My First Clicked Quest
In January, I signed up for the "Preparing for AI as a Salesforce Professional" quest by Clicked.
Clicked is a virtual work experience program that enables learners to access hands-on learning experiences to explore Salesforce careers & build skills. I attended a couple shadow sessions they had in early January on Apex & Flows but wanted to try out one of their longer activities. Clicked has the following experience offerings:
- Shadow Sessions are 30 to 60-minute experiences where you can observe and interact with Clicked Coaches as they showcase key skills.
- Skills Challenges are 1-hour long experiences where you can work alongside your Clicked Coaches and practice a particular skill.
- Team Sprints are 2 to 3-week-long experiences where you can role-play a real-life scenario to practice what it would be like in the role of a Salesforce professional. The end output is portfolio-ready projects to showcase on your resume or LinkedIn, alongside a certificate if you complete the full experience.
- Quests are 1 month-long experiences similar to Team Sprints, where you will take on the role of a Salesforce professional in a more in-depth and hands-on experience.
I decided to sign up for the Clicked program to get a better understanding of it as I see positive LinkedIn posts about it often. My goal is to work on additional materials to add to my Salesforce portfolio site.
I participated in the AI quest from late January to early March. All course participants met twice a week on Tuesday & Thursday evenings for 90 minutes. The first meeting had close to two hundred participants attend. While the last meeting for the "final presentation" had only 59 participants in attendance. Along with the twice-weekly meetings, we were placed in a small group/team of 5 individuals total. None of us had participated in a Clicked quest experience before. We were all in different time zones; one in Pacific time, one in Central, two in Eastern & one in Berlin, Germany. We met a couple times outside the normal class times to get organized & divide up the work. It was a bigger time commitment than I had originally expected.
The AI quest topic was also a bit different than I had expected it to be. I was hoping more for Salesforce-related AI assignments such as Prompt Studio or Copilot functionality. More discussions on ChatGPT versus all the different GPT applications available too. The quest did not cover any of those topics but was more chatbot-oriented. While it is interesting to develop Einstein Chatbots, it was something other than what I had planned to spend several weeks in a Clicked quest doing. It did remind me of all the great Service Cloud features I had studied for the Service Cloud Consultant certification though. I am mixed about including the completed assignments in a portfolio as not sure I truly want to work with chatbots in the future.
All in all, my first Clicked experience was a mixed bag. It was good to experience what the program offers, but I had several disappointments:
- The topic covered didn't go over the AI functionality I was hoping for.
- The time commitment was a lot more than expected. Two 90-minute weekly full-attendee meetings, two 30-60 minute weekly team meetings & countless hours finishing up an assignment was a lot more time to allocate to an AI quest than initially expected.
- The assignments were only displayed after the prior session ended. This made completing the Thursday assignment almost impossible due to the very limited time available.
- There was too much emphasis on presenting quickly during the 90-minute twice-weekly meetings. Feedback from the coach was rushed if not downright rude at times.
- Some of the feedback from coaches was misguided. In the last session, they informed the class that in the workplace do not expect feedback until you are written up. The manager "will not provide feedback but would fire you" if you do something wrong. No, that is a toxic work environment you do not need to be working in. If that is the norm in Salesforce consulting, I definitely have zero interest in that. Open, honest communication should be provided by the manager to the employee at all times, not just during a performance review. If an employee is doing something the manager does not like, they should be corrected at that time, not months later.
- The requirements/assignments were vague. There was no one to ask clarifying questions too.
- The team I was on burnt out with trying to keep up with the assignments. Various team members had work conflicts during the only time everyone was available, so team meetings stopped.
- The last assignments on Einstein Chatbots were rushed. I didn't even get to the "custom Chatbot" assignment.
While my experience with Clicked was not optimal, I am going to try a different course offering before no longer participating in the program. The quest offering would be great for someone with more time such as individuals unemployed or looking for their first Salesforce role. It did provide the portfolio artifacts I was looking for, but not exactly the right topic.
My next experience with them is the Flows Team Sprint. I am hoping this sprint will help narrow things down to the portfolio topics I am looking to showcase & the time commitment I am willing to spend.