Recruitment crossroads: Should business upskill new Salesforce recruits to fill labour shortages?
The tech boom-sized recruitment crater
It’s official. Despite a recession, an ongoing global pandemic, and a crowded market, tech workers, especially Salesforce specialists, are in hot demand. Of course, if you’ve been recruiting and working with project services or SaaS talent lately, this will come as no surprise to you.
In Australia, this gap is further widened by border closures and visa restrictions which have reduced access to offshore and migrating talent. This is making an already hard task of finding talent even harder.
Jobs to candidate ratios are at around 4:1 or 5:1 in many cases, so businesses are having to think on their feet to be in the running to land the talent they need. While this is great news for a booming tech industry and highly sought after workers, it’s throwing up some huge challenges for companies trying to outbid each other for highly skilled Salesforce recruits.
With little forward visibility around when borders will open again, the one thing we can be sure about is the need for new approaches to hiring. So, what’s the plan?
The talent is out there
On paper, the widening gap between available talent and open positions is enough to give any Salesforce recruiter a nervous twitch. With international borders closed, a dearth of trained specialists is resulting in scrambling HR departments and surging salaries. Roles such as Salesforce Architects and Cloud Engineers are seeing rates jumping 20% over the past six months alone*.
This is where the argument for ‘close is enough is good enough’ comes into frame. When a problem arises, as we always do in this industry, it’s time to innovate. In this case, we have a supply versus demand issue.
The smart companies are moving quickly to hire talent with some, but not all selection criteria met, then upskill their workforces to keep ahead of the pack. But if sentiment across the industry is anything to go by, not enough companies are moving fast enough to hire from the ‘close enough’ talent pool.
A brand new world means a brand new approach
PricewaterhouseCoopers has recognised the need for relatively urgent digital transformation in the current climate, so they created an internal upskilling initiative using the hugely popular and free online Salesforce training tool, Trailhead.
Of course, embarking on internal digital transformation is one thing, practically implementing it is a completely different proposition. While anyone can use Trailhead, companies like PwC, along with others, have recognised the need to marry up the theory with experiential learning. In this current environment, tailored Salesforce training content is proving its worth in upskilling ‘close enough’ recruits on the job.
Businesses are even going as far as inserting coaches at a board level to ensure the company’s leadership has the skills to walk the talk when mentoring teams during the process. That’s dedication, but it serves to illustrate how seriously the big hitters are taking the current supply crisis in order to equip their employees with the skills needed to meet operational demands.
Necessity is the mother of invention
Upskilling your workforce or hiring ‘close enough’ recruits to bridge the digital divide isn’t a band-aid solution, it’s just what needs to be done right now.
PwC have said that they believe this current tech skills shortage will accelerate technology adoption by at least a decade. That’s huge.
Admittedly, there’s a lot to weigh up. Forced investment in upskilling and reevaluation of recruitment strategies at a time when you’re distracted by the struggle to meet demand can put stress on your operation, but let’s face it, it’s now or never.
The silver lining in this crisis is a world becoming more digitised and project services tools like Salesforce being at the forefront of this digital revolution.
I speak to so many junior and entry-level candidates who find it challenging to land their first Salesforce job. The question is, are you ready to build your Salesforce business with talent that needs a little extra on-the-job training? It’s time for businesses to rethink their recruitment model or risk being left with no one.
*https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2021/employers-reel-as-ict-salaries-surge-.html
~Garth Kharitou
