Episode 19: Salesforce Career Conversations Megan Tuano with ROD. Super talented Megan talks about her journey to becoming a Salesforce Consultant and her impact on the Salesforce ecosystem through her online media activity.
Lee: Hi, this is Lee Durrant here with another episode of RODcast where we dive into people's Salesforce careers to find you, ideally, little nuggets of inspiration that might help you in your Salesforce career. I'm delighted to say that joining me today is Megan Tuano, who is a Salesforce consultant and content creator, among other things. Hi, Megan, thanks for joining me.
Megan: Hi, I'm so excited to be here with you.
Lee: This is fantastic. It's the first time we've spoken, isn't it?
Megan: Yes.
Lee: It's nice to have you on. I was going to list everything you look like you're doing, but I think content creator and consultant probably sums it up. Perhaps, if you don't mind, give us a quick overview of what you're doing now before we rewind time and walk through your career if it's okay.
Megan: Yes, absolutely. I've got quite a few things going on. For full-time, my employment, I'm a Salesforce Consultant at Slalom. For my part-time jobs, I am an expert author for Salesforce Ben. I create content for Focus on Force. I'm also the founder of Trailblazer Social, where people that are coming into the ecosystem can network with other people because community is absolutely essential. Then I also run a Discord channel, with about 750 members, catering to military members, military spouses but also people that are entering the Salesforce ecosystem. It's just like another sort of a community which they could have when entering.
It's like Slack, but Discord has channels and then sub-channels. Really cool platform. It was originally designed for gamers, but since COVID and everything, everything's really changed. This is more of like a professional platform. I have a community where people can come in and ask questions. They can find out about local events going on.
Then my personal favourite; we have something called a rant channel. If you're just needing help or you have open questions or you want to discuss something going on, where we just have all these different channels, which people feel, essentially, at the end of the day comfortable with. That's the best platform.
Lee: Did you mention Focus on Force, which is your other content that you produce? Cool.
Megan: Yes.
Lee: How did all this start? If we go back to, I suppose the beginning or maybe even prior to Salesforce, what were you doing before you got into Salesforce? What was your first job?
Megan: That's a great question. I had graduated and like many people, I was struggling to find a job. I had worked at my college days for the graduate admissions office. I was contacted by a company called 2U, that essentially run admissions schools in different master's programs. I was called into work for Syracuse in Upstate New York for their master's and data science program. That's where I started breaking into tech. I was able to work with different people within data science.
The real background behind that was that they were actually using Salesforce at the time. I started using it from a sales perspective, where I was selling admissions to students that were potentially interested in the master's program. Then from there, I went to work for the University of California, Berkeley, the same master's program, just a little bit more advanced for those professionals, but they were also using the Salesforce platform.
That's really how I got started. My uncle suggested-- He worked at Capgemini at the time, another Salesforce consulting firm. He was just like, "Yes, you should check out Salesforce, you're using it." It just went from there. Hopped on Trailhead one day, and then now, a Salesforce consultant.
Lee: Yes, among lots of other things by the sounds of it as well. In a way then, I appreciate your uncle tipped you off, but you also seem like you're someone that fell into it a little bit by accident, again, with using it and getting a bit interested in it from a data science background. That's pretty cool. What was your first real 100% Salesforce role then? Did it happen in a place that you were using it or did you have to then go out somewhere else to get that job?
Megan: That's a great question. I originally was so determined. I was so motivated by my students, both at Syracuse and UC Berkeley. I was like, "I'm going to do data science too." It's like the right field, but I just pivoted. I was like, "You know what? Never mind." I actually looked for-- I use LinkedIn. I'm a huge, huge, huge, proponent of LinkedIn. I found a non-profit in the area.
At this time, we were moving in Maryland before we moved to Texas. I had found a non-profit that needed help, and they were using Salesforce. It was a way for me to add it to my resume, get hands-on experience, work with this non-profit that was also working with high school students to teach them tech. It all just fit every criteria that I was looking for. I volunteered with them for a while. COVID hit.
Then, thankfully, there is a lot of Facebook groups for Salesforce professionals, and a lot of times, people go in globally looking for people to volunteer. At that time, I found an organisation, actually, in London, Oxford area. They were looking for Salesforce consultants to volunteer. They hired a main consultant on but that consultant needed help, and essentially, that's where myself and two other people stepped in. Then we were like a global team. We grew from there. Then that's how I started. Very, very thankful to have two volunteer positions.
Then a recruiter, after adding that experience to my LinkedIn, reached out. They were like, "Hey, we would love to talk." Then that's, essentially, how I landed my first actual position.
Lee: Now, so you skimmed over that, but I think we need to probably congratulate you for the fact that you were willing to do that volunteer work because it's no mean feat, is it? To say that I'm going to volunteer and put the work in to get something on my CV. It is a tip that we try and give a lot of people when they're trying to break into the Salesforce space. It's all well and good going and getting certified, but you need the real-world experience. It's like a chicken and egg, isn't it? How did you juggle that? How were you able to go, "Okay, I'm going to volunteer?" What was that like?
Megan: That's a great question. When I was working my full-time job, what I agreed upon when I took my first volunteer position, the one in Maryland in-person, thankfully, I would dedicate three nights and going there from like, let's say, 6:00 to 9:00 or 6:00 to 10:00 depending on when the high school kids were there, because not only were they using Salesforce, they were a non-profit that relied completely on grants.
I was motivated not by only the kids, but by the founder. He was doing this all alone. The motivation from the people was what kept me going, but also maintaining just a really tight schedule and committing to myself. When you start volunteering, you have to commit to that organisation too. That's how I managed it. It was being happy about going, really.
Lee: Fantastic. As I say, it's a tip that we give to people to try and find things like that, where you can get some real-world experience and develop. What was that first project like then when you were working with them? Do you mind? You don't have to go into too much detail, but what did they have you do?
Megan: For the first position, it got cut a little short because of COVID, but we, essentially, started creating users. We started getting an idea of the kids were the show. They, basically, just separated themselves into departments. These are all kids in tech from, I would say, just high school grades. They would have a business team; they would have an engineering team. They would have a team focused on the drones because they did hackathons.
The way they did hackathons, they had to get sponsored by tech companies in the area. We worked with colleges and universities and high schools that would, essentially, sponsor them and give them internships. I would have to divide it between here's our campaigns that we're sending out, here's the marketing side that we're going to be sending out, here's how we tracked students that are potentially interested in the people, here are people that we could talk for grants about. Are we meeting our grant goals? Creating reports and dashboards.
Essentially, the goal was to see the whole 360 version of the company and the non-profit itself but also get the kids involved. For them to be able to learn Salesforce was really cool too. They were like, "Oh, I'm building drones, and I'm doing all this hackathon stuff and all this tech stuff, but Salesforce is really cool, too". It was really interesting to see how that shifted and really seeing their eyes light up almost. Then it did get cut, April. I guess, it was 2020 at that time when the pandemic really came down, so it then shut. I've been in contact; they're doing great but definitely miss it.
Lee: By the sounds of it, you putting up with the time now to go back and help them if they need you, but it must be nice to get something that complex. I'm not a Salesforce person by any means, but it obviously then helped you in your career, to get that on your CV to go, "Not only have I got Trailhead badges." I'm guessing at that point, did you have any certifications, or did that come after you got that experience?
Megan: You know what? That's another good question. I actually didn't know or understand the value of certifications at that time. I was so focused on, "Oh, the Trailhead is so much fun." When I started, I didn't fully understand the path that one needed to take when starting Salesforce. I was like, "Okay,
