug. Please keep sharing this gold with the world!
David, please continue to build more training on your Apex Academy..... I sure hope you continue after Apex Academy 3
Thank you!!!!!!! Let's see!!
Finding it really tough to actually follow through and learn Salesforce on my own via Trailhead. TH-cam videos just assumes that I know it already and I am stuck somewhere.
Where is the start? Does anyone know how it actually is worked out?
Agree with you. But I was expecting to see a lot of jobs specifically called "Lightning Administrator" in 2020. Yet to see it though. Something in me says 2021 is for going to see a lot of traction for Lightning Admins.
I am not optimistic about the admin industry: th-cam.com/video/ieQKpohMfoE/w-d-xo.html
what? i am about to start studying for the admin test. How do you become a developer? can someone without much computer knowledge and math learn developing skills?
Hey.... Can anyone tell me about the scope of jobs in SFDC CPQ in EMEA region
? I am currently working in Oracle CPQ but don't see much opportunities in EMEA.
When you can pay your developer to do both code and do Admin work,why pay extra for a pure admin who can't code. That's the logic that hiring managers use
A Salesforce Developer is not really a true coder, and is next to ineffective when comparing it to a true pure breath programmer. The bosses don't know the difference.
@@crumblycisco Believe me....when your app needs higher customisation,you need a lot of coding in addition to our of the box ffeatures that Salesforce provides. I am a Salesforce developer and I have used HTML,CSS and JavaScript in my code. Have even used jQuery in some places
@@crumblycisco it depends on the company and the implementation. Some companies do require code but Salesforce is making it difficult to be a pure coder when stuff like Flows is trying to replace Apex and triggers.