Headshot of Mark Jones next to text that says "Skills for Success: A New 14-Part Blog Series for Admins."

Skills for Success: A New 14-Part Blog Series for Salesforce Administrators

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Welcome to “Skills for Success”, a 14-part blog series that aims to help Salesforce Admins better understand and develop the skills needed to be successful in their role. Written by admins, for admins, this series features a great lineup of #AwesomeAdmins who have real-world experience and knowledge of how each skill is applied in this role. Over the next 12 weeks, we’ll cover these 14 skills:

  1. Communication
  2. Problem Solving
  3. Attention to Detail
  4. Learner’s Mindset
  5. User Management
  6. Security Management
  7. Business Analysis
  8. Data Analysis
  9. Data Management
  10. Designer’s Mindset
  11. Change Management
  12. Process Automation
  13. Product Management
  14. Project Management

Once an admin, always an admin (at heart)

Before we dive into more detail about what you’ll learn in the blog series, I’d like to tell you a little about my Salesforce journey. It was back in April 2016 when I first joined the Salesforce ecosystem—a time I remember well. When going through an interview process for a new job, I found that the role included working with a customer relationship management (CRM) system called Salesforce. At the time I didn’t know too much about it, so I began to learn more about the platform with the help of my late father. Long story short, I managed to get the job and my journey in the Salesforce ecosystem began. Six years later and I couldn’t be happier to be part of the amazing Trailblazer Community, and it gives me great joy to have launched a Salesforce User Group located in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Although I’m currently a Salesforce Consultant, I still consider myself an #AwesomeAdmin at heart, having been an admin for 5.5 years before moving into consultancy. It was through my work as a Salesforce Admin that I acquired and developed the necessary skills to build a successful career in technology. Like many roles in tech, the admin role is one that constantly evolves. There are three annual releases to stay on top of, not to mention the additions to the Salesforce family such as Tableau and Slack. It’s this evolution of the admin role that brings us to the setting behind this series of blog posts.

Why is skill development so important for Salesforce Admins?

Like most other Trailblazers in the community, I streamed Dreamforce ’21 on Salesforce+ in the comfort of my home. One of the many sessions I watched was the Admin Keynote, The Future of Admin Success. In this session, Rebecca Saar from the Admin Relations team at Salesforce showed the below slide that included the 14 key skills all Salesforce Admins should aim to learn and develop.

List of 14 skills admins need to succeed.

This discussion around skills really piqued my interest—I wanted to learn more. I decided to reach out to different members of the Salesforce community and invite them to collaborate with me on a blog series that outlines what each skill is, why it’s important to the admin role, and how admins can learn and develop it. It was through this process that I was fortunate enough to connect with Juliette Warren on the Admin Relations team at Salesforce who agreed to help bring the series to life on admin.salesforce.com.

So, every Tuesday for the next 12 weeks, we’ll release a new blog post that covers each of the 14 skills. The first four are already available: Communication, Problem Solving, Attention to Detail, and Learner’s Mindset.

Below you can see the amazing lineup of writers that will be featured. These 14 Trailblazers from six different countries have a wealth of knowledge, life experience, and insight into how each skill can be applied to the Salesforce Admin role. It brings me great joy to be the community lead of this timely series and to work with these amazing Trailblazers and Juliette at Salesforce. I’m excited for you all to read the posts—everyone who contributed to this series hopes the content will be significant and beneficial to each and every Trailblazer in the community. I truly believe that the skills we highlight across these posts are super relevant to not just the admin role but the Salesforce ecosystem as a whole. Many of these skills are utilized and built upon in every other Salesforce career path. So, you could say that every role in the ecosystem involves the core skills and principles of the admin role.

Promo graphic of all 14 admin writers who contributed to the Skills for Success blog series.

We really hope that you enjoy this series, and we would love to hear your plans for skill development throughout the next few months. Please share these posts on social media and get involved in the conversation using #AwesomeAdmin. Ideally, we want to see this series reach every Salesforce Admin and help them continue their growth and development.

Take these three steps to build your success:

  1. Explore the new Salesforce Admin Skills Kit to learn how to represent your skills when applying for admin jobs or preparing for performance reviews.
  2. Share these skills on social media using #AwesomeAdmin, and tell other admins three skills you’re going to commit to developing this year.
  3. Revisit admin.salesforce.com next Tuesday for the next blog post in this series!

Resources

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Your role as a Salesforce Admin demands more than just technical know-how—it requires creativity, problem-solving, and the ability to think beyond the basics. While there are plenty of resources available that teach you the “how” of Salesforce, from documentation to step-by-step tutorials, there’s something invaluable about understanding the “why.”  Podcasts, often overlooked as a learning […]

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Advance Your Admin Career With Dev Fundamentals

Advance Your Admin Career With Dev Fundamentals

Ready to take the next step in your admin career but unsure where to start? Take a page out of my book and learn development fundamentals to jumpstart your abilities as an advanced admin and extend your Salesforce Platform knowledge. Several years ago, I was at a career tipping point. I felt solid in my […]

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