The hiring challenges across the Salesforce ecosystem vary for different categories of users – Salesforce End User Organisations, Salesforce Consultancies and Salesforce ISVs (applications on Salesforce’s AppExchange).
Each one of these three have different hiring requirements and priorities that are worth considering individually.
The biggest skill gap I see repeatedly arises from when end user organisations are transitioning away from using a partner, usually post implementation. The partner may have spent several months leading an implementation. The customer
will then look to bring these skills in house to save on consulting cost & build internal IP for long term sustainability.
Herein lies the problem – there is a lack of onus on change management during this transition period. This means that when the partner rolls off there is often a knowledge gap internally around what’s been implemented. Furthermore, how the implementation aligns with the future road map of the organisation and its Salesforce org.
Often end users prefer to hire a full time, internal platform manager to replace of the partner to manage their Salesforce org and road map. This is certainly the right type of skill set that these companies require. However, I firmly believe that hiring this person after a partner has rolled off is detrimental to the continuous improvement and ongoing maintenance
of the platform. These two elements are crucial to its success and to the ROI of license costs for the organisation.
Evaluating such options is a key consideration of any end user organisation. This can ensure both short and long term success of their Salesforce platform.
The consulting partners face a very different set of hiring challenges. The biggest one being the ability to scale up their resource capability at short notice in response to winning RFPs.
I encourage our partner clients to be as transparent as they can be about their project pipeline and associated resource requirements. This allows us to be prepared with the right resources (either contractual or permanent) at the right time. Doing so can make the critical difference to the partner in being able to deliver a project successfully for their customer.
This also fosters a genuine long term strategic growth partnership to be formed between us and our partner clients. Such partnerships have led to some great successes in assisting various consultancies build their Salesforce practices.
A lot of the ISVs we work with are looking to expand their operations from overseas to Australia (more often than not, Australia is their APAC HQ).
The two biggest hiring challenges these ISVs (and Australian ones) face in the Salesforce ecosystem include:
Finding resources that understand the dynamics and nuances of the Salesforce ecosystem Finding resources that are able to leverage an existing network within the ecosystem
These are the two most sought after areas of experience for ISVs. They also happen to be hard to find because a lot of the time these roles are sales or account management positions, and there are a very finite amount of high quality sales professionals from within the ecosystem on the market at a given time.
My advice in addressing this issue is as follows:
In conclusion, if you could take one thing away, it is that you cannot underestimate the importance of strategic hiring planning in advance!
This blog has been contributed by Saaspeople. SaaSpeople are the longest standing dedicated Salesforce recruiters in APAC. Please feel free to reach out to Will Walker for assistance or advice around your Salesforce hiring road map. His contact details are as follows:
Will Walker | Co-Founder and Director | W: www.SaaSpeople.com.au |T: +61402632141 | E: [email protected]
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