Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Joe Sterne, a Solutions Architect and Salesforce contractor. Join us as we chat about his tips for job interviews, what to look for in a job description, and how you can use AI to help you prep.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Joe Sterne.
Last month, we talked to Jason Atwood about how to prepare for a Salesforce job interview. That episode was fantastic because Jason interviews job candidates all the time, but I wanted to hear from someone who’s had experience sitting on the other side of the table. That’s why I was so excited to hear from Joe Sterne about his experience as a contractor.
Contracting is becoming more common in the Salesforce ecosystem, and it can be a great way to get experience to land that next-level position. “At the end of the day, certifications are great,” Joe says, “but certifications aren’t the be-all, end-all—it’s also experience.” Of course, being a contractor means that you’re constantly looking for that next gig, so Joe has a lot of great tips to share from going out on so many interviews.
Looking for a new position usually starts with reading through a bunch of job descriptions. Joe recommends taking a close look at what responsibilities are actually listed because it doesn’t always match the job title. It can happen for any number of reasons, but it’s important information to know going into the interview process because it can affect the salary band.
Joe also suggests investing the time to make sure you have something to talk about once you land that big interview, especially if you’re bound by an NDA. It could be Superbadges, or work you’ve done for a nonprofit, or, as Joe says, “maybe it’s something you did for fun just so you could talk about it in an interview.” No matter what, you need a way to demonstrate your skills and knowledge and how they’re a fit for your new role.
When you’re prepping for an interview, Joe recommends taking some time to learn about the business and the industry they’re in. Who are their clients? What problems are they trying to solve? And, most importantly, why are you a good candidate for them to help them address those problems? At the end of the day, that’s what you’re selling.
As Joe says, you want to be able to walk into the interview and say, “Here are your problems, I understand them, I’m going to be able to fix them, here are some ways I should be able to fix them, and here are other ideas I have that I could work on with other people as I learn more to evolve those solutions.”
There’s a lot more great stuff from Joe in this episode about how to deal with weird interview questions and how he uses ChatGPT to help him prep, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast.
Mike:
So let’s say you’re out there as a Salesforce admin and you’re interviewing and you get a crazy question like, “If you could be any animal, what animal would you be?” Well, I won’t tell you the answer that Joe Sterne gave but Joe Sterne is on the podcast today and he’s going to help us flip on the other side of the coin. That’s right. So it’s June. If you remember back in May, I had Jason Atwood on the podcast. He’s from Arkus and he was talking about what he does to interview Salesforce admins. My hope was to get you in the mindset of what a hiring manager is looking for.
Today, I got Joe Sterne, who is out there in the job market and he’s interviewing as a Salesforce admin, at least he was at the time that we reported this. And gave some tips to help you get ready for your interview, some things that he’s doing. Also, you know what? We talk about contract work because I think that’s a very viable solution as a new admin. Now, of course, before we get into the episode, I want to make sure you’re following the Salesforce Admins Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, whether it be Apple Podcasts or Spotify or iHeartRadio. Go ahead and click that follow button and the reason is then a new episode will be put on your phone right away when you wake up Thursday morning. So with that, let’s get to our conversation with Joe.
So Joe, welcome back to the podcast.
Joe Sterne:
Hello.
Mike:
Good to have you on again. It’s been a while. But let’s talk about, so back in May for the people that follow along with the podcast, because I know everybody does. I published an episode How to Prepare for a Salesforce Job Interview in 2024 and Jason Atwood was my guest. And I think he did a really good job of prepping us on the employer side. You, I know, are currently now on the admin side. So I wanted to get the… Does it show my age if I say the peanut butter cup scenario, like the chocolate and the peanut butter version?
Joe Sterne:
I mean, I don’t think so. I’m still a big fan of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Wait. Can I name drop brands on this?
Mike:
Yeah. You can.
Joe Sterne:
So-
Mike:
I mean, if they want to want to send me a care package of peanut butter and chocolate, I’m all for that.
Joe Sterne:
There you go. Yes. I mean, to me, that does not date you. If you were saying something more along the lines of… I’m trying to think of… Not Milk Duds. There’s some candy that’s coated in chocolate that has powder in the middle of it that’s from the 1940s.
