The development of each Waeger's professional career is an important commitment for us and we do our best to ensure that each Waeger has the means to grow.
We sat down with David Maas to hear how his move to Waeg has given a new boost to his career. Within a year, he obtained two Salesforce certifications that allowed him to become a Pardot Consultant, in addition to already being a Social Studio expert. Let's hear about his inspiring journey.
Can you present yourself?
My name is David Maas and I'm from the Netherlands. Since October 2017 I have been working at Waeg as a member of the Marketing Automation Team.
Before that, I worked for many years for Interpolis, one of the largest insurance companies in the Netherlands. In my last five years there, I was directly involved in the successful introduction and further expansion of our brand on social media. It was from this pioneering role that I created my own job as a social media community manager. I was responsible for real-time monitoring and analysis of all social channels, setting up social media customer service, and supporting all brand and marketing campaigns on social media. It was there that I first came into touch with Salesforce. We then started working with Social Studio, Salesforce’s solution for listening, engaging, and publishing across the most popular social media networks. For five years, I worked with great pleasure and passion to make Interpolis a leader in social media in the banking and insurance world.
I then embarked on the adventure of setting up social media customer service globally at Elsevier, the scientific publisher. After this stopped unexpectedly, Chris Timmerman approached me via LinkedIn about whether I was interested in working for Waeg. A week later I started as officially the first Waeg employee in the Netherlands.
Can you tell us more about your path at Waeg?
I joined Waeg on the day of the start of LeasePlan's global What's Next campaign and I was responsible for the Social Studio implementation for around 15 countries where LeasePlan operated. After this project, I was directly involved in the introduction of Social Servicing and I did another Social Studio implementation for the daughter company- CarNext.
Why did you decide to start the journey from Social Studio to a Pardot expert?
During my first conversations with Chris in 2017, he already asked me if I would be interested in developing further in the direction of Marketing Automation. That was also an important reason for me to start at Waeg- I wanted to learn new things and develop professionally.
I then started to focus on Marketing Cloud. I got my Marketing Cloud Email Specialist certification and spent a few months working on MC projects for a client. After that, I wanted to focus on Pardot because we did a lot of Pardot projects for customers.
How did Waeg support you in your career development?
Waeg gave me every opportunity to train myself in Pardot through self-study and courses. In a year's time, I managed to get my Pardot Specialist and Pardot Consultant certificates. At that time I was not fully dedicated anymore to the Social Studio project so I was able to dedicate my free time to learning about Pardot.
In addition to self-learning, I worked with an experienced Pardot consultant on Pardot implementations with customers. I learned a lot from my colleagues and this was incredible.
What has been the most exciting challenge you’ve had since grown into this new professional stage in your career?
The biggest challenge for me was when I first started working full-time for a customer as a Pardot consultant. There was a lot of confidence from Waeg that I would be successful in my work which is motivating because you then have to prove your capabilities. But you really learn how to work with the tool by putting your knowledge into practice in a real project. I always want to get it right the first time - that's how I’m made - I found that challenging. But it went extremely well on that assignment!
What advice would you give to people who wish to develop their careers in the same direction?
What I remember from day one is that within Waeg I was always told how important it is to enjoy your work and that you are given every opportunity to develop further if that is what you want.
So to a large extent, you are in the driving seat yourself and you decide which direction you take.
What’s next?
I come from a business background so before joining Waeg, I had no direct experience with Salesforce at all. I noticed that it has a direct impact on my daily work and I sometimes suffer from this lack of knowledge about the Salesforce Platform. That is why I want to learn more about it. My new challenge for this year is to get my Salesforce Administrator Certificate. Thanks to the 12 days of training offered by Waeg each year, I can dedicate some time to work on obtaining this new certificate. This will undoubtedly help me in everything I do at Waeg.
