Breaking Into Tech With a Nontraditional Background

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Derika West, IT Application Support Analyst II at KinderCare Learning Companies.

Join us as we chat about how she got started in her tech career and how she started her Salesforce journey.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Derika West.

Getting started in a tech career

Derika started her career in the U.S. Army as a Carpentry and Masonry Specialist. From there, she bounced around between service industry jobs while she tried to figure out what was next. “There’s no way I could get into tech,” she told herself, “that’s way too smart for me.”

However, when Derika moved to the West Coast, her friends believed in her. She applied for a position as a QA Test Technician, and spent a lot of time figuring out how to pitch her skills in a way that would make sense for the role. And that position gave her a foothold into an entirely new career.

Getting hands-on with Salesforce

In her current role, Derika is the SME for her organization’s transition from Classic to Lightning. It’s an org with over 40,000 users, so change comes slowly. She found herself in more and more conversations with end users about their pain points using their Salesforce deployment, and started looking for solutions.

One thing that has been very helpful for Derika is to reach out to the people at her organization who are more experienced with the Salesforce platform. Even learning the basics of what they do and how they got to where they are today was very helpful in making the decisions that would shape her career. 

Why you should go to a Salesforce Admin Meetup

Derika resolved to go to the next Portland Salesforce Admin Meetup, where she happened to meet Admin Evangelist superstar Kate Lessard. “I told everyone in the room that I’m new and I know nothing about what I’m doing,” Derika says, “and everyone was so welcoming and so helpful.”

Kate connected Derika with Supermums, an organization that provides training and volunteer opportunities to help people get started with a career in Salesforce. She’s about to take her certification exam, and let’s all send her good vibes and good luck.

Make sure to listen to the full episode for more from Derika, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you can catch us every Thursday.

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Full show transcript

Josh Birk:
Hello, everybody. Welcome to The Salesforce Admins Podcast. I am your guest host, Josh Birk, and today I'm delighted to bring Derika West onto the show, to talk about her journey into Salesforce, into the world of tech. And where she is on that journey, where she's looking for to go. Welcome to the show, Derika.
All right, welcome everybody to the show. To