Mike:
That’s Milk Duds. That’s Milk Duds. Every time I’ve had Milk Duds-
Joe Sterne:
Oh, okay.
Mike:
Oh. No, no. Malto-
Joe Sterne:
Malt… yes. Malted Stuff. Yeah.
Mike:
Malted Dots or something they’re called.
Joe Sterne:
Yes. Yeah. Those-
Mike:
Yeah. Those things-
Joe Sterne:
Are old.
Mike:
You bite into it, you’re like, “Oh, chocolate,” and then it’s like a puff of dry dust.
Joe Sterne:
Exactly. Yes. That, I feel like, would date you.
Mike:
Wow. All right. So Joe, since we’ve last spoke, what have you been up to?
Joe Sterne:
Oh man. So was I still at Salesforce when we last spoke? I think I might have been.
Mike:
You were still?
Joe Sterne:
So yeah, I was wrapped up in part of the layoffs in the beginning of 2023 and landed a couple different solution architecture specific roles at companies over the course of 2023 that also had layoffs sadly. The market has been quite chaotic over the last year and a half in the Salesforce space. I am currently right now doing contract work for another company, still doing solution architecture, but doing it under my own LLC.
Mike:
Ah. So what have you found interviewing… And I guess being an LLC and pitching consulting services, you’re interviewing, right?
Joe Sterne:
Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You’re still interviewing. It’s just, to me… Well, I’ll take one step back here. I’m still interviewing for full-time or W2 positions as they like to call it when I’ve been talking about positions but I’m also open to 10-99 or corp to corp. Corp to corp is one of the main reasons that I decided to do an LLC. Besides the tax reasons, it’s the ability just for somebody to come back to me and be like, “Hey, we can do contract but it needs to be corp to corp.” It’s like, “Cool. We can do that. I have one.”
Mike:
Gotcha.
Joe Sterne:
And not have that be a limitation where it’s like, “Hey, we can’t do 10-99 or W2 on this engagement,” that knocks you out of the rutting. It’s like, “Well, okay, that doesn’t really help me and I would love to be able to deduct stuff from a business standpoint. Since I’m going to be using my own hardware in most of these contract situations, I’d rather just wrap that up from a business perspective.” So I know that’s not necessarily totally viable for a lot of people, especially just starting out in the industry. But I would say, it’s something to be aware of because I have seen a pretty big shift within the last 18 months in the industry. Well, big for me. I’ve been in the industry since 2013 and I fell into it. That there’s been a dramatic increase in contract roles of any sort and a pretty pronounced pullback in full-time W2 roles.
Mike:
Okay. But let’s tackle that first part. Let’s say you are, for your opinion, a newer admin. What is the level of experience you feel people should be at before they would go and do what you did which is start an LLC and do, we’ll just call it contract admin work, as opposed to being hired on as a position within the company?
Joe Sterne:
Yeah. I would recommend probably being at some sort of a senior level, so a few years of hands-on experience ideally. That you can then use to translate some of the value of why you would be a good candidate for them from a hiring role in general, whether it’s contract or not. But here’s some of the stuff that I’ve done, here’s some of the things that I’m a part of, here’s some of the knowledge that I have, that I’ve encountered on the job, some stuff that I may have not necessarily encountered on the job but dabbled in.
Because at the end of the day, certifications are great. I am a certification ambassador for Salesforce so I will not say anything different. But obviously, certifications aren’t the be all end all either. It’s also experience. Experience both helps you get a certification as well as certifications help you get experience. So it’s this chicken and the egg scenario sometimes when you’re first starting out where it’s like, “How do I get that experience if no one’s willing to take a chance on me?”
That is obviously a much larger conversation than what we’re having today. But having some of that experience, I think, is helpful if you’re trying to go that contract admin route or a fractional admin. Which I feel like as the rise of some of these C-suites, I think that some of that “fractional work” may start coming up where you may be working for two or three companies at once. That you’re all doing admin things, but they just don’t have the level of requests or tickets or change that would require somebody to be on full-time with benefits but they still need some help.
