If you want to understand what it means to be resilient in forging a career, there’s no better person to talk to than Aleksandra Radovanovic.
Looking at her today and her role as a Salesforce Solution Designer at Vancouver’s Aria Solutions — where she handles everything from QA testing and end-user training to data modelling — you might assume she was always destined to work in technology.
You would be wrong.
Instead, Aleksandra is an exemplary example of a Canadian Trailblazer: a self-motivated, lifelong learner who has progressively improved her skills by taking part in the many courses offered through Trailhead.
We want to shine a spotlight on some of our local Trailblazers to inspire the next generation of Salesforce certified professionals. And if you read on, you’ll see why starting with Aleksandra was a natural choice.
The origin story
Aleksandra originally came to Canada because her husband had gotten a job here. With a degree in linguistics from her native Belgrade, however, finding work that suited her capabilities was incredibly difficult.
Like many people faced with such challenges, Aleksandra applied for countless job opportunities and sent out hundreds of resumes. This created a secondary problem, however: keeping track of everyone she’d approached, the status of her application and those that didn’t pan out.
“It’s really hard to do that through Excel,” she says. “My husband suggested Salesforce because CRM was used to track and manage sales opportunities, which was similar, and at the time it was also a new, emerging technology, and he thought that I should look into it.”
Like the untold number of sales reps who have standardized on Sales Cloud since then, Aleksandra said she found Salesforce highly customizable to her specific, if unconventional use case, and automated a lot of otherwise manual work.
Things might have ended there if she hadn’t gone to a baby shower during that period where she ran into the owner of an auto financing company who was also struggling to run his business via spreadsheets.
“It just sort of dawned on me that he should use Salesforce,” she says. "He was completely surprised and asked me to tell him more. Then he asked if I could implement it, I bravely said ‘yes’ — and scared myself with the answer.”
Suddenly, Aleksandra found herself with a job — and a lot more she realized she wanted and needed to learn.
The Trailhead effect
“When I heard about Trailhead — honestly, it was like someone shone sunlight on the darkness I was stumbling in,” Aleksandra says. “It quickly became my best friend.”
That’s almost an understatement. Aleksandra has gone on to complete 20 Trails, earn 226 badges and rack up an astonishing 119,875 points.
For those who aren’t Trailblazers yet, that means she has been able to get up to speed on everything from building apps on the platform to helping the employers she’s joined since to take advantage of Service Cloud and other Salesforce products.
Aleksandra didn’t stop there, however. She also recognized the power of learning directly from her peers at in-person meetings. First, though, she had to get over a few understandable inhibitions.
“When I first went to my local community group, I spent the whole meeting feeling like a huge imposter,” she says. “When I talked to some of those people, though, they said, ‘Just take your time, keep learning, keep coming to the group.’”
Life as a Trailblazer
Today, Aleksandra has transitioned to become one of the leaders of her local Trailblazer community, which she views as a way to give back to the many mentors she’s had as she’s developed her own successful career.
Her advice to other would-be Trailblazers? Never give up, and to connect with other Trailblazers online as well as in person.
“When it’s hard and they’re stuck and not sure what to do next, you can count on (other Trailblazers) to have your back,” she says, “even if it’s through social media or Chatter groups.”
To Aleksandra — who says the Git and Github Basics are among her favourite Trailhead badges — being a Trailblazer is less of a profession and more of a mindset.
“It means I’m in charge of creating my own path, and that I should never stop learning,” she says. “It’s about making a commitment to help each other, to support each other, to treat each other equally and with respect, and to have the opportunity to continually gain expertise and experience and break through any obstacle.”
