As the footprint of Salesforce continues to grow, so too will the need for Salesforce professionals. One trend I noticed during 2020 and the pandemic is that a lot of people that lost their jobs turned to the Trailhead platform to skill up on Salesforce. What this means is that there is more competition amongst Salesforce professionals which bodes well for companies looking to build out their Salesforce team.
The flip side of that is that with more people claiming Salesforce expertise, it’s both more necessary and also more difficult, to find the hire that’s right for your organization. Below are my top three tips for avoiding hiring mistakes when evaluating Salesforce talent.
Understand what you need from your Salesforce person/team and hire for it.
Here is an example of the mistake I see the most often: Susan needs some Salesforce help but is restricted by a budget so she goes out and hires a young Salesforce admin. Two months later, COVID-19 hits and now Susan needs that admin to help strategize how to redesign the system to handle an increase in demand and also a decrease in workforce. The admin spends 50% of their time researching answers, building out Trailhead playgrounds and attending Salesforce webinars. Now you’re paying 50% of their salary for them to learn on the job, further delaying the time before they are useful.
As you build out your team, the most helpful thing you can do for yourself is to understand the differences in the various certifications and where that certification falls on the critical-thinking spectrum. The ADM 201 certification is the bare-minimum and, therefore, requires the least amount of critical-thinking. Tell them what to configure and they’ll do it.
The Advanced Administrator certification taps into a little more critical-thinking but is still largely configuration driven. For both admin exams, questions are phrased more like “is it possible to…”, “what configuration feature does this…”, “how can this desired result be configured?…” etc.
The critical-thinking really comes after that, especially with consultant exams, where the questions are phrased more like “what is the best way to…”, “how can you accomplish this for a client?”, “what would you recommend for someone in this situation…”
If your organization is prepared to hand off project specs and just needs them configured, you’re probably going to be okay hiring an admin. However, if you’re like most people building out Salesforce teams, you expect the system to evolve along with your company and you need someone who can not only administer the system but can also help build a roadmap of what your system will need to look like in a year, and how to get there. It’s not fair to expect this level of critical-thinking of an admin; a business analyst with architecting experience would be ideal but also be prepared to pay a higher salary. Also, be wary of the impact that overloading your Salesforce admin can have on the culture of turnover for that role.
Don’t overvalue certifications.
Salesforce Trailhead has made it possible for anyone anywhere in the world to learn the technical skills of Salesforce. This means that, in theory, someone could get Salesforce certified without ever having seen Salesforce in action. It’s not likely, but it’s absolutely possible. Being that it’s possible, assign some weight to certifications, but it shouldn’t be the end-all-be all.
What I’ve found is that most Salesforce professionals won’t take an exam until they’re 90% sure they’ll pass It. If there’s even a moderate amount of doubt there, they won’t even take the exam. Now, that doesn’t mean they can’t still help you solve your Salesforce problems. It could just as likely mean that the consultant is more than capable but needs the boost of confidence from someone like you seeing their value pre-certification.
This happened with me. For years, I avoided the Platform App Builder certification because I didn’t think I could pass it without a strong background in coding - which I don’t have. I stumbled onto a practice test and did very well and then passed the exam easily my first time. I was more than capable intellectually, just needed something to give me that confidence boost. You knowing not to overvalue certifications could be that boost.
Appreciate variety.
Let’s say you run a real estate company looking build out your Salesforce team. Naturally, you’d want people with experience in real estate. However I argue that you should find someone with tangental real estate experience, at best. First, because there’s a surprising amount of cross-over between industries or sectors in terms of how they use Salesforce. There are obviously nuances but pulling from a variety of skills and experiences will allow you to leverage lessons from other industries that may not be as intuitive.
For example, I did a project for Lionsgate Motion Pictures where Salesforce managed the pre-production process of making movies. It just so happened that the process of matching a script with a writer, reviewing the writer’s script, and alerting finance that it’s time to pay the writer for that draft is actually a very similar process to how the LA Chamber of Commerce matches fellows with interviewers, reviews their custom interview grading rubric, and generates invoices for finance to track tuition. The labels for the fields are all different but the structure of the data is almost identical.
Do yourself a favor and build up your Salesforce team with people who have worked on all different types of projects (Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, Communities, both native and non-native Integrations, VisualForce heavy environments, Heroku apps, etc.). Try to build a team that can cover as much of Salesforce’s capabilities as possible. Don’t limit your system to the specific portion of Salesforce that you’re aware of at the time of hiring.
As long as you have a clear understanding of what you need, you understand the factor that certifications play in this type of decision-making, and you build a team with experiences that complement each other, you should go into your hiring season confident that you’ll find the next right addition to your team. If you would like for me to take a look at your org and diagnose what level of Salesforce professional you need, please feel free to reach out.