Mike:
Right. That may be the case, right? In your area or depending on where a person is, maybe they’re not hiring for a full-time admin. So you’re newer, you need the experience, would you take on a contract role? Let’s say a company’s like, “Look, we’re not going to hire for this position full-time but we will do a 6-month contract with you.” As an individual, to me, that sounds like a great way to at least get some experience.
Joe Sterne:
Absolutely.
Mike:
And then you’re also working towards, “Well, they could renew the contract. It also gives me a few months to get in with an organization,” and maybe you may like it. And then, you could… Well, if you made this full-time, look at all that you would get.
Joe Sterne:
Right. The one thing I’ve seen over the past few months as I’ve navigated the new contract world. Because historically, I’ve only looked for W2, but with this market I’ve had to open myself up to contract roles, is that there definitely is the concept of contract to hire.
Where essentially instead of testing out an employee for 60 or 90 days, you’re essentially testing them out for six months, a year, or so. Some of those offers might just be dangling in front of you to get you to be willing to do a contract. But I feel like others actually do convert and drawing some parallels to outside the Salesforce ecosystem when it comes to community management or marketing, having a bunch of contract roles before you land a full-time one is not unusual.
It used to be unusual in the Salesforce realm and I feel like that is also starting to change just with the way that the current market is and the pullback on head counts. That is forcing companies to arguably prioritize their bottomline over their employees. But again, slightly separate conversation. But making sure that from a cost standpoint, that they’re not necessarily wasting money on separate groups that they don’t “need” too.
So I think that having the ability to grab a contact role for six months is great. It’s just that one of the things that you will need to be aware of is that from a interviewing perspective, you don’t… Sometimes when you get a full-time job, especially if it’s one that you’ve been pining for, for a while, you take a step back from the LinkedIn and the job application market for a period of time.
When it comes to contracting like sales, you don’t really have that luxury. So yes, I am currently contracting for one company but I’ve never stopped looking for additional work. Just because I don’t necessarily have an exclusivity with my current company and I’m also… I’m trying to get to 40 hours a week billable right now which they can’t offer and that’s okay. It was only pitched as part-time anyway. But for me, it’s always trying to find more work and more potential pipeline.
So it’s very similar. It’s from a consulting standpoint of trying to build a book of business and trying to build a pipeline and trying to line that up. Because ideally, if I stayed in this world of contracting work and whatnot, I would be trying to make sure that I’m fully booked out for a year or so in advance and turn away work or refer work to other people rather than trying to scramble for it. It’s the typical feast or famine concept.
Mike:
What were… I guess I started in the past tense. But what are some of the things that you do when getting ready for a job interview, either as a W2 or a 10-99, that you feel is applicable to a lot of admins?
Joe Sterne:
Oh, man. So I would say, one of the things that I’ve really started to leverage. And I know that the whole AI, AI, AI thing has been beat over-
Mike:
Really? You don’t get that anywhere? I haven’t-
Joe Sterne:
Yeah. No, I-
Mike:
I haven’t seen AI anywhere. That’s the first I’ve heard of it.
Joe Sterne:
Yeah. Exactly. Over the last year, I’ve definitely started to leverage at least ChatGDP more and more to a point where I’m actually paying for it. I tried to actually set up my own custom GDP around Salesforce architecture that got kicked off the store because it used the term Salesforce. But that is something that I’ve found to be helpful when I have been, A, researching the company and the industries that company is in. Because asking questions about that, diving deep, granted for most of the stuff that people think of AI today, arguably it’s just spicy autocorrect.
But there are some areas where it can definitely start doing things for you that are either tedious or just time-consuming. So I just saw an article that Shannon Tran posted around a Salesforce Ben posting where they were trying to implement different types of AI in an org and they were just trying to figure out what made sense. It turns out, a lot of it, they had to go off platform for and that brings up a ton of complexity. As an admin, you’re not necessarily required to know all of that. But you would want to know at least on the Salesforce side, what they’re planning on doing and what tools that they are implementing. And what different areas or different features that may have not been available in the past are now available. Is the company going to be paying for those extra licenses? How are those going to be implemented? Are you implementing them? Is a third party implementing them?
