Zero to hero: Visal keeps his promise and becomes a Salesforce developer in France!

David’s note: Visal, you kept your promise to me that you would become a Salesforce developer this year! I am incredible proud of you to say the least =*) Especially because you started off with zero coding background! Everyone, check out his blog, where he shares more of his learning experiences!

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    I wrote this article for those who have the same story and would like to encourage them to walk on Salesforce’s avenue.

    I am a Cambodian living in France for about two years until now. Before moving to France, I have known that living and working here would be really big challenges for me. I have no choice but to fight for.

    Even I have experience in logistic and international business from my pass work in South East Asia plus my master degree in that field, it was really still hard for me to find a work in France. I have not been even selected in the short list candidate for the works I have applied for.

    However, I told myself everyday that I MUST not give up even I have received countless rejections. But one day my maximum limit came and I hopelessly said STOP to myself as I could not support the fact that even a small part time job, I have been rejected.

    One day, my brother who works as Salesforce consultant introduced me Salesforce’s platform and provided the useful documents to consult as he told me that you have the background on CRM so you will need little time to understand Salesforce (I have used and set up CRM Goldmine in my last work).

    I felt in love with the platform and started learning alone with my brother’s support sometimes. I passed two certifications ADM201 and DEV401, finally.

    Magic happened after that; I received two or three calls per day from companies finding Salesforce consultants after I published my Salesforce’s cv online. However, after many interviews, I have not been recruited under the reasons that “I don’t speak French fluently and I don’t have experience in Salesforce.”

    Hopelessly (again), I had not applied for any job and said to myself that “I will never find the way to finish this hard situation.”

    Second magic happened! My brother again, introduced me David Liu’s website and said that you can learn code from this site and will find the work as developer because you dont need to speak French FLUENTLY to code :-)

    At first, I found that this suggestion was quite strange. How can someone with no background in coding learns to code? It is a mission impossible, isn’t it?

    I have tried and started learning all tutorials and tests on SFDC99, reading Head First Java (Sorry David I have read more than five pages per day ;-) ), consulted the documents like Apex Workbook, Force.com Cookbook, Developer guide on Developer.force.com, etc.

    Finally, I made a promise with David that I will become a developer this year! I have set my planning to read and practice exercises on workbook at least two hours a day as I would never accomplish my promise if I don’t work hard enough.

    Well, what I have strived and fight for pays back to me. Yesterday, I received the positive answer from interviewer for the job as business analyst/ junior developer Salesforce.

    After two years of fighting, I finally get out of darkness and can proudly said that nothing is impossible. I can do it, you too can do it. ANYONE CAN CODE as DAVID said!

    I still have more objectives to do. Passing Salesforce Advance Admin, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud certifications and of course, successfully archive my probation period. So I will need to work harder!

Let’s do it all together by setting objective for five certifications by March 2015.

Good luck to all Salesforce’s friends and keep fighting for. Warrior’s spirit will help !

ANYONE CAN CODE

Visal OU
LinkedIn: Visal OU
Twitter: VisalKhmer
Blog: My Salesforce Adventure

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