4 Ways To Build a Powerful Resume Website and Stand Out in Your Salesforce Career Journey
Learn how Trailhead's Build Your Personal Portfolio on Salesforce project helps you add more details about your experience than a resume or CV ever could.
When opportunity knocks, it’s sometimes difficult to prove you’re the one for the role when you may not yet have real-world experience. What’s more, career transitions can be bumpy, especially now when there seem to be more challenges than ever.
Enter Trailhead, Salesforce’s free online learning platform, focusing on empowering anyone to learn the skills needed to transform their career or reskill at their current company in a work-from-anywhere world.
With the Build Your Personal Portfolio on Salesforce project, you can learn how to build a standout resume website, using the exact platform you’re trying to prove you know to showcase your Salesforce experience. The project guides you through the steps of creating a resume website with the Salesforce platform.
Check out these four ways to supercharge your online portfolio.
1. Share your journey
When Uber driver Abdul Sultani happened upon Dreamforce attendees as his passengers for the 2019 conference, his career journey changed significantly.
“Driving Uber changed my life … My riders told me about Salesforce and Trailhead programs. It was then that I became determined to be a Salesforce Admin. I started studying Trailhead modules. In four months, I was able to become a Certified Salesforce Admin.”
Abdul has also gone to gain his Salesforce Platform Developer I certification and train with the Salesforce Pathfinder Program, and can now share this story from one culture (and country) to the next on his portfolio resume website.
He recalls, “My life was riddled with hardships in Afghanistan, hoping to find a better life in America. I moved to the United States, San Diego city, in Jan 2014.”
Through telling his story, both personally and professionally, everyone who engages with his site — recruiters, prospective employers, Trailblazers — gain a fuller picture of who he is, where he’s been, and where he’s going.
Telling your story helps you stand out; it’s key to increasing your visibility. Karen Engstrom, talent acquisition manager at Salesforce consulting firm CodeScience, agrees.
“When a recruiter is searching for a candidate, if they don’t have this more robust picture of you, it makes it harder to tell whether you’d be a good fit for the role. With a portfolio, you’re able to show recruiters a fuller picture of yourself.”
This more robust picture helps job seekers and recruiters alike.
Karen shares,”I’m a unicorn hunter, looking for people who have the right skill set and work well within our culture and values. A portfolio that shows me all of this — your whole self — gets me interested, starts the conversation, and helps me narrow the time spent sorting through applicants.”
Show your skills
Stand out by highlighting your skills in a resume website. This helps you, no matter your experience with Salesforce.
Trailblazer Kelly Michael Skelton agrees, “If you can’t display projects you’ve already done, it’s hard for a company to put that trust in you.”
It’s been what seems like a short time, a year, since Kelly was searching for a Salesforce job. To prove his experience and knowledge, he showed his Trailblazer.me profile to potential employers. A short while later, he received a job offer to serve as a director of digital transformation — his present job.
Now that he’s created his portfolio resume website with the Build Your Personal Portfolio on Salesforce project, Kelly links to his Trailblazer profile on this site.
“It’s great because it gives you the ability to demonstrate something hands-on. That’s what excites me the most. And, once the module ends, you can then make your own [online portfolio]. It’s always available to update, and it can grow with you on your journey.”
Cate Robbie, director of human resources at Salesforce Partner NuAge Experts, concurs that,
“Actions speak louder than words, so showing what you can do is good to help yourself stand out. The right portfolio will give me visibility into someone’s strengths and technical skills that are transferable to Salesforce.”
Robie notes “Out of our entire development team, so far, only two people have joined NuAge Experts with any previous Salesforce experience. Developers new to Salesforce were able to show us other transferable skills and successfully demonstrated their passion for Salesforce.”
And CodeScience’s Karen also points out that,
“If someone describes themselves as a Salesforce geek, that’s a good sign. It’s also important to share superbadges, certifications, and Trailblazer rank. And I love the projects tab [on an online portfolio]. I’m not guessing by just looking at a resume. I can see, through their projects, what someone’s skill set is.”
3. Get innovative and creative
Accomplished Trailblazer Jessica Mills — now in her fourth and final year at Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado Springs — shares, “Building a portfolio lets you have fun and unleash your creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. It helps you showcase your unique perspective.”
Jessica believes that organizations favor hiring those who enjoy learning new things and demonstrate a different viewpoint. As a Salesforce Platform App Builder, Administrator, and Advanced Administrator certified, Jessica has certainly showcased her love of learning and passion for creativity and storytelling on her portfolio resume website.
Get innovative and creative
Salesforce professional Jessica Mills shares, “Building a portfolio lets you have fun and unleash your creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. It helps you showcase your unique perspective.”
Jessica believes that organizations favor hiring those who enjoy learning new things and demonstrate a different viewpoint. As a certified Salesforce Platform App Builder, Administrator, and Advanced Administrator, Jessica used her online portfolio during her job search to showcase her love of learning and passion for creativity and storytelling.
On her site, she shared important accomplishments and work, including web design projects and Salesforce certifications.
On her site, she shares important accomplishments and work, including web design projects and Salesforce certifications.
“With my portfolio, I can go beyond my LinkedIn profile, showcasing my work more in-depth than I can on LinkedIn. And I can include a link on my resume so employers can check it out.”
And employers did check it out. Jessica is now an implementation specialist at Fast Slow Motion having landed her first Salesforce job after attending a Trailblazer Connect Career Fair!
Uber driver turned Salesforce Administrator Abdul also uses innovative thinking to stand out. He used Salesforce to keep a record of his career opportunities while he was searching for jobs and shared it on his resume website.
He shares, “One of the reasons I created a portfolio is because I wanted to stand out. I can show to potential employers that, while I don’t have Salesforce experience, I can think out-of-the-box and create a portfolio that shows I do have the skills that it takes.”
And, during his time at Climb Hire, an organization that prepares working adults to be Salesforce Administrators, members of his cohort, known as Climbers, specifically requested that he work with them to build their resume websites because they were so impressed with his online portfolio.
“When I created my portfolio and presented it as part of a Climb Hire class, everyone was like, ‘Whoa, Abdul, this is really cool’ […] and I held a Zoom meeting and invited them all, and I helped them.”
4. Point out what you care about
Highlighting values in your resume website gives potential employers and recruiters a sense of what’s important to you.
Cate, NuAge Experts’ human resources director, feels you should, “show who you are as a person, too. Highlight ways you care about your community — your values could match a prospective company’s values.”
Trailblazer Jessica concurs and relates her work as a volunteer to her Salesforce experience.
“Giving back to my community is one of my core values on my portfolio site.”
Through pointing out her work as a volunteer, Jessica shows how she stands out by connecting her most passionate interests to her experience with Salesforce.
She explains, “I am currently volunteering as a Salesforce Administrator for the Rocky Mountain Youth Leadership Conference. In 2019, I helped the local volunteer coordinator at the National Alliance on Mental Illness learn how to use Salesforce and navigate the new Salesforce Community.”
Ready to stand out?
Building an online portfolio helps you show off your technical skills, get creative and innovative, and highlight what you care about. Your online portfolio belongs to you. It’s always available to update and it can grow with you as you learn new Salesforce skills.
Now you’re ready to get started building your own online portfolio of Salesforce skills.
