Trailhead — the Ace Up My Sleeve for Learning Over the Summer
Onboarding can be challenging, especially for a high-tech company like Salesforce. But not anymore! Here’s how Trailhead became my key to ramping up and crushing it during my Salesforce Summer Internship, and how my eyes were opened to the exciting career opportunities skilling-up with Trailhead can bring.
My Salesforce adventure began on June 4, 2018 when I, along with 300 other bright-eyed interns, streamed into the Rincon Center Cafe — a Salesforce building in downtown San Francisco — for our Intern Orientation. We were all excited about starting our Salesforce summer but were unsure of what to expect.
The next morning, I met my manager in the lobby of the new Salesforce Tower. We boarded the elevator and hopped off at my home away from home for the next few months. We dove in immediately. Acronyms, Salesforce terms, and techy-sounding words were banded over my head at every meeting.
“What is this?” I thought. “Am I supposed to know all this already?” So I just smiled and nodded, making a mental note to look up all the jargon afterwards.
Trailhead, my new best friend
“CRM,” “Marketing Cloud,” “Customer Journey,” “Reports,” and “Dashboards” were some of the beauties I jotted down. Where to start? What to do? Then I found it (well, it was there the whole time actually)… Trailhead! I searched for the terms and, to my surprise, each one came up with trails, modules, and projects to help me learn!
It was so simple and fun to use that I found myself incorporating Trailhead into my daily routine. After each project meeting, I would head over to Trailhead to look up the words I didn’t know and find out how to use Salesforce to solve the problems I’d heard about.
Learning through doing
I learn best by doing, so the hands-on challenges at the end of each learning journey were key. They allow you to dive into the deep end and build objects, dashboards, reports, and more — all in an actual Salesforce instance.
My favorite project was Build a Lemonade Stand App. In bite-sized learning content, Trailhead walked me through all of the steps, from making a basic business plan to building a data model. From creating custom fields to putting it all together in a custom app, and then running reports on it. Pretty cool, huh?
Trailhead broke down what was a pretty intimidating process for a beginner into manageable chunks of information that helped me to quickly build my understanding and knowledge! The whole time I worked on the project, I learned important Salesforce skills.
Throughout my internship, the skills I learned from the units — and then put into practice by completing the hands-on challenges — have served me well. I’m now more confident in my ability to use Salesforce’s robust features because I have actually done it before, all in a stress-free environment and while having FUN on Trailhead!
Take the guesswork out of onboarding
One of the coolest features of Trailhead is the ability to make curated learning journeys called trailmixes. My manager created an onboarding trailmix for me, with all of the modules and projects I was to complete, in order to hit the ground running.
The trailmix covered everything from Marketing Best Practices (which was super helpful to ramp me up for my role in Product Marketing) and the Salesforce Ohana Culture to how to Cultivate Equality at Work. It made such a difference to have a set path — or trail! — for getting up to speed on Salesforce.
This custom trailmix made my onboarding not only structured, efficient, and tailor-made for my role at Salesforce but also enjoyable. There were days when I started on a module only to look up at the time and realize that hours had passed. I’d never experienced a learning platform that made skill development so engaging.
Not just Salesforce skills
And Trailhead has something for everyone, not just Salesforce administrators and developers. There are modules that cover soft skills like Public Speaking and Demo Storytelling, both of which came in handy when I got the opportunity to give a demo of Trailhead to a customer. There’s even an MBA Essentials trail (which was one of my favorites) from the Drucker School of Business from which I learned the basics of running a successful business.
Through using Trailhead to ramp up for my internship, I unintentionally gained valuable skills that will serve me well in both University and beyond!
After the summer
Trailhead’s content helped me get up to speed for my role and also inspired me to think beyond the summer onto my long-term career. I learned that there are so many opportunities in the Salesforce ecosystem (there’s even a Salesforce Career Exploration for Students module!) and that the demand for these skills is constantly growing.
So, you may be wondering, “Why should I care? I’m not applying for an internship at Salesforce. Is Trailhead really for me?” The short answer is — YES, absolutely! Trailhead is perfect for YOU. It’s perfect for everyone.
Salesforce skills in high demand
More than just a Salesforce enablement and onboarding tool, Trailhead has modules, projects, and trails that encourage continuous learning. It covers everything from Salesforce Einstein Basics and Career Development Planning to an overview of Technologies and Trends of the Fourth Industrial Revolution like blockchain and artificial intelligence.
So, you’re not only developing the Salesforce skills that are so in-demand but also the soft skills to make you a well-rounded candidate in your job search. Win-win!
Jump in and get learning!
Trailhead is so much more than just a learning tool. It’s THE platform to skill-up for a career in tech. And the best part? It’s FREE. You can sign up today in just a minute and hit those trails instantly.
Overwhelmed by all of the exciting content on Trailhead? Not sure where to start? There are super helpful search and filter features to pare down the most relevant content for you. Filter by role, interests, products, and even level of expertise.
Discover all you need to know about Salesforce, build your personal brand, brush up on your public speaking skills, learn the basics of business administration (and so much more!), develop your career strategy, then go grab your dream job.
Never stop learning
I love to learn. As soon as I started at Salesforce, I realized how many fields of knowledge there are beyond what I have been exposed to in the classroom. This epiphany simultaneously excited and intimidated me. “Where do I start?” I wondered. “How do I know what topics are most important to learn?”
But with free and fun online learning tools like Trailhead and a genuine thirst for knowledge, I’ve realized there are no bounds to my learning.
My main takeaway from my Salesforce summer is that learning doesn’t stop at the end of your formal education; on the contrary, it’s where the rubber meets the road. Cultivating a mindset of continuous learning is key to staying at the forefront of a career landscape that requires constantly refreshed skillsets.
Trailhead makes learning accessible and fun, and the proof is in the pudding: check out how Trailblazers around the world have leveraged Trailhead to skill-up in their careers.
Beyond the summer
As a History major with minors in Spanish and Entrepreneurship at a University that sings the praises of a liberal arts education, I never thought I would be able to obtain the requisite high-demand, real-world skills for a job in tech. Trailhead opened the door to a world I had never experienced before and changed my mind about possible career paths.
I thought that I was permanently at a disadvantage to my peers who are gaining formal degrees in technical fields, but I was wrong! My learning on Trailhead taught me that any skills are within reach, allowing me to pursue any career I can imagine. And you can’t ask for much more than that.
Want to learn more? There’s a trailmix for that — check out Get started with Trailhead.
