The question of how to secure Salesforce talent will no doubt be on the minds of everyone who attended Partnerforce this year. The world’s #1 CRM is on an unstoppable journey of growth, with 1.5 million new jobs on the horizon for EMEA by 2026. While this growth is exciting, it further calls into question the need for Salesforce talent, with companies getting increasingly competitive to get Salesforce experts on board to help scale their business at speed. As a Salesforce talent creation specialist, this is an issue that sits squarely in our crosshairs at Revolent.
To shed some light on the main challenges when recruiting Salesforce talent and find out what’s next in store for businesses and organizations that operate within EMEA, we asked Stuart Mills, VP, Trailhead and Ecosystem, EMEA, Salesforce to share his views.
What are the biggest challenges or barriers that companies and organizations are facing when securing their Salesforce talent?
“It’s a great question!” says Stuart. “We know that the three talent qualities most in-demand in the Salesforce ecosystem are certified, diverse, and affordable—but to secure all three, companies really need to think differently about who and how they recruit, and that’s a tricky change to influence.
We’re in a situation where the shortage of talent is a barrier to adopting emerging technologies, which can affect an organization’s ability to effectively do business, and the digital skills gap we’re currently facing isn’t going to go away by itself. In fact, our latest Global Digital Skills Index highlights just how unprepared many people feel when it comes to having the basic digital skills they’ll need for the future of work, a concern that is rightly at the top of many organizations’ agendas.
So, we need a fresh approach if we’re going to make in-roads. There are plenty of job vacancies available, and a diverse pipeline of new candidates with the right knowledge and attitude that could fill them. We just need to find a better way to match the two together.”
One way of doing this is making the job offer more attractive to candidates. But what exactly are they looking for when applying for a new job? The recent Mason Frank’s Careers and Hiring Guide, an in-depth study of the Salesforce ecosystem and professionals that work in it, can shed some light on this. They asked permanent employees who work with Salesforce to share the main reasons for taking up their current role. They stated the following answers.
What perks entice a candidate to accept or consider a new role?
- A better salary and compensation package
- The opportunity to work remotely
- Opportunities for career progression or a defined career path
- The chance to work in a challenging role or on a challenging project
- The chance to learn a greater range of skills
- To develop personally
- The chance to pursue a better cultural fit
- To pursue a career change
- The challenge of working for a startup
- The new role was a promotion
- To work for a larger organization
- Ability to escape a toxic work environment
- Relocation
Four weeks or more paid time off
44%
Homeworking
41%
Bonus (monthly/bi-annual/year-end bonus
33%
Health/medical insurance
24%
Flexible working hours
24%
Retirement savings plan/401(k)
15%
Training and development opportunities
12%
Shares in the company/reduced priced shares in the company
11%
Commission
7%
Certification exam vouchers
5%
What can businesses do to tackle these barriers?
“I firmly believe that there are four pillars of skills development work that bridge the gap from sourcing talented candidates, to placing them in employment, and fulfilling a company’s on-going needs.
The first is Digital Savviness. This involves a good level of understanding of how various technologies, including social, mobile, analytics, and cloud, will impact your success in the years to come.
The second is Technical Skills, the practical, ‘hard’ skills that an employee needs to do their job.
Thirdly, Power Skills, softer, cross-functional skills such as analytical thinking, active learning strategies, and complex problem-solving (the top three according to The World Economic Forum).
And finally, Hands-on Experience—being able to say you’ve had exposure to real-world situations and have had to come up with workable solutions.
You’ll notice that ‘time served’ doesn’t appear on that list, and yet employers traditionally look for people with a certain amount of time in the same field as the position they’re advertising. It creates a Catch-22 situation where companies can’t fill positions and up-and-coming talent is left thinking, ‘How can I gain work experience, if I can’t get work?’
The thing is, the pace of digital transformation moves so quickly, longevity isn’t always the best measure of up-to-date knowledge. Employers who acknowledge this are more likely to be able to attract and recruit suitable candidates. If you add in continuous up-skilling and set a budget for training existing employees, holding onto the right people also becomes less of a problem. And if you’re open to looking at different demographics for recruitment—business managers can usually understand the support and capability that Salesforce provides, for example—then you’re really starting to change the game.”
The data from Mason Frank’s Careers and Hiring Guide also reveals just how crucial upskilling through Salesforce certifications is within the industry, and how motivated Salesforce professionals feel when it comes to this.
already holding at least one Salesforce certification
76%
agree that Salesforce certifications make you more marketable to employers
91%
respondents believed that their salary had increased since gaining a Salesforce certification
63%
and those that reported earning a salary increase post-certification received an average raise of
26%
In terms of what motivated candidates to get certified,
stated that it was their employer funding the certifications
53%
indicated paid time off work to attend their training as a motivating factor
40%
felt motivated by the promise of earning a higher pay, once they’re certified.
48%
“With all that said, however, I don’t think the responsibility lies only with employers,” Stuart adds. “Candidates who want to be taken seriously also need to re-think how they showcase their skills across the four pillars above. Even just pulling it all together in a Salesforce portfolio which will help them stand out. A great starting point for all the pillars is Trailhead, our learning platform, which helps clearly showcase skills via digital badges, super-badges and credentials. It also contains hands-on projects that replicate processes you’d need to go through in real-life.
Then there are Trailhead Academy instructor-led classes, and the Workforce and Educators Pathways programs that we support, such as Revolent, all of which include significant exposure to hand-on learning. And don’t forget about the Trailblazer Community which is a rich source of learning and support, as well as a good way to find out about hackathons that can provide even more valuable experience. In my opinion, it’s just as incumbent on candidates to think differently, be proactive and clearly demonstrate the value they bring.”
The good news is that tech professionals are increasingly seeing the cloud, and Salesforce in particular, as a future-proof career choice. A little over a third (37%) of those surveyed for Mason Frank’s Careers and Hiring Guide have cross-trained into Salesforce, having worked with a competitor product before moving into the Salesforce ecosystem. Organizations such as Revolent are helping to solve the skills gap by utilizing the desire of experienced IT professionals to make a career shift in the cloud, and equipping them with the necessary skills, training, and Salesforce certifications to kick-start their new career.
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As members of the Salesforce Talent Alliance, we have an in-depth understanding of the extent of the skills crisis in the cloud and Salesforce, we are helping to tackle this by offering experienced tech professionals the opportunity to cross-train into Salesforce, providing them not only with technical abilities and certifications but crucial consultancy skills training, too, before we place them with our clients on a short or long-term basis.
We also know that, to succeed as a business, you need more than just technical skills, you need the creativity, innovation, and wide-ranging perspectives that only a diverse workforce can offer, which is why our Revols come from such a wide range of diverse backgrounds.
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Nabila Salem,
President of Revolent
What’s in store for the next 5 years? Do you see the talent shortage turning into a crisis—or the opposite?
“There’s a lovely proverb that says: ‘The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.’ and I think that’s relevant here,” Stuart comments. “There’s no reason why we can’t improve the situation going forward, but it does depend on how we act right now. After all, we live in a world where the tech landscape is ever-changing, and that’s going to continue. If we do nothing, the digital skills gap will only grow and the challenges we’re currently facing will only intensify.
But if we do start doing things differently, by embracing the various routes open to us, we’ll be able to make progress. Tackling the situation isn’t impossible, especially if we keep ensuring learning is accessible to diverse cohorts via platforms such as Trailhead. The most important thing is that we don’t bury our heads in the sand – that would definitely be a mistake in the long run!”
Get ahead of the Salesforce skills gap and build a sustainable and cost-effective Salesforce talent pipeline to help your business scale with Revolent.
