“Don’t take anything for granted, enjoy the little things in life”
This year, Kevin Klerkx joined Talent Peaks as a Salesforce Consultant. A truly versatile personality, who has seen many places, encountered many cultures and is always looking for things to explore and new things to do. In this interview, we want to get to know the man behind the professional. Let’s ask Kevin some questions.
Your career was quite a journey, wasn’t it?
You can say that again. In the past, I used to swear that I’d never work in IT but due to a holiday job I found myself working at an IT department in my early twenties. I liked the world of technology so much that I stayed and worked in different IT roles during the next 6 years.
Then, I decided to follow one of my many passions and embarked on a journey around the world. It took me nearly three years and after that I gladly returned to the world of IT. And boy, much had changed. The last two years have been a rollercoaster of catching up with technological developments. Also, I had to find my way again in getting back into a settled life and picking up from where I left. During that journey, I encountered the Salesforce platform and got hooked.
I started doing Salesforce trailheads, which are a great way of getting up to speed in my own pace and time. Above that, I helped out with implementations and did a lot of admin work in the Connexys ATS my company worked with. That was cool, but I really wanted to focus on Salesforce for the full 100%. Since that wasn’t possible with my employer, I decided to make a career switch.
And then Talent Peaks came in.
Why become a Salesforce consultant?
I found it time to really immerse myself into the world of Salesforce. As a consultant, I help a large variety of companies to make the most of their Salesforce implementations. And since the Salesforce CRM – with all its complementary clouds – is elaborate and innovative, I’m assured of being able to develop myself at high speed towards being an alround Salesforce consultant. Being a Salesforce Gold consulting partner, Talent Peaks is the perfect employer for me, they offer me lots of opportunities.
Why choose for Talent Peaks?
I knew Talent Peaks already and had a pleasant connection with Joram Timmerman for quite some years now. In one of the projects, I worked with Talent Peaks consultant Daniëlle de Ruwe and she gave me good first hand insights into what Talent Peaks is all about. It is a young, informal and energetic organization with lots of passion for what they do.
So when I decided to change my career and become a dedicated Salesforce Consultant, Talent Peaks was a logical choice for me. Up till now, it couldn’t have been better. I find myself in a cool team of friendly and enthusiastic people, with no two days alike, that’s really what I like about working at Talent Peaks.
What will be your main focus?
For now I’m testing the waters with different kinds of assignments and projects. I have a technical background, so I’m planning to add additional value by focussing on the technical details around projects. Over the years, I’ve picked up a lot of experience, knowledge and skills covering different areas in the world of IT.
A lot of Talent Peaks’ consultants have a background in the business instead of the IT department, so I feel I have a lot of technical insights that will come in handy. Another thing I bring to the table is my experience in customer support. I can effectively to put myself into the customer’s shoes and have a firm grasp on what kind of issues the user will encounter.
Must be pretty awkward, starting a new job in times of Corona?
It sure is strange to get an actual onboarding process going while working remotely. I spent only one week and a half on site at clients and then we all got locked up at home, so that was a bit of a shock. True, I miss the face-to-face contact with my colleagues and the customers. However, technology makes it possible to keep making an impact for our customers. Working remotely has never been easier with the different collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts.
Fortunately, Talent Peaks does everything they can to make sure I’m doing all right. My colleagues call me regularly just to ask how I’m doing. We have weekly TP Update calls, and let’s not forget the awesome ‘work-from-home-kit” and the ‘we-are-family-surprise mail’ that everyone received. Little things like that make it work for me.
Curious what Salesforce has to offer?
