It can be hard to find a clear path after leaving the military. Years or decades of a clear mission give way to an open world of possibilities, all with their own perks and drawbacks. Whether you’re retiring after 30 years, separating after four, or even if you’ve been out for 10 years already, Salesforce Military and Military Connect have a job pitch for you to consider: Come get free training for high-paying, in-demand jobs at thousands of companies.
Also Read: The 3 best ways an officer can earn the trust of their NCOs
The Salesforce Military training pipeline is focused on, duh, Salesforce jobs, but those jobs vary from being a cybersecurity expert for local credit unions to being an analyst or cybersecurity expert for universities. You don’t have to clock in to Salesforce for this training to make sense. You could even build and deploy AI agents for nonprofits.
These are in-demand, high-paying jobs. This is free training for most military members, veterans, and their spouses. And your first certifications can be completed in as little as a month.
It’s also not limited to the U.S. It also includes the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Great Jobs in Cushy Offices
If you want to work in the field with your hands getting dirty every day, awesome. Really. But feel free to click away. Salesforce jobs are not that.
Salesforce is customer relationship management software. Basically, it’s one of the major software companies that other companies rely on, so that every person who works with a customer has one view of that customer.
If a bank has a sales manager reaching out to local farmers to offer equity loans, the manager can log in to Salesforce before the call and see what experiences other employees have had the last few times they spoke to the farmer. What crops is he raising? Have the last few years been good or bad? Are there specific weeks he’d rather not get any phone calls because he’s busy picking up baby chicks from a hatchery?
What Salesforce is training people to do is to make sure that the bank’s Salesforce instance always works, that it’s secure, and that it is customized to the bank. The bank hires Salesforce experts with the needed certifications to do those things, like a Salesforce developer and systems architect.
Obviously, that means most of the jobs take place in the bank’s offices. Or the manufacturer’s or the printer’s or the carpenter’s office, whatever the company is.
And that bank sales manager who’s reaching out to the farmer likely has Salesforce certifications as well, and they might be part of the professional network that Salesforce calls the “Salesblazer Movement.”
And these Salesforce jobs, from sales to cybersecurity to developer and system architect, pay an average of over $80,000 per year, according to Salesforce.
Free Training
But if the jobs are in demand, only require certifications that take months to earn, and lead to cushy office work, why is the training free? Well, for most people it isn’t. Salesforce charges hundreds of dollars for each exam unless the student is part of a program like Salesforce Military.
Salesforce Military says:
“Salesforce is deeply committed to supporting the military community in upskilling into a valuable career as a Salesforce professional and provides all benefits of the Salesforce Military program at no cost to you as a member, ever!”
It’s important to note: the company Salesforce makes its money selling high-end, AI-empowered software to profitable businesses. The businesses can only make full use of that software if they hire people with the right certifications. And so it’s in Salesforce’s best interest to make sure that those companies can hire hard-working professionals to fill the necessary roles.
The Salesforce Military program ensures that companies can hire veterans, Reservists, and military spouses for these roles, all groups that know a thing or two about demanding jobs.
So the free training helps the student, sure, and it also helps Salesforce succeed. Salesforce Military even has a partnership with Hire Heroes USA and a Hiring Our Heroes virtual fellowship program. To get started, you just have to verify your military affiliation with Military Connect and sign up.
Certifications Completed in a Month—Sometimes Less
There’s no requirement to come in with a degree or specific job experience. Salesforce has its own training system named Trailhead, and users can hop on training “Trails” and build their own “Trailmix.”
Basically, you pick what role you’re interested in, Salesforce recommends certifications aligned to that role, and you pick which certifications you’re most interested in. They recommend starting with the Salesforce administrator role since it provides a broad basis of understanding of what Salesforce is, how to use it, and how to help businesses use it better. The first certification for that role, the first “Trail,” is less than 15 hours long.
Adding on the first course for creating and managing AI agents adds another 9 hours. Taking the level 2 and level 3 courses for AI agents, teaching you to create AI agents that can parse your company’s data and incorporate it into chatbots that the rest of your team can use through tools like Slack, only adds on another 34 hours.
Or take the app builder certification after 40 hours of training. Or do both.
Obviously, your time and attention are valuable and you do have to invest those in the training, but the financial costs, from the training itself to the certification to prove you learned it, are free to students verified through Military Connect.
So if you’re interested in managing data and helping cool companies make it useful, check out one of the training pipelines in Salesforce Military. There’s no obligation and no cost.
Register for Free: Salesforce Military
Join Military Connect®: MilitaryConnect.com/join
Don’t Miss the Best of We Are The Mighty
• Someone wrote a list of 65 ways civilians can simulate military life and it’s hilarious
• 5 workplace habits from the military that you should keep doing forever
• The inside joke names soldiers have for different unit patches
