“It’s harder than it used to be to recruit good Salesforce devs and admins”
Yep…
Recruiters, DevOps Managers, Project Leads and agency founders are all starting to feel the pain of a Salesforce talent shortage.
Recruiters are shortlisting and making calls only to find that their candidates have already being snapped up within days and HR is finding that Taco Tuesdays are no longer enough to retain top talent.
The most obvious solution of “we need to pay more” doesn’t stack up in the long term. Sure, its a tool that can be used, but throwing money at a problem without understanding it won’t make your CFO happy and might not get you the outcome you need.
Much like that drip coming in from the roof, putting a bucket on the floor to catch the water isn’t going to solve the problem. Its time to metaphorically get up into the roof cavity and find out the root cause of why the Salesforce talent pool is drying up.
Let’s talk about entry level staff
Employee development is essential to producing knowledgeable personnel that can adapt to any project you throw at them. Therefore, investing in your staff creates the road for them to develop new abilities, advance in their professions, and increase your company's bottom line.
We get it…nobody wants to wipe up the baby dribble and deal with the mistakes and learning curves that are obligatory with entry level team members. But here’s the bad news, everyone is thinking the same way. Short term objectives and project based business models are driving a trend towards hiring for experience with over 70% of advertised roles seeking 5 or more years of experience.
This means experienced talent is being poached repeatedly (again, the whole higher wages costs thing) and the juniors aren’t getting the focus and exposure they need to learn to walk on their own.
Inflation and the great resignation
Like the worlds worst rap rhyme, inflation and great resignation or as we like to call it “Less Money, Mo’ Problems” isn’t an issue just limited to Salesforce talent but we need to recognise that it is impacting our industry. As we all know inflation is a double whammy with a higher cost of living and higher mortgage repayments (macro-economic policies stink).
This is coupled with a post-pandemic pheonemon of people re-evaluating what important to them and switching to employers that align with their values. For your Salesforce squad members that have a home loan and want a better work life balance, its generally an easy choice to make a bee-line straight for the employer who is paying more and offers hybrid working. Now more than ever, innvoative ways to help offset this pain on behalf of our team are needed.
Increase in users of the Salesforce ecosystem
“I got 99 users but a dev ain’t one” (sorry, we couldn’t help ourselves)
The growth in companies adopting Salesforce is having an unanticipated knock-on effect of a lack of resources to support them. Its kind of like going to a musical festival to 100,000 people and only 100 toilets…..it gets kinda messy.
Salesforce themselves suggest that 1 full time SF admin is required for every 35-75 users then is scales (check it out here.) Its basic maths but as Salesforce grows, so to does the requirement for admins, business analysis and developers. Right now, the continued growth is outpacing the resource pool, increasing demand on the existing talent in the marketplace.
The desire integrate Salesforce with disparate systems
Salesforce is quickly becoming the central nervous system for many businesses. Adoption of multiple Salesforce clouds is increasing year on year with( #stats) customers adopting 6+ clouds at a growth rate of 97X between 2018 & 2022. With Salesforce touching so many areas of the business, there is a growing need to integrate other business systems with the Salesforce ecosystem e.g. linking a finance system (i.e. Xero) into Service Cloud for invoicing automation.
For sure this makes the customer’s life easier. But it also extends the scope of the Salesforce admin or BA, often requiring them to specialise in systems integration or niche into a specific veritcal or industry. This niching means more customised skill sets (and generally a higher salary demand) and less tranferability into other clouds or general admin.
Growth in the Salesforce ecosystem components
Remember when Salesforce just used to be a CRM??
Salesforce’s aquisitions and Customer 360 strategy have broadened the ecosystem far beyond the little CRM that took the world by storm. With everything from data analytics to API integration, there is a dizzying array of arenas for admins, dev’s and BA’s to play in.
Much like the previous section, the talent pool is specializing and niching into products, clouds and verticals and is combining technical capability with deep industry experience. Whilst necessary, this also means experienced developers are less capable of tranferring their skills between industries resulting in a more fractured and siloed marketplace.
Developing a Game Plan On How To Recruit Qualified Salesforce Developers
It’s pretty grim out there but fortune favours the bold in times like these, so assembling a toolset to attract and retain talent and outpace the crowd without breaking the bank is more important than ever. Here are some tips to consider:
Invest in new talent instead of cannibalizing the existing labor market
Fresh minds are essential for innovation. New talent not only opens a new perspective when working, but they also provide an unmatched audacious vigor that frees the bandwidth amongst the pressure of senior developers to harness Salesforce.
Yes, it can be painful at times but injecting new talent into the ecosystem is the only way the demand will eventually ease. Whlst the intial effort may prove significant, studies show that organisations who invest in recruiting and nuturing entry level talent see better retention and lower wage costs overall.
Consider how your more experienced admins can mentor incoming team members and delegate tasks so your senior staff can focus on more complex and niche tasks.
Look for offshore solutions
Offshoring is an emerging saviour meeting demand for a rich pool of skilled Salesfoce squads. Onshore and training is costly and offshoring can reduce this overhead and provide a ready-made solution for both short and long term resourcing needs.
Recruiting for tomorrow instead of today
Wayne Gretzky, the famous hockey player said that he skates to where the puck is going to be, not where it is. It’s important to align your recruitment strategies with your core business strategies and start hiring resources today for where you plan to be tomorrow. Look for gaps in the Salesforce ecosystem that aren’t currently being filled. This will reduce your need to scrap for talent in today’s enviroments and put you in a great poisition for future demand.
