It’s no secret that in the digital marketing world, the skills of developers are in high demand—particularly the skills of developers familiar with Salesforce and Salesforce Marketing Cloud. However, many the curriculum of most undergraduate programs and coding boot camps don’t have the opportunity to cover the many intricacies of these complex marketing platforms, meaning employers are left to fill that gap, often resorting to developers having to learn as they go on live-client accounts.
Needless to say, this system is not always ideal, especially when your client base is on a constant increase.
To remedy this, Pierry introduced “Pierry Academy” an intense 4-week pre-employment training program designed to train developers in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform and various integration processes.
All participants in the Pierry Academy were recent graduates from San Francisco’s General Assembly, a global network of campuses that provides technical, creative, and business training programs designed to prepare students for today’s technological needs. Each participant was interviewed by Pierry staff and chosen to participate in our Pierry Academy with the understanding that successful completion would result in permanent employment.
Over the course of four weeks, the Academy participants came to the Pierry headquarters in Redwood City, CA, where they participated in intense training sessions, while also gaining exposure to real-life, hands on client work.
We are happy to announce we had a 100% passing rate among our academy participants, giving them the knowledge and experience to not only work in Salesforce, but also some real-world experience dealing with the multiple, often complex implementation issues that our clients require
But what made Pierry Academy so successful? We caught up with three of our recent grads (Hila Vaisler, Ayush Jha and Bryan Smith) to discuss life after post-Academy:
What was your biggest takeaway from Pierry Academy?
Hila:
I really appreciated the technical knowledge that I gained from the class, especially since I haven’t worked in Salesforce and Marketing Cloud before. We learned its uses and how to create data extensions, Journeys etc. It was nice coming in as a group with people you went to school with, getting trained as group and working on projects together. It felt like a continuation of General Assembly because we were all together in a class setting.
Ayush:
I liked the opportunity to collaborate as a team, and having experienced implementation consultants come in and show how the teams behave and work together was helpful. Everyone was very accommodating and Pierry’s organizational structure made it easy to get to know everyone quickly.
Bryan:
I feel I got a much better understanding of the Salesforce atmosphere.
What was your favorite part about “Life at Pierry”?
Hila:
The people! It’s a younger environment with a lot of collaboration. And someone is always there to help when questions come up. Everyone is willing to drop what they are doing and help out, even if they are busy. All the functions outside of work are fun also– getting to meet the team in a more casual environment, plus having the dogs around is great.
Ayush:
The open atmosphere. I like knowing that as long as I work hard and am responsible for my tasks, then everything will go well. The youthful environment is great because people are more open to new ideas for tasks and projects.
Bryan:
The vibe and the people. It’s a work hard / play hard attitude.
What has been one of your biggest challenges since working at Pierry?
Hila:
Dodging all the nerf bullets!
Ayush:
Getting ready for the certifications has been tough and getting trained up on the tools takes time.
Bryan:
Working through the technical issues since I am new to the Salesforce platform.
What advice would you give to new hires at Pierry?
Hila:
Talk to everyone and ask questions, ask for examples of similar work that they have done in the past.
Ayush:
Focus on getting familiar with Salesforce and ExactTarget. Everyone is super helpful and is willing to help you.
Bryan:
Practice makes perfect. Make sure you go through the program and understand how it works and is set up.
We’re excited to see our recent Pierry Academy graduates working on projects and fully integrated into the day-to-day. As we continue to grow, we’ll be working to build more programs like Pierry Academy to not only help empower potential employees to build upon their skills, but to ensure every brand and company we partner with at Pierry has the resources to make their marketing technology needs a reality.
Congrats to the first graduating class of Pierry Academy! Excited to have you in the Pierry family and to see what you can do!