If you think finding Salesforce talent is a little tough right now here in Australia, you’re right on the money. Demand for talent far outstrips supply across the entire Salesforce ecosystem, from Salesforce Administrators, Developers and Functional Consultants, to those in Sales, Marketing and project resources.
When it comes to working out how to find the best employees in this climate, you need a few aces up your sleeve. Here, we share some up-to-date intel from working as specialist recruiters within the Salesforce market to help you secure highly talented, experienced Salesforce professionals.
Understand What Top Salesforce Talent Wants
It can be easy for hiring managers fall into the trap of focusing their recruitment efforts on the figures, believing pay is the most important driver for candidates. But recent statistics from a Deloitte and Swinburne Edge Report show 93% of Australian workers rank their wellbeing as just as important as their pay, with work autonomy, leadership and performing meaningful work following closely behind.
The report also highlighted that two in three Australian workers are willing to forgo a pay raise for flexible working conditions, with one in five happy to sacrifice between 6-10% of their salary.
This is why it’s key to understand what current Salesforce professionals want in a role. From our experience, work-life balance with associated flexible working arrangements almost always tops the list for most candidates. But other ‘wants and wishes’ vary according to the Salesforce position and candidate profile. As one example, Salesforce professionals love a work challenge. Providing opportunities for interesting projects that involve on-the-job learning and other forms of professional development is vitally important.
If you’d like more information about what current Salesforce candidates are looking for by position, feel free to connect with one of our recruitment specialists for advice.
Leverage Your Employer Brand
Why would exceptional Salesforce talent want to work with your company? If your EVP can effectively showcase this answer, it places you a step ahead of your competition. Your EVP is a statement of what you offer employees in return for their endeavours. The best EVPs draw from your company values and culture, but also actively engage staff by revealing the professional development opportunities, employee recognition and benefits you provide.
A well written EVP helps potential employees understand if their work style and career aspirations align with how you work, upping the chances of finding your right cultural fit and increasing your retention rate. Gartner research shows that by delivering on your EVP promises, you can reduce your employee attrition rate by just under 70% and increase new hire commitment by close to 20%.
Once you have your EVP down pat, embed it throughout your business and showcase it on your website, social and professional networking profiles, recruitment materials and through your activity in the online Trailblazer Community. If you can demonstrate it using employee stories and testimonials, that’s even better!
Provide Personal Development Pathways
Due to the ever-changing customer experience landscape, Salesforce must be a dynamic ecosystem. Proficient Salesforce professionals enjoy this aspect, so seek out roles that encourage continual personal and professional growth.
Using your updated knowledge about what Salesforce employees want, cultivate a suite of personalised professional development pathways, with a focus on Salesforce certifications. As you progress through to your recruitment interviews, be sure to highlight these customised progression pathways.
Ensure You Have an Agile Recruitment Process
Top Salesforce professionals value efficiency and agility, so are naturally attracted to employers who possess and encourage these traits. As your recruitment experience is often the first candidate touchpoint, it’s important to make a good impression. Review your processes from the candidate’s perspective. Can you pinpoint any inefficiencies, communication gaps or delays?
Think back to your prior recruitment experiences – did you lose quality applicants at a particular stage? It’s more common than you may think with a global Sterling research report finding over 70% of candidates either considered, or did, drop out of their last hiring experience, with close to 40% citing it either took too long or was overly complicated.
Developing a partnership with a specialist Salesforce recruiter – like SaaSpeople – can be highly beneficial when it comes to streamlining and enhancing your candidate experience. With best practices (read – speedy!) processes in place, we can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to hire, enabling you to capitalise on those top candidates before someone else does.
Be Open to Expanding Your Hiring Parameters
When it comes to finding Salesforce employees, consider ways you can widen your talent pool. Rather than hiring based on experience, perhaps hire for potential. You may come across candidates who don’t have a large Salesforce work history, but still possess a cache of highly transferrable skills, particularly from customer-facing and project management industries.
Look for candidates with top soft skills such as a knack for analysis, problem solving and communication, as well as proactivity, adaptability and organisation. With these core skills in place, you can use Trailhead to support them to develop proficiencies with the Salesforce platform.
Our Final Top Tip
We understand the difficulties you face in finding exceptional Salesforce professionals. This is why our market position as a true specialist has become more important than ever.
It’s a challenge we’re up for and enjoy facing head on, especially when it comes to finding and securing both active and passive talent.
On that note, our final tip is to consider leveraging our specialised Salesforce recruitment & advisory services. Whether it’s understanding what top Salesforce talent really wants, assistance with crafting your EVP to attract said talent, drafting the perfect job description or overseeing the entire hiring process for you, contact us today to find out how we can help you build your Salesforce team.
