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From Stuck to Skilled: Breaking into Tech After a Career Break · Work It Like A Mum

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Elizabeth Willits and I'm obsessed with helping as many women as possible achieve their boldest dreams after kids and helping you to navigate this messy and magical season of life.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: I'm a working mum with over 17 years of recruitment experience and I'm the founder of the Investing in Women job board and community.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: In this show, I'm honoured to be chatting with remarkable women redefining our working world across all areas of business.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: They'll share their secrets on how they've achieved extraordinary success after children, set boundaries and balance, the challenges they've faced and how they've overcome them to define their own versions of success.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Shy away from the real talk?
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: No way.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Money struggles, growth, loss, boundaries and balance we cover it all.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Think of this as coffee with your mates, mixed with an inspiring TED Talk sprinkled with the career advice you wish you'd really had at school.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: So grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, make sure you're cosy and get ready to get inspired and chase your boldest dreams, or just survive Mondays.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: This is the Work it Like A Mum podcast.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by Investing in Women.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Investing in Women is a job board and recruitment agency helping you find your dream part-time or flexible job with the UK's most family-friendly and forward-thinking employers.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Their site can help you find a professional and rewarding job that works for you.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: They're proud to partner with the UK's most family-friendly employers across a range of professional industries.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Ready to find your perfect job?
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Search their website at investinginwomencouk to find your next part-time or flexible job opportunity.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Now back to the show.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to this week's episode.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Today I am chatting with Artemis Cropper and we're going to be talking all about her career to date and what made her retrain in Salesforce with Supermums and how she has found her career change since.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining me today.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I'm really excited to chat with you.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, lovely meet you.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: What was it that prompted the um?
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: I suppose you know, the jump into doing something completely different and um retraining yeah, well, I think, um, yeah, because I was fortunate I started on the graduate program at Accenture when I left university and that was a really good training program and I got lots of different experience, um, on clients, but also actually just being taught, you know, and like gaining lots of skills, um, and I just felt that after that my career, uh, I was using all those skills I'd learned at Accenture and that was amazing.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: I was sort of riding on the riding on the tide of those.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: But then in my most recent job, um, I just I felt that, um, yeah, I just I got to the point where I just knew that I just wanted to start learning um, and I knew that what we were doing was quite, you know, was right, but it we could be doing better.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: But I didn't.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: I just felt I didn't have the experience and the skills, the current skills, to be able to to help them do exactly what they needed to do, to to grow their business um, and that's why I decided to step away.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: And then actually it wasn't immediate that, um, I clicked.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: I didn't immediately find supermums, um, I first of all sort of went back to kind of I had a few interviews with, with other companies and so forth, but actually, and I did a career, a bit of career, had some career coaching, a group career coaching session actually, which was really good, but it was actually just that time I had and sort of talking to people and going through those experiences in that time off it made me realize that actually I really learning and and I was lacking skills, you know, and I wanted to gain skills, um, rather than just carrying on, carry on riding on you know the skills I'd learned.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, so, um, that's when I, uh, I actually um, some friends of mine told me about you, yeah, and they said why don't you, why don't you contact Elizabeth Willett?
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: So I was like, oh, okay, so I looked you up and but I actually signed up to your um, to your um feed, yeah, your email feed, and then it was one of those that came through that had, um, the supermums, talked about supermums and and it was basically like right, you know, do you want to learn a technical skill?
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Do you do you, do you love working with people?
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Do you love understanding their requirements and um, you know all that sort of thing.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Anyway, everything, all the questions were like I wish I had it with me now, but it was literally like yes, yes, yes, I was.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: I was so excited, um, and it was like yes, exactly, I really do, because when I was at Accenture I didn't learn a specific technology.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: It was, I mean, I did coding and so forth, but I didn't.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: I didn't learn, like you know, sap or whatever you know.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: There were so many different systems back in the day and and then I did lots in like the resources, launch center or web stuff, but I feel like I missed that, because I just think being an expert in a particular software or, you know, trying to become an expert in a particular software, is really great.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so and often attracts a premium, doesn't it?
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: You know in the job market and things like that?
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, you know in the job market and things like that.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, and I figured that actually if I had that, then I could use my consultancy skills as well and my business skills I'd learned.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: You know that I've sort of developed over the years, um, and sort of put them together and then relaunch my career that way.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: So yes, sorry, that wasn't a quick answer no, that was a brilliant answer.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I loved it.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: And what did you think of the course then?