So there’s a lot of different questions that would probably come up in an interview if you start diving down into that. I have found that tools like ChatGDP are very helpful to navigate those flows beforehand and potentially, give you a talk track before you actually even talk to them. So I mean, you can use ChatGDP as a pseudo interviewer and have it just drill you for questions. You can use it as a certification prep tool and have it ask you questions.
Now, granted, especially in the latter example, I would want to verify that those answers are correct because they do have the chance to hallucinate every now and then. Obviously, I always joke that because it’s on the internet, everything is true. But I do feel that when people see things that are typed out, they usually default to thinking that is true rather than potentially critically thinking that it may not be. So just a word of caution that you may not have 100% accuracy in truthfulness. But, to me, that’s been a great way to prep for interviews just because I can almost have a conversation rather than me just doing a few Google searches and having to potentially connect the dots here and there which is also very useful.
Mike:
You said something that… Well, right at the beginning of your answer, it’s been just echoing in my head that I want to know in the current landscape… You said, “When I’m looking at a company and how I would work with them…” How much does that come up in the interview? How important is it in the age of the internet that you actually do the prep work on the about page and the history page and the about us page or if they have a corporate values page? How much do you do that when you’re prepping as an individual or as a consultant?
Joe Sterne:
So I would say that you don’t necessarily need to know their entire executive suite by the back of your hand and be able to recite off what they’ve done like you’re talking about a sports player. Unless you want to, by all means, go for it. I’ve found that knowing a initial amount about what the industry that they’re in, some of the customers that they deal with, whether that’s other businesses, whether that’s end consumers, whether that’s both, it helps you figure out some of the problems that they’re searching for.
Because eventually, that’s what you’re trying to help them solve. That’s what you’re selling to them as a solution is, “Here. Here are your problems. I understand them. I’m going to be able to fix them. Here are some certain ways that I should be able to fix them. And there are other ideas that I have that I could work with other people as I learn more to evolve those solutions.” I mean, that’s true if you’re a consultant, that’s true if you’re in-house. You’re there to solve problems and make the company money or make the company money by making other people more efficient, stuff like that.
So having a baseline knowledge of what they’re doing helps you because from an initial interview standpoint, you may not necessarily have a lot of the… The best way to describe this is like a contact situation where it’s, “Hey, given this certain issue that we’re having, we’re going to give you a quick brief background, tell us how you might approach it or tell us how you might solve it.” I see that all the time. Those, if you don’t know what the business does, you don’t know how they necessarily act with their clients or partners or anything in their ecosystem, it’s going to be a struggle for you to answer those. Because you won’t know that off the top of your head and then you might have to fumble your way through it.
As opposed to doing a little bit of research, not a ton. Because granted like right now in this market, I’ve found that there is a lot of quantity that you may have to go after initially before you can start focusing on quality as those amounts of interviews narrow as you go through the process. So it does take a lot of time to fully memorize a company. I’m not recommending that you do that. But not knowing anything about them and going in “cold” is not going to help you either because you won’t be able to answer those hypothetical situations.
Mike:
Right. Yeah. It’s funny just having been in the world and seeing that change, just the difference that the internet brought interviewing people. God. Before times? So what are things that you… Always, we get asked, and a lot of people get asked like job description. What should I look for in a job description? How do I know if this is… Is this a Salesforce admin job? Some companies call it that. They call a duck a duck, you’re a Salesforce admin. Some don’t. The business technology specialist or corporations sometimes have different naming conventions. What are things that you look for in job descriptions?
Joe Sterne:
Okay. So-
Mike:
Buckle up. I feel like this is an answer.
Joe Sterne:
Yeah. So it’s funny that you bring this up because from the one thing that I have definitely noticed as being a solution architect, for the last half a decade or so, is that a solution architect these days isn’t always a solution architect. You have to actually read the job description. Because a lot of times, I’ve encountered where you have a “solution architect”, like that’s what they call you. But you’re asked to do Apex coding and debugging and all these other things that a technical architect would be responsible for.
