Do you really NEED X years Salesforce experience and Y certification?

In Salesforce news by Ben DuncombeLeave a Comment

Over the past year, Talent Hub has seen numerous clients underestimate a Salesforce professionals ability based on how many years experience they have, or by how many certifications they hold.

 

Which got us thinking, why are people so caught up on the length of time someone has been doing something? Spending long periods of time doing the same thing won’t necessarily mean that you will be any good at it. Trust me, I have hit a lot of golf balls over the years.

 

Salesforce certifications split the room and although we definitely see both sides to the argument – we do feel that they are worth having, especially those that include practical assessments and obviously the review board.

 

But is it wise to rule out an experienced candidate just because they do not hold a certain certification?

We have one client who will only consider a Salesforce Developer to be ‘Senior’ if they hold the Platform II/Advanced Developer certification. This means that they are ruling out a talent pool of highly experienced Developers, including one of the best Developers that Talent Hub has ever placed (based not just on our opinion, but on feedback from clients and peers) who has in fact never even held a Salesforce certification. So there is evidently a lot more to it than just what’s written on a candidates resume..

 

It is a well known fact that the ANZ Salesforce market is short of candidates. Refreshingly, we are seeing more Salesforce Partners now willing to consider candidates from other technologies with a view to cross training them in Salesforce – but we are still seeing end user companies and some Salesforce Partners miss out on excellent talent due to their expectation of X number or years Salesforce experience when reviewing resumes.

Salesforce themselves have built their business on hiring top employees from competitors (How are Oracle still going?) and helping them to become some of the very best Salesforce professionals.

Evidently Salesforce aren’t ruling out potential talent because they don’t already hold a Salesforce certification or due to a rigid expectation of a set # years experience, their job descriptions are subjective and based around the person – their passion – and if this would fit into the Salesforce culture and work environment:

 

 

 

Even though we have been guilty of requesting X years experience on job descriptions previously, we don’t believe that years of experience gives you any real insight into how capable someone is of performing a certain role.

Aptitude cannot be demonstrated on a resume and without properly discussing a Salesforce professionals experience it is hard to know if they have spent the last 5 years in cruise mode or 1 year in the most challenging, complex Salesforce environment.

 

 

We would love to hear your thoughts! Do you agree or do you feel that years of experience and certifications are a good way to form an opinion on Salesforce professionals? 

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