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, it was amazing.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I did the ultimate admin course.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it was all remote, I don't know the difference.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Is there a bit more basic admin course then?
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there was.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Anyway, I did mine in September.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so there was a more basic one.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: I'm, but the one I did it was um, it was basically so.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: You did the, you did the training, so you had um the weekly, the weekly online, and you had homework.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: I had a mentor and my mentor is fantastic.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: I'm still in touch with him now um, and then you got work experience as well and and we were in this cohort, so we're all on whatsapp group.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: So we all kind of, yeah, it's nice, we had an immediate um.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: You know, we, we had everyone.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: The people in our cohort were all in the same situation.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: We're all on a WhatsApp group.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: So we all kind of, yeah, it's nice, we had an immediate.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: You know, we, we had everyone.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: The people in our cohort were all in the same situation.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: We're all trying to retrain it.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, it was amazing.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: So it was like a curated version of Trailhead, so they curated Trailheads.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: But also they had their own org in Salesforce where you were set homework and you know it was really challenging.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which was fantastic.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: I absolutely loved it.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was so I'm so pleased.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: How many weeks was the course?
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Can you remember well?
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: it was basically so.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: I did the September course.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, um, so I started in September.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Uh, and then, um, my work experience, because because, sorry, did I mention we had work experience as well?
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, and then so it depended on how long you took to do that, um, so I finished in, I actually finished at the end of April my work experience, um oh, that was a good long stint yeah, exactly so it was, it was yeah, so it's basically about six months.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Really, you sort of have to allow for the course and the and the work experience is the work experience, paid or unpaid?
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: it's unpaid, yeah, and you and you basically, um, it depends on who you do it for, um, but you might be or you and your team from Supermums might be the most knowledgeable about Salesforce.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: So, and obviously, we've only just finished our training and done our exam, so, yeah, so it was generally there for for nonprofits.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Salesforce have an arrangement with non-profits.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: So the non-profit we work for was this fantastic charity um called see able who, and they arrange holidays for visually impaired and blind people.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: Just amazing what they do, and they were.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: They had had salesforce um since 2019, but obviously they weren't technical, particularly they, you know, it was a small team and they just focused on, you know, on organizing the holidays and so forth and trying to manage that.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: So they needed to start using Salesforce.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: So our role me and the other two people in our, in my we were there were three of us all together that were put on into the work experience.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: We had to um, yeah, go in there and like, basically try and set up salesforce for them, understand the requirements and then um set it up for them, which actually turned out to be a much bigger project, but at least we could kind of scope it out.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: So that was yeah, so I used.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: You had a really good project.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: So you, I mean, sometimes I speak to people like Salesforce and they go, I don't want a sales job.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh no, it's not, it's not a sales job.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: But maybe, if somebody's listening to this, what does somebody in your position generally do?
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: And, um, you know, maybe dispel any myths people have about the job?
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: yeah, so well.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: So, basically, so well, I'm now working for the I, um, supermoms helped me get this amazing job well, let's say they helped me get they.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Really, they put me forward for it and they helped me with my CV and everything, because they've got a recruitment arm as well.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Um, and I work for this fantastic consultancy company called Revcor, which is a revenue operations consultancy.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: All right, so that's one route you can go down with your sales force.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: So you go so, like most.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: So sales force is used by, yeah, non-profits, but also by, you know, huge organizations and small organizations.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Um, so, like, at rev call, what I'm doing is, um, I'm basically we, yeah, we have working on several projects for small, medium sized enterprises and generally they're not using Salesforce in the best way, or they've acquired another company and they need their systems merged, or they also work with other like systems as well, like HubSpot for marketing.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: But, yeah, so, but on my end I'm at the moment, because I haven't been there for very long I'm very much doing the really skilling up on Salesforce.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, so it's things like so you go into someone's organization and you might be adding fields, so, and then you might be like at the moment, this morning I'm working on dashboards and reports, um for set.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: So it's basically like yeah, you don't have to be a salesperson, but you're supporting the sales people.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, help them do their jobs yeah, and make their job successful?
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: yeah, and I also is.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing it's a lot of automation as well, and is there AI involved?
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Do you feel you know you're on the right bus, basically, when there's a lot of change going on in the world?
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, exactly, and actually that's a really good point because that was another reason why I wanted to do it.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: When I was at Accenture, I always wanted to try and like stay with the latest.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: You know you, just, I don't know there's something inside and obviously things.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: That's why I ended up going down the dot-com route, um, but uh, yeah, well, now with AI and everything, um, I mean it's amazing, like recently I went to the Salesforce world tour.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: So if you do, if you go down the Salesforce route, um, then, um, they have these huge conferences and you get to go to those and, um, wait, yeah, and they show you, they showcase the latest um functionality and everything else.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: And this year's one was all about agent force, which is is the ai side of um salesforce, and I mean it's just huge and it's and so many companies are using it.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: At the moment, day to day.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: We're not using it so much in the company that I'm working for, at Revcore, because we tend to be getting the companies up and running with the basics of using their sales force, because obviously they have to have the data, they have to have everything else in place then to be able to move on and and and leverage on the ai, but we, yeah, I mean we use, yeah, we use ai to help us and, um, you know, yeah, I mean it's amazing.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: So it's really good to be part of that absolutely looking back, obviously when you're on your career break.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: I speak to a lot of people that are on career breaks and they start panicking about how they're going to be perceived in the workplace afterwards.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Did you have those feelings when you were on your career break and looking back, what would?
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: What do you wish you could tell?
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: yourself.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the thing is, if you're not, when I'm not working like if I'm not working, it's you know I it is terrible for your self-esteem and and it's terrible for your confidence.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: So I really sympathize with anyone who's there.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: But yeah, like you, just try not to worry really, and it's just about you.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: Don't have to hide it, be open, open about it.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: I make sure I put mine on my desk, you know, in my profile, and try and explain how you've used it.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's no shame in it at all.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Looking back, do you think it was quite a good thing you had that time away?
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: I think it really was because, yeah, like I said to start with, I very much, you know, when I first finished, it was basically I literally immediately launched into trying to get the same sort of jobs that I had before, but then I realized that's ridiculous, what am I doing?
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: That wasn't making me happy.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: That was the point that I stepped away.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: So, yes, I think it was really good to have that time, definitely so what's next?
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: I know that there's a bit of a ladder, isn't there with salesforce and you can potentially do other qualifications.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Is that something you hope to do?
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I'm working on the sales cloud at the moment.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: On that qualification, I'm slightly addicted to getting just to keep, yeah, just to keep learning.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: But actually for that one, like every week I'm doing Salesforce admin at RevCore I'm learning a bit more to, which will help me, um, to get you know, to pass that certification.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Is that through Supermoms or another provider?
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: No, it's not actually through another provider, it's just, it's just direct at the moment, with um, yeah, and and my um, my boss, uh, one of the CEOs at RevCore.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: He's really keen for us to carry on learning and, yeah, he really he's very, very supportive.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: So that's great.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: It sounds like you've landed on your feet.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: What would you say to somebody listening to this is maybe considering retraining into Salesforce with Supermoms.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, supermoms are amazing.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: I really really recommend them.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: You're not on your own.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Also, it's such a massive world.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: You know, if you open up Salesforce and you look, you won't even you know it's really hard to know where to start, whereas Supermoms, they curate an amazing course.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: The trainers are really good.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: We had we had a guy called liam.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: He was amazing.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Um, if you've got any questions, you know that they're always like they're always there for you.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Basically, um, and and also it's one thing like learning, like sort of just by reading stuff and and doing trail heads, but actually just getting that hands-on experience through the extra homework you get given it, um, through the super mums course, but also like sort of just by reading stuff and doing trailheads, but actually just getting that hands-on experience through the extra homework you get given it through the Supermoms course, but also through the work experience.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: I mean it is just yeah, it's fantastic.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's definitely definitely a step above.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: I think what's really good about Salesforce is it's such a big system, it's not going anywhere.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: It feels quite secure.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: With all the jobs losses and things like that happening, it does feel quite a secure field to be in.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I would definitely agree with that.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is the biggest um CRM.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: It's not going anywhere, is it?
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: It's really not going anywhere?
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: No, not any time soon.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: No, yeah, well, thank you so much for joining me.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Are we all right if we put your LinkedIn profile in the show notes if anyone wants to contact you?
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, lovely.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for your time today.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: It's been a real pleasure to chat with you oh, lovely to talk to you thank you for listening to another episode of the work.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: It like a mom podcast.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe, and don't forget to share the link with a friend.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: If you're on LinkedIn, please send me a connection request at Elizabeth Willett and let me know your thoughts on this week's episode.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: You can also follow my recruitment site Investing in Women on LinkedIn, facebook and Instagram.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Until next time, keep on chasing your biggest dreams.