In this spotlight series, we interview @Darshil_Shah1, who is not only a Marketo Engage Champion but also a Community Advisor. Darshil is a Marketo Consultant at Deloitte, based out of Bengaluru, India. Read his spotlight below to learn about how he got started in Marketo, what he wanted to be when he grew up, and more!
What was your first job?
I began my career as a Trainee Software Engineer after my graduation at one of Adobe's platinum partner organizations. During my tenure at the company, I learned about full-stack web development and was later placed into the marketing automation practice.
How and when did you get started with Adobe Marketo Engage?
What was your first role and initial reaction to the platform? Post the general full-stack web development training at the organization which I joined after my graduation; we were asked to give preferences to get into the specialized practices. I researched about all the available options and chose Marketo Engage as my first preference as it had great mix of both the worlds – strategy and technical. I didn’t want to restrict myself to being in the practice that was heavily inclined to one or the either. On a deeper note, I believe this has to do with my ambivert nature. I was lucky to get what I chose.
When I started off with learning Marketo, I was impressed by the way Marketo encapsulated the most technical things in as user-friendly of an interface as possible. The UI is very intuitive, which makes it convenient to follow and learn. Apart from that, I was also fascinated by the rich sets of APIs exposed by Marketo, which enabled the automation of repetitive tasks, the ability to set up custom integrations, and much more!
What is your favorite thing to do in Marketo and why?
Hands down custom integrations! Having done my graduation with majors in the Computer Science and Engineering, I can code, set up custom integrations, work with APIs, and more. I believe custom integrations allows me to get creative with the implementation design (strategy-wise) and it also involves the core technology aspect of the implementation phase itself. I also like Marketo’s native web personalization capabilities! It has extensive capabilities in customizing the web experience for visitors based on their demographic, behavioral, and geographic data.
Throughout your Marketo career, what are you most proud of?
I’m very fortunate to have more than one Marketo achievements that I’m super proud of, but if I’d have to choose one, I’d choose the day I acquired the Adobe Master certification. Back then it was a presentation-driven process, and I’d put in several weeks to come up with the perfect presentation and all the supporting documentations for my interview with the Adobe certification panel. The feeling of getting certified was completely exuberant and un-matchable, one of the proudest moments of my life, totally. Thanks to all the guidance I got along the way from my colleagues and our awesome clients.
What piece of advice would you give to someone who is just starting a career with Marketo?
I’d say just to dive right in, don’t feel overwhelmed by looking at the extensive capabilities and feature-set of Marketo. Start with the basics, build your expertise on the product step-by-step, and most importantly, try things out in Marketo. I believe you can learn a lot faster, and a lot more, by doing things practically in the instance than by just going through the documentation. And lastly, be sure to check-out the Marketing Nation community, ask questions, and engage with the people there. It’s a very cultivated community and I personally have learned a lot from there.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a scientist back when I was introduced to science for the first time in school. The idea of innovating and researching something that can potentially impact the lives of so many people, and generations to come, struck as so fascinating. Particularly, I was very inspired by the inventor of bulb, Thomas Edison. I was totally captivated thinking about how many people his invention and work has impacted positively. I took science as my major in the high school and pursued computer science in the college later. With the world going all digital, I think this is one of the best areas to work and contribute to make an impact!
If someone gave you $5 million tomorrow, what would you do?
I’d take my family to a nice long vacation at some of the best places around the world and then would donate the rest equally amongst the support groups working towards the climate change and helping children learning the technology.
If you could have an endless supply of any food, what would it be?
Cottage Cheese! In India, we’ve an extensive variety of dishes that use cottage cheese as a primary ingredient and god, I love them all.
Connect with Darshil Shah
4 Comments
.png)