Just how much do we love helping our people grow? So much so that it’s in our DNA, and one of our vision statements reflects that value: Revolutionize talent development in technology consulting. As a technology services company, we rely on a world-class workforce of consultants to deliver the best solutions to our clients. We approach building our workforce through a strong Learning & Development (L&D) department that carries our values of career growth and life-long learning.

From this vision, we created Silverline Academy, our flagship L&D program. We think it’s important to build junior team members, in addition to hiring experienced consultants, in order to support our model and grow our team long-term. The Academy is our framework to develop talent and grow careers from the ground up.

The Silverline Academy is a full-time, 3-month learning program for recent graduates. The class goes through rigorous training to learn a variety of consultative and soft skills including client and project management skills, solution architecture, design, system testing, and training approaches. Our curriculum is delivered by our most experienced team members and is designed to prepare the class to become Salesforce.com certified consultants. At the end of the Academy, each person is assigned a mentor and begins working on client projects.

Academy at a Glance: Facts & Figures

Our Academy Graduates have:

• Experience on 300+ projects and provided 40,000+ consulting hours
• 82% of our Academy Team members are still with Silverline
• And of the few that have left, all remain part of the Salesforce.com community or are currently consultants in other industries!
• 22 people have completed the standard Academy program
• We also ran a specialized Academy Bootcamp (5 people) to get experienced consultants up to speed on our processes, methodology, and Salesforce

The Silverline Academy has made a huge impact for Silverline, our clients, and our team.  

For Silverline:

• We have been able to develop top-notch consultants who are steeped in both our methodology and Salesforce.  

For our consultants:

• We enable new consultants to quickly develop high-quality skills on internal and mock projects so they are well prepared when embarking on client projects.
• We continually measure performance and skill development so moving to the next level as a consultant is well-defined, consistent, and quicker than in traditional models.
• Our experienced consultants enjoy greater job satisfaction as they have the opportunity to mentor new consultants and ensure their team members are building skills at a quick pace.

For our Clients:

• We have strong teams that work together extremely well.
• Experienced consultants who have gone through a tested and continually improving training program that ensures high-quality skills and Salesforce experience.

Interested in building your career with Silverline? Check out our career page for current openings and be sure to look through our Glassdoor company page.

Written by Sarah Risen-Robertson, L&D Manager and Jonathan Snyder, Support Director (former L&D Manager)