Amani Farooque
Role: Senior Yext Administrator
Previous Roles: Technical Project Manager (Yext Consulting)
Role: Senior Yext Administrator
Previous Roles: Technical Project Manager (Yext Consulting)
I joined in July 2019 as one of the first members alongside Sam Torres and under Liz Frailey. It's been amazing to see the team grow ten-fold over the course of the year.
I've launched a few clients (it's been a busy year!)
I've also been involved since the beginning in developing the Hitchhiker program. This has ranged from spreading the word at the Hitchhiker Booth at Onward, writing Answers, Pages, and Technical training for the site, as well as partnering with some of our first external Hitchhiker partners as we go into our Beta launch.
Unsurprisingly, my favorite and most rewarding project was launching the New Jersey COVID19 Hub. It was incredible to see so many people at the company come together to hit a seemingly-impossible deadline and get our site live in 5 days. Their team has been incredible to work with and really has shown how powerful the analytics of Answers and the flexibility of the Knowledge Graph really can be.
Aside from the technical experience learning HTML, CSS, JS, and Handlebars, as well as better understanding of the underlying technology behind Yext Products, one of the most valuable skills I've gained is the ability to teach this to others. Through the Hitchhiker modules, we have to determine a way to explain these concepts to those without any CS or web development background. It's been so encouraging to see each class who takes our training emerge being able to handle these complicated techincal concepts right out of the gate.
Being an Administrator is more than just the sum of the skills you gain through the Hitchhiker training modules - although I've deepened my understanding of Yext products as well as technical skills needed to implement them well, the most valuable thing I've learned is how to create solutions out of the toolkit provided. If we were strictly confined to what our product has been used for in the past, or the use cases it was designed for initially, there would be no way we would have pulled off a build like New Jersey. This kind of solutions-oriented thinking is something applicable to any role a Hitchhiker might hold.
I'd say the initial batch of customer launches late fall of 2019 was really critical to get through. Because the product was so young, we needed good partners who understood that some components were a work in progress, and had faith that what we were delivering would knock their existing site search out of the park. Especially since we didn't really have a fully fleshed out 'implementation' process at the beginning, we needed to focus on what was critical so that we could get our customers to launch. I'm thankful for the partnership we had with Citizens, Three Mobile, and Dignity Funerals who took a leap of faith with us and are seeing incredible results as an outcome!
