For many people, working at a company like Google, Apple, Meta, or Salesforce is the ultimate career goal. These companies are known for their incredible offices, high salaries, and amazing cultures. It’s safe to say that Salesforce is amongst one of the best companies to work for in the world. While constantly ranking at the top of “greatest places to work” lists, Salesforce also fights for equality and provides employees with amazing benefits.
So, for a lot of people working in the wider tech landscape, as well as companies within the ecosystem, Salesforce is a company that people want on their resume. In this article, we will answer the question “how hard is it to get a job at Salesforce?” by looking at the characteristics of the company, the interview process, and finally, some tips to help land your dream job.
Why Salesforce?
There are many reasons why Salesforce professionals and individuals in the wider tech ecosystem want to work at Salesforce. You don’t need to look far to find the multiple awards that Salesforce wins each year, crowning them one of the best places to work in the countries they operate in.
Recent accolades include winning Glassdoor’s 2021 best places to work in the UK, dropping only a couple of places to third position for 2022. And in the USA, Salesforce