I don’t know if it’s just people don’t understand that there is a fairly clear delineation between technical architects and solution architects when it comes to the amount of code that they should be required to do or if they’re just trying to get a technical architect for cheap. Because arguably, the pay band for a technical architect, like any other dev, is a little bit higher than a solution architect which is generally not responsible for stuff like that.
So I have seen a lot of that confusion in the marketplace when it comes to the position that I’m currently in. And I think that definitely also cascades down into even the difference between a “junior admin” where they’re asking you to do everything an admin would do, but they’re only trying to have you at the junior level to save cost or that they may not know better.
It definitely depends on, if you can tease out, how long they’ve been using Salesforce. Because obviously, the newer they are to Salesforce, I think, the more struggle of understanding titles and how they reference to typical other titles in the ecosystem. It’s a little bit more of a struggle if you’ve just started Salesforce as opposed to, “Hey, we’ve been on Salesforce for a decade. HR is caught up to this. We’re well aware of pay bands. So that’s not something that we’re going to necessarily be able to,” I don’t want to say con, but, “argue with the level of talent that we want.”
Because that’s something where if you’re applying for a job that says junior and all of the stuff that they’re asking and all the things that you talk about in the interview says, “This is actually a typical admin or a senior admin level,” that’s something to call out. Because that’s probably going to show up, maybe not necessarily on the title side, but it’s probably going to show up on the pay band side.
So being aware of what a typical admin is responsible for is generally pretty helpful when you’re reading these job descriptions. Because then, you can get a gut check of like, “Hey, are they really asking for an admin or are they asking for a senior admin? They just happen to have it marketed as something different.”?
Mike:
Yeah. Well, and a lot of times, a lot of what we find and this is true for a… I don’t want to pick on just admins because I know I’ve talked to the developer relations side. It’s that way, too, with a lot of roles that people write. Especially if it’s a new role within the organization, they just blanket, “Here’s everything you should do,” and it’s like… I remember reading job descriptions in… Was it 2017? And they said, “You need five years of Lightning experience.” It’s like, “Well, it’s only been out for two.” And it’s no fault to the company, they just… I don’t think they somehow know to categorize stuff like that. So yeah, job descriptions can be all over the place.
Joe Sterne:
But as long as you’re comfortable with what they’re asking you to do, at least on the ten, that is usually a good start. Because the other thing to note about the job descriptions is it’s generally, not always, but it’s generally a starting place to some of the questions that you’re going to start getting from the interviewers. One of the things that I get all the time when I am pitching companies or just interviewing generally is they’re like, “Hey, you gave me an example about X, Y, Z. Can you go into more detail?” It’s like, “No, I can’t. I’m under NDA, so you can go talk to this company and have them sign a waiver if you want but I can’t tell you exactly what I did. I can tell you that I worked on it.”
That happens more often than people think because they’re trying to not necessarily see what the competition is doing but they’re trying to gauge your skills. So being able to have ways that you can talk about your skills that aren’t necessarily bound by an NDA can be really helpful. Maybe, that’s some stuff that you’ve done with Superbadges, maybe that’s something that you’ve done with a nonprofit that isn’t necessarily bound by NDA, or maybe that’s just something that you did for fun, literally, so you could speak about it in an interview. There’s nothing wrong with that. But those questions generally do come up. It may not be first round. It might be second or third. And God, hopefully not fourth or fifth. But those-
Mike:
You never know.
Joe Sterne:
Yeah. You never know. Those examples usually directly relate back to that job description. Because there are people that you may be talking to that aren’t necessarily very close to Salesforce. But they’re brought into the interview process because they are a department that you’re working with or a division that you’re going to be embedded in. They may not know everything about Salesforce, so they may just go down the job description part and ask you questions.
They may go down your resume and just drill you on, “Hey, why do you have this on here? Can you tell me a little bit more about it?” So being able to say, “Oh, cool. Thanks for asking me about that here. And I’m going to go into a 2-minute monologue of the question that you just asked.” That’s definitely very helpful because it shows that, A, you understand what they want and you also understand what you’ve done and you’re able to talk about it at arguably a snap of your fingers. And not necessarily have to be like, “Oh, well, hold on a second. Let me look that up,” and, “What did I write here?”, kind of thing
Mike:
As we wrap things up, I… It sounds like a fun question. Fun is a word that means a lot of things in my head so we won’t use-
Joe Sterne:
Are we using air quotes right now?
Mike:
No. I’m trying not to. Nobody can see them. Let’s use the word interesting.
Joe Sterne:
Okay.
Mike:
What is the most interesting question you feel comfortable sharing that you got in a job interview?
Joe Sterne:
Oh, man.
Mike:
See how fun could also work?
Joe Sterne:
Yeah. Yeah. Fun could also work. I feel like that is… I’ve gotten a lot. I’ve had a… So I would say within the last year and a half across the last few jobs that I’ve gotten ever since I left Salesforce, I’ve probably put in well over a thousand applications.
Mike:
Wow.
Joe Sterne:
I’ve had not a very good conversion rate to interviews but I have had some interviews. I think that the more bizarre questions that I get are usually something that has absolutely nothing to relate to Salesforce. I think it’s the ones that they’re trying to figure you out from a psychological perspective but they haven’t really thought it through. So it’s the ones where it’s like, “Hey, if you could be any animal, what animal would you be?” “I don’t know. An elephant? So I can’t forget all this stuff.” Like, “How does this relate to what we’re doing?” That was-
Mike:
Joe, how are you going to type with elephant feet?
Joe Sterne:
Right. Exactly. I’m like, “I’ll have to use-“
Mike:
[inaudible 00:29:30].
Joe Sterne:
Right. I’m like, “Do I need to ask for accommodations here?” So it’s questions like that, that I’ve gotten, where it’s just been completely oddball. Like, “This has nothing to do with the job at all. How…” I even struggle to how connect the dot back to the interview process itself where it’s like, “Hey, what are you trying to ask me?” Because it’s not something simple of like, “Hey, I’m having this issue. How would you tackle it?” It’s like, “Well, I’d try to do it in configuration and this is the way that I think I would tackle it based on this information. If that changes, then maybe I’d look at the App Exchange and see if I could find anything there. If that didn’t necessarily work, then I’d have to start talking about custom code and understanding…” That’s a whole train of thought that you can have with a question that is semi-technical related. But if you have somebody asking, “Hey, what brand of soda would you be and why?” Where do I go with that?
Mike:
Yeah. First of all, you’ve got the big two. And then, what if you go a regional flavor that nobody understands with limited distribution?
Joe Sterne:
Right. Or what if you go something retro like, “Hey, I’d like to be Tab or Crystal Clear Pepsi,” like-
Mike:
I was going to say Crystal Pepsi, yes.
Joe Sterne:
Yeah.
Mike:
That’s the second or third time it’s come up on this podcast. It’s awesome.
Joe Sterne:
Yeah. I mean, bringing it back full circle, talking about something that will date you, Gen Z has no idea what Crystal Clear Pepsi is. But it is definitely one of the, I would say, the rare failures of soda, up there with new Coke which is also-
Mike:
It still doesn’t… Coke still doesn’t taste right. I remember what Coke tastes like as a kid and the whole new Coke, new Coke tasted like Pepsi.
Joe Sterne:
Yeah. Exactly. They were trying to go after the sweeter market. I only remember this because Stranger Things did a Coke tie-in, I think, for Season 2 or 3 where you could buy redone new Coke in the can. And so, I bought it just to taste it and I remember sipping it and I was like, “This is horrible. This is knockoff Pepsi, store brand Pepsi.” And I was like, “Yeah. I can see why this didn’t go anywhere.”
Mike:
Right.
Joe Sterne:
So yeah, so I would say that I don’t know if you could necessarily prepare for those questions of, “If you were a soda, what soda would you be and why?” But those are usually ones that I would found there, it’s like, “All right. Maybe I should reconsider wanting to work for this company in general if you’re going to be asking me questions like this. Because I don’t know if this is going to be a reflection of the type of company that it is too.”
