Hiring the best tech talent isn’t easy, especially in a candidate-scarce market like Salesforce. With a growing number of Salesforce customers and Partners competing to land skilled Salesforce professionals, attracting, training, and retaining these candidates can also be incredibly expensive.
Demand for Salesforce talent has driven salaries skywards, and many companies are being priced out of the race for the talent they need to thrive as a business.
In this blog, we’ll look at four ways companies are losing money on their Salesforce talent pipeline, what you can do to avoid the same mistakes, and how you can access incredible Salesforce talent for less.
If you want a full rundown of how to cut the cost on your Salesforce pipeline spend, download our white paper.
1. Not properly calculating the cost of your Salesforce talent pipeline in the first place!
When working out the total cost of ownership of your Salesforce instance, there are many factors to think about. Not only do you need to consider the cost of purchasing and implementing your platform, but you also need to factor in longer-term costs like development, software licenses, add-ons, user training, and of course, people costs.
In fact, the most significant part of your Salesforce ownership budget is likely to be spent on talent. It’s a crucial aspect that should never be overlooked, as hiring missteps have the potential to slow down or even derail a project altogether. But, with both permanent and contract costs skyrocketing, organizations need to look at innovative ways to develop their talent pipeline.
Talent creation programs are a proven method for reducing your Salesforce cost-to-hire and are becoming an increasingly popular option for businesses struggling to attract and retain Salesforce talent.
Programs like Revolent create net new talent and diversify the Salesforce candidate pool to ensure that every business has access to the affordable, certified Salesforce professionals they need to innovate and compete.
2. Identifying unscalable talent pipelines
Getting people with the right skills on board to implement Salesforce or roll out a new cloud product can be incredibly difficult, and eat up huge chunks of your project budget.
How many pairs of hands you need depends on your organization’s size, but for a one-off project, the people costs will likely account for at least 50% of the allocated budget, on average.
And what happens once that project is completed, or demand reduces over time? You’re left with expensive talent with little or no relevant work to do. As a result, it’s typical to see most of a project team made up of independent contractors or consultants supplied by a Salesforce Partner. Which is never cheap.
Outsourcing your talent pipeline to a talent creation program can save your business money across the board, and programs like ours are truly valuable in how they lower the cost of ownership of your entire talent acquisition program, not just your salary overheads.
Revolent’s clients can scale-up their Salesforce talent quickly to match demand, and scale it back down again just as quickly, if that demand drops. Plus, any talent brought in can be added to your permanent in-house resource at no extra cost. In fact, 83% of the talent we source and cross-train (known as ‘Revols’) convert to stay on with the client permanently at the end of their contract with us.
Discover more actionable tips on how to cut your Salesforce talent costs in half:
3. Overstressing in-house talent with coaching, training, and mentoring
At first, utilizing your in-house Salesforce experts to upskill other staff members seems like a great way to save money. After all, buddying up your team members and having them learn from one another might seem like the perfect way to disseminate knowledge and upskill your staff.
However, if you’re working to tight deadlines on major Salesforce projects, having experienced staff members give up time to train graduate hires or clue-up transient contractors can dent your productivity. Laying the responsibility for training team members on more senior staff can also cause morale to suffer if they feel like they’re stretched too thin.
As any business knows, time is money. Especially when you’re dealing with tech professionals who command high salaries and rates. The less time your employees have to spend away from their core responsibilities on training and onboarding, the better.
This is where Revolent’s ReSkill comes in. Our program can help your organization build the talent you need, in-house without losing productivity. That’s because our training can be tailored around your existing projects and business needs, minimizing the impact on your organization whilst ensuring your teams have the skills needed to drive business growth and maintain a competitive edge.
4. Wasting time on outdated hiring methods
According to recent research by LinkedIn, it takes a company an average of 42 days to fill a position. In a candidate-scarce space like Salesforce, this can take even longer, particularly when you need to verify credentials and size up technical skills.
If you’ve got a time-sensitive project and need talent fast, traditional hiring methods just aren’t going to provide the results you need to quickly get people on the job.
Unfilled roles cause strain on other team members, thwarted growth, and a rush to fill the vacancy that can lead to unsuitable hires, leading to an overall hefty price tag. In fact, the same research by LinkedIn shows that the average cost of just one bad hire is a whopping $15,000.
And even then, once hired, the time it takes for a new employee to reach optimal productivity levels mean the process can take even longer than you expect. According to research, it can take as long as eight months for a new employee to achieve their full potential in terms of output. Until your hire reaches this crucial break-even point, you’re not making a return on your investment. These lost productivity costs can mount up quickly, especially when you need to expand your capacity but can’t find the right candidates.
At Revolent, we have a strong Talent Acquisition team who can source candidates that meet your unique requirements, so they can jump straight into any Salesforce projects upon deployment. Plus, our Revols spend 60% of their time in training working on practical application and developing their consultancy skills, so they’re business-ready and able to make an impact from day one.
If you’d like to learn more about the hidden costs behind creating a Salesforce talent pipeline, and how to reduce them, download our white paper.
Struggling to find Salesforce talent through traditional hiring methods?
Get the talent you need, without breaking the bank, with Revolent.
