Apprentice Hoots: Sharing my experiences at a panel discussion
Last week, Charlotte was invited to attend her first ever panel discussion as part of the Movement of Work programme. Learn all about the event and what she shared with the panel in the latest Apprentice Hoots blog:
Sharing my experiences at a panel discussion
In September, I was approached by Simon Bozzoli, the CEO at LDN Apprenticeships to see if I would be interested in speaking at an event for work experience candidates. I was excited to be able to experience something new that I hadn’t done anything like before and accepted the opportunity to be on the apprenticeship panel and share my journey so far with young people looking to enter the workforce.
On Thursday 30th September 2021, Olivia, a fellow apprentice and I signed into the Zoom event where we were met by a Salesforce Senior Associate facilitating the discussion and the individuals who were completing their work experience with Salesforce. This was an opportunity to give young people an overview of our career to date and our journey into our apprenticeship roles, as well as be able to ask lots of questions to gain more of an insight into their curiosities.
In case you are interested in a career within Salesforce, I thought I would share three of my favourite questions asked and my response, which hopefully will be of interest to you too.
- Have you faced any setbacks during your apprenticeship and how did you overcome them?
“The main challenge I have been faced with, has been problems caused by rushing to a solution without thinking it through properly, and consequently, what I wanted to achieve did not work. An example of this would be when I created a traffic light system to display when a purchase order did not meet the minimum order price. I rushed into creating a formula without planning how this might look first, throwing in the logic, flag formulas, every step all at once. It did not work and I did not know what step went wrong. After spending hours trying to figure it out, I was officially stumped. I took a step back, decided to start again with a fresh head and began to plan, writing out every step on paper and designing how this might look. When I had a clear plan of what I needed to do, I then began building and testing each step one at a time… it worked! Through breaking it down, and testing it out stage by stage, it was much quicker than getting myself into a pickle and unable to figure out where I had gone wrong, because I was able to recognise when a certain step wasn’t correct and fix that exact step before moving onto the next. Drawing this on paper also allowed me to visualise how this might look before creating it.”
- What do you love most about being a Salesforce Apprentice?
“There is so much I love about being a Salesforce Apprentice. My three favourite things are:
- The constant fulfilling feeling you have when overcoming a challenge;
- The continuous growth and learning; and
- The Salesforce ecosystem.
Within my role, there are lots of challenges and problem solving activities. With this comes, a lot of lightbulb moments and an overwhelming feeling of fulfillment when something you have spent a lot of time on finally works… and it looks great! There are also such a large variety of learning experiences, from problem solving with formulas and flows, to improving business processes, talking with customers, improving your people skills, to writing these fun blogs with you to teach and share experiences with others so you see yourself quickly growing as a person developing so many skills. Finally, my favourite part about being a Salesforce Apprentice is the ecosystem. I don’t know whether I have just been incredibly lucky (which the other Apprentice confirmed this was not the case, and my following point is true for her too) but everyone I have met within the Salesforce ecosystem has been absolutely fantastic. The Salesforce ecosystem is full of interesting, fun and incredibly helpful people and I feel incredibly lucky to be a part of it. With a team that is so supportive and accommodating, I can’t help but love being a Salesforce Apprentice.”
- Was a Salesforce role similar to your childhood dream job? If not, how much does this role differ from your childhood dream job?
“My childhood dream job was to become a beauty therapist working on cruise ships, which a few years ago I actually achieved. That being said, my cruise ship experience does not compare with how happy and settled I am being a Salesforce apprentice here at Coacto. The roles are similar in terms of talking with clients and customers and helping them with what they need, however differ in every other way. I much prefer working as a Salesforce Apprentice due to the variety, the fun challenges and the constant growth and learning.”
Overall, my Salesforce panel discussion event was a great experience and I thoroughly enjoyed answering all the questions and engaging with individuals interested in joining Salesforce. I look forward to similar experiences in the future.
Owl see you later…
Charlotte