Because I mean… I feel like one thing that a lot of people forget, and it’s easy to especially when you’re desperate for a job, is that you’re also interviewing the company. You’re trying to figure out if you want to work there too. So there are times where the interviewers are trying to sell you on working there and there are times where they may not be. But that’s something that, ideally, is on you to figure out, “Hey, I need to be able to ask questions that would determine if I want to work there,” and those can vary from people.
So I can’t say there’s a list of questions that you should ask every company, period. But a very good one to start teasing out how they were is what is their stance on return to office? Because that’s usually a really good indicator of, “Do we listen to our employees actually or do we say we listen to our employees and ignore them?” So it’s questions like that… Obviously, if you want to be in the office full-time, you can ask that question. It doesn’t necessarily matter what they say. But if you don’t want to be in the office full-time or if this was marketed as a remote job and they’re actually saying it’s hybrid, that’s something to think about like, “Hey, if they can’t get this right in the job application, what else are they going to potentially be getting wrong or not necessarily telling you the truth when you’re working there?”
So make sure that you don’t forget that you’re also interviewing them to see if they’re a place that you want to work for too. Not necessarily just… It’s not one-sided. It’s always two sides of a conversation. It’s a conversation. It’s not a monologue. It’s something where you need to have back and forth and it’s for the… Ideally, it’s for both sides to make sure that, “Hey, we’re both in agreement of what’s expected.”
Mike:
Yep. I completely agree. I wasn’t trying to teach admins anything out of this other than just sometimes getting funny questions is a fun way to end things. Joe, I want to thank-
Joe Sterne:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I probably went on a serious tangent there.
Mike:
No, you’re fine. We know you want to be an elephant.
Joe Sterne:
Yeah. I mean, sometimes that’s also to keep with a funny thing like, “Do you have any questions?” That’s also something that you can just throw back at them too. “Hey, if you were a soda, what soda would you be and why?” Because I guarantee that 99 point something percent of people aren’t expecting that question. So it’s a… Depending on the banter that you have with your interviewer, it might be a fun way to end it out.
Mike:
Right. Good. Joe, thanks for stopping by and-
Joe Sterne:
Of course.
Mike:
Keeping us up to date on what’s going on out there. If people wanted to follow you on anything social, I’ll go ahead and link it down in our show notes.
Joe Sterne:
Yes, that would be great. Yeah. You can find me on Twitter, I refuse to call it X. You can find me on LinkedIn and I mean, heck, you couldn’t find me at my new company. You can shoot me an email. Feel free to reach out to me. I still have people reaching out to me from our past conversation I’ve had on this podcast periodically so I always love to get those notes. Yeah. I love to get those notes because I mean, I’m here to help other people. So if I haven’t helped you, I’m sorry. That was definitely my goal of today. And if I have helped you, I’d love to hear that I have because it’s always a nice ego boost.
Mike:
Absolutely. Thanks so much, Joe.
Joe Sterne:
Thank you.
Mike:
It was a great discussion with Joe. I’d love to know, so what answer would you be for an animal? The whole time that he was asking that question, for some reason, the tiger came to mind. But I’d be curious, I’d love to know what animal you could be if you were a Salesforce admin at a job interview. But I did think that Joe gave us some really good tips and from an experience standpoint, oftentimes, it’s brought up, “Go help a nonprofit.” But sometimes looking for a full-time FTE job versus a contract job, a contract job might be a good path for getting some experience. If it’s a trend that a lot of organizations are going to, it’s a great way to get into the front door of that organization. So thanks, Joe, for being on here and sharing some of those wisdom.
Now, if you’re doing one thing and you enjoyed this, I want you to help share and spread the word. So if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, just go ahead and tap the three dots in the upper right and click Share Episode. What you can do there is you can post at social or you can text it to a friend, maybe you have somebody else that’s out there looking for a job. Of course, I mentioned resources, links to Joe’s social stuff, all of that will be in the show notes for the episode. All of the Salesforce Admin episodes can be found at admin.salesforce.com. That is your one-stop for everything admin, including a transcript of this episode. Be sure to join our conversation in the Admin Trailblazer Group that is in the Trailblazer Community. Again, link is in the show notes. So until next week, we’ll see you in the cloud.
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