Salesforce Q&A with Phil Young

We recently caught up with Phil Young, Director at Stimulus Consulting. With 15+ years’ experience encompassing commercial enterprises, business & economic development and a background working with Chambers of Commerce, Business Links and 7+ years of running his own consultancy business we were interested to learn about Phil's background and his thoughts on the Salesforce industry.

How did you get a career in Technology?

I have always been fascinated by the world of business and have been privileged through my previous roles to get an insight to many different businesses and many different industries.  Much of the work that I did with businesses, stretching back to working with Chambers of Commerce, was about helping them to improve – whether it was systems, processes and people.  Over that time, the biggest driver of change was technological advancements so it was a natural progression for me personally to make a similar move

What attracted you to the world of Salesforce?

My wife, Jo, was a Siebel consultant who moved to Salesforce early in the days of the platform (she was actually one of the first hundred or so people admin certified globally!) so she initiated Stimulus’ involvement with Salesforce.  At that time, I was management consulting and when the opportunity for Stimulus to grow within the ecosystem became clear, it was a natural jump for me to move to work with Jo to develop the business to what it is today.

Who inspires you in the Salesforce eco-system?

It would have the be the big man himself, Marc Benioff. To have the vision to disrupt the market in the way that he did with cloud computing, and then to emerge as a leading light in the drive towards a philanthropic & sustainable society has to be admired.

What advice would you give to all jobseekers at the moment?

Get some experience – certifications are important but most employers want people with active experience on the platform so volunteer for a charity, undertake a work placement – however you do it, get some experience.  Once you have a job, the advice changes to ‘Follow the Technology’ – you have to stay at the cutting edge of changes in Salesforce otherwise you can quickly find yourself off the pace of the platform.  It’s a real challenge to keep up but this is when continuous learning (through Trailhead or instructor-led classes) becomes critical to keep you on your game.

You have worked at Stimulus Consulting as a Director for over 18 years, what’s the biggest change you’ve seen in Salesforce over the years?

The thing with Salesforce is that it is always changing and developing, just look at the acquisitions that the company has made and integrated over the last few years.  However, the single biggest change for me was the move from the classic interface to Lightning.  It was like trying to learn Salesforce from scratch all over again!  But that change was so significant as it provided the platform for the future with things like Lightning Pages, Lightning Components, Dynamic Forms and much more.