Welcome to another post in the “How I Solved It” series. In this series, we do a deep dive into a specific business problem and share how one #AwesomeAdmin chose to solve it. Once you learn how they solved their specific problem, you’ll be inspired to try their solution yourself! Watch how Hayley Tuller uses a free dev org to create a digital resume to showcase her Salesforce skills. Read more details in the post below.
Salesforce is a great industry to be in these days. We all know that there’s a shortage of skilled Salesforce professionals for all the openings that exist out there. By some estimates, Salesforce has created more than 3 million high-quality jobs.
But when you’re new to the Salesforce community, it can feel like none of those jobs are open to you. Ideally, hiring managers always want candidates with experience, but as a candidate, you may feel like you need a Salesforce job first to get experience. The standard wisdom used to be “go volunteer with a nonprofit,” but, increasingly, we’re all coming to understand how this tactic can wind up doing more harm than good.
So, what’s an aspiring Salesforce professional to do? Easy–configure your OWN use case! In this blog, I talk about how I used a dev org to create a public-facing digital resume, building and showcasing my skills as I went.
Why did I opt to build a Community–er, Experience Cloud site–instead of a custom app? For starters, this isn’t an either/or choice. You can develop both an app and a Community in tandem, as I’ve done here. The extra benefit of a public-facing Community is the ability to show off your work.
As a certified data architect and sharing & visibility architect, I can also tell you that this exercise is GREAT prep for both of those certifications. Communities are all about who can see what, so this project will push you into what might be new areas of learning. With a Community, you can showcase:
Data Modeling and Architecture
User Interface Design
Experience Cloud Site Building
Access and Visibility Planning & Architecture
Here’s my own public resume site.
Like what you see? Let’s build one for you!
If you’re new to Salesforce, then you may not know that you can sign up for a limited version of Salesforce for FREE at any time! Salesforce Developer orgs are intended for learning and development on the platform. They’re very similar to Trailhead Playgrounds in that they’re too limited for formal use as a CRM but are, in nearly every other respect, just like a production org. To create the org you’ll use to host your resume, you need only sign up at the Salesforce Developer site.
When filling out this form, be fairly deliberate about picking your username. Usernames must be unique across all of Salesforce, so I like to append a single word to describe their usage. In my Resume dev org, I’ve added “.resume” onto my email to get the unique username.
Here’s where you get to let your creativity run wild! It’s also a fun place to showcase your data architecting skills. Think about the skills and principles of data design you want to show off when building your digital resume, and start there.
In my virtual resume, I really wanted to showcase the speaking and writing events I’ve participated in, and contextualize them within a particular job I had at the time. To do this, I made a standard lookup between Custom Objects Writing__c, Speaking__c, and Achievement__c to a parent Role__c. For my certifications, I felt they made more sense as an absolute list, so there’s no relationship between Credential__c and Role__c.
I also used lookups on my Roles to standard accounts so I could get a bit of pizzazz in my org by leveraging the Twitter integration to showcase logos.
To amp things up just a bit more, I spent some time styling my Lightning record pages creatively, too. Here on the Credentials record, I used a free component from the AppExchange called Super Image Slider to showcase the certification badge. Alongside the details pane, I added a custom screen flow component to show the full list. Note: In Winter '23, you'll be able to create this full list right in Flow using the new data table component.
You can also show off this part of your org during interviews or discussions, so it’s worth spending some time here. Creative User Interface design shows that, as a Salesforce professional, you can think past the architecture to the user experience.
Now it’s time to take all that hard work and build a showcase for it! If you’re new to Communities, ahem, Experience Cloud sites, here’s the authoritative bible on all things setup and configuration. When I’m learning a new skill, I like to read through the documentation page by page while I fiddle around with what I’m reading in a test environment like a dev org. If you’re more for narrative resources, one of my favorite trails for this is Customize your Experience Cloud Site.
However you do it, it all starts in Setup, under Digital Experiences. You’ll need to enable the feature under Settings, and then create a new site under All Sites. Salesforce will give you access to a whole bunch of templates for your Community in a dev org, so have fun exploring all these options! In the end, you’ll want to pick the template that will showcase your data model the best. Maybe you’re using Knowledge to share writing samples; if so, the Help Center will allow your visitors to search your Knowledge base, but Customer Service won’t. For my resume org, I kept it simple and opted for a Build Your Own template.
From there, you’ll use the Builder to create pages in your site. There’s so much more that can and should be said about Experience Builder than I can possibly cover in this blog post, so I’ll leave you with the official documentation link.
Here’s where you get to show off your Sharing and Visibility chops. You’ll need to set up a Guest User profile. This is the profile that Salesforce will assign to any guest, or non-authenticated, visitor to your digital resume. In our case, since we’re keeping everything public, that’s everyone!
You can name it anything you like, but be sure to use the Customer Community license type.
Use this profile to define the record level of access for your guest user on any custom or standard objects you showcase in your site.
Once you’ve created this profile, you’ll also need to configure your dev org’s organization-wide defaults. If you’re new to Communities, this may be the first time you’ve ever configured the Default External Access option!
Now, in my case, my objects have a Status field on them, which I wanted to leverage to control access. In my use case, records are created in the Draft mode, and then updated to Active when I’m ready to show them. I want to continue to show Former records, so they make up things like my employment history.
To achieve this level of sharing, I used custom sharing rules. These are also configured in Setup > Sharing Settings, way down below the organization-wide defaults. Under each object for which you’re setting up sharing, you’ll need to create a custom rule. Here’s mine for Role__c.
n short, if the Status field IS NOT “Draft”, then give the user Read access to the record. This, combined with a Private External Default and a Profile Level Read/Read All, gives the guest user visibility to all these Active and Former roles.
Once you’re done, use the Administration Workspace to set your Community to Active! Congrats, you’ve just created a digital resume!
The dev org link will be a little long, but you can use bit.ly or similar URL shortening services to make it more manageable. Don’t forget to link it in your social media accounts so potential hiring managers can read all about your amazing Salesforce skills!
Cue the confetti—we’ve got a BIG announcement for our #AwesomeAdmin community! We are very excited to announce the launch of Season 2 of the popular Salesforce+ series, “How I Solved It”! Hosted by Principal Admin Evangelist Gillian Bruce, this series explores how Salesforce Admins solve business problems using automation, data, and design tools. In each […]
Welcome to another post in the “How I Solved This” series. In this series, we do a deep dive into a specific business problem and share how one #AwesomeAdmin chose to solve it. Once you learn how they solved their specific problem, you’ll be inspired to try their solution yourself! Watch how Selina Choy was […]
Welcome to another post in the “How I Solved It” series. In this series, we do a deep dive into a specific business problem and share how one #AwesomeAdmin chose to solve it. Once you learn how they solved their specific problem, you’ll be inspired to try their solution yourself! Watch how Cece Adams built […]
