San Francisco Advantage

USF and Salesforce Host First-Ever 5-Day Admin Bootcamp

Over 70 students and alumni convened at 101 Howard over winter break for a one-week intensive taught by instructors from the cloud computing powerhouse.

by School of Management

The University of San Francisco School of Management was excited to host the first-ever Salesforce 5-day Winter Break Intensive Bootcamp from January 11th to January 15th, open to all university students and interested alumni.

Salesforce is a cloud computing company that generates revenue through its customer relationship management (CRM) product. Businesses and organizations ranging from Kiva to ADP to Virgin America to the Academy of Art University to Comcast have all used Salesforce in order to simplify their customer’s experience. Salesforce admins are sought after in industries such as healthcare, government, automotive and many more. For university students and alumni, regardless of their degree program, all were welcome to take this workshop and learn Salesforce skills.

What was it?
This workshop was an opportunity to learn how the Salesforce platform works and gain skills that over 100,000 jobs started to require just last year. From 8am to 5 pm for five days straight, over 70 students and alumni filled a classroom at USF’s downtown campus, taking in all that their Salesforce instructors and several guest speakers had to offer. The students and alumni were put into teams of three or more and worked together and engaged as if they were actually on the job.

Who was there?
Students and alumni from USF, Mills College, San Jose State and Dominican University of California all attended the weeklong event. Among the Salesforce team, instructors Mary Scotton, Developer Evangelist, Platform Evangelist LeeAnne Templeman and Admin Evangelist Mike Gerholdt led the workshop. An array of guest speakers appeared in person and through Google hangouts, including Ludo Ulrich, Senior Director of Salesforce for Startups and Becky Webster, Vice President of Client Success at Trekbin and Salesforce MVP.

How did it work?
The Salesforce instructors and guest speakers took turns sharing their unique expertise and knowledge and engaging their students in experiential learning. For instance, on day three, instructor Templeman had everyone get into groups along the whiteboard-covered walls and come up with business scenarios to develop rollout strategies including obstacles, questions and steps. This task was an example of what they would actually be doing in the real work world.

What did they learn?
By using hands-on projects and real life case studies, students and alumni can help build and keep relationships with customers and clients. The workshop detailed how to generate workflows in order to computerize business process, personalize Salesforce to successfully identify and resolve business problems, spread Salesforce services to mobile and design high-value reports and dashboards.

Why Salesforce?
There is no one more qualified to pass their highly-valued set of skills on to employees of the future than Salesforce representatives themselves. Because these skills are valuable in so many diverse industries and job positions, the workshop was a terrific opportunity for learning across disciplines, in an engaged learning process using the San Francisco advantage to its fullest. At the same time, the relationship between USF and Salesforce is stronger than ever. With the recently created Salesforce Academic Alliance in full force and kickoff of this first-ever bootcamp, the relationship can only get stronger from here.

What’s next?
Armed with the skills they acquired at admin bootcamp, workshop attendees are given the opportunity to take one of Salesforce’s four certification exams with a one-time voucher that was included with their week-long workshop ticket. Instructor Scotton seemed excited about bringing on new employees before they could even finish the bootcamp. “I would hire everyone in this room if I could,” she said.

Sarah Franklin, Vice President of Admin Marketing at Salesforce, offered this tip...

The most important lesson they should take away from this is not to be afraid to learn the skills that will help them get jobs. They should just try different things and if they have questions, ask them. Just dig in and learn. Sarah Franklin, Salesforce VP

Some of our USF students were excited to share their workshop experience.

What was your experience like?
“I really enjoyed being able to be a part of the Salesforce world and being able to get some insight into what it’s really like. Being here makes you feel like you’re a part of it--it’s more insider. And as a communications major, gaining as much credibility as I can is going to make things easier for me in the long run.” – Jannely Rodriguez, '17 Communications Studies Major, Business Administration Minor

“Crazy. One of the things that I love about this program incorporated with USF is we’re all about changing the world from here, and I have always felt that Salesforce is about changing the world from here.”– Nicholas Muller, '17 Advertising major, Computer Science Minor

How do you think this opportunity will set you apart from others?
“Salesforce is changing the way marketing is done; it’s changing everything, so it’s really beneficial for us to learn these skills because it’s going to be a great advantage when we start jobs. That’s how it’s going to set us apart from other students--because we have this experience.”
– Julia Aziz, '18 Business Administration Major

“It’s going to especially help us because we’re younger than most of the people here. We can go fresh into the work field and say we have worked with Salesforce before, which is exciting.” – Salina Monh, '18 Business Administration Major

What do you plan to do with the information you learned?
“I want to take the certification exam. I also want to see if they want an intern for this bootcamp program. I think it’s a great opportunity for students and would be a great way for me to immerse myself in the program.” 
– Nicholas Muller, '17 Advertising Major, Computer Science Minor

By Brandi Licciardo