3 Keys for Tech Success from a Kenzie Alum

Get involved with the community, and put yourself out there. One of my Kenzie classmates shared a Salesforce event with me where they would teach us about Trailhead, this fun, gamified Salesforce app. I thought, OK, this is interesting. I’m a full-time Kenzie learner — learning all this stuff and I have no idea what Salesforce is, but I can go learn some more things at this event.

Salesforce has a huge emphasis on its certification program. So, I decided I’m going to take one of these certifications and after that, I decided this is what I want to do. Getting involved with the community and just the whole environment of Salesforce — the online community, the in-person community, the certifications. You’re constantly working towards these goals and it made it clear to me, this is really what I want to do.

The point is community involvement and getting out there. Think about some companies that are doing something that resonates with you or an exceptional leader that really inspires you. Then get involved with whatever communities those people are involved with.

There are weeks when we have countless meetings. We spend like 20, 30 hours in meetings and I’ll feel like, what did we do at all? What did we actually accomplish? It feels like you did nothing. But then, two months later you have a quarterly business review and you go over all the successes, all the key challenges, and how we overcame them. I’m amazed — I feel like we are the best team ever. We’re doing incredible things here, and I’m just amazed at the things that we achieve.

The lesson is, you’re not going to get the job tomorrow or a week from now, and grit is applying this perseverance. Not just for the job search, but to master the material, to find that purpose that fuels you, and sticking to it. Not just for a week, or a month, but for months, for quarters, for years. You need to stick to it and you will see results.

I’ve had countless times where I’m about to bash my head into the wall because I just can’t figure out why this thing doesn’t work. I’m just trying to log into this app, but why can I not log in properly? I did it exactly how I’ve been taught and I think everything should work, but it could literally be an apostrophe you’re missing within 300 lines of code, and now none of it works. Or somewhere you didn’t have a comma and now it’s not running properly.

I have all these experiences with constant obstacles, and constant challenges, and I feel like I can’t do it. I start to feel like I should just forget this app. Then I come back and I figure it out or I notice the apostrophe, or I ask for help. I have to use everything that I’ve learned. I start searching everywhere, start looking through these documents, and I’m learning new things. I’m scanning through things, but I’m learning too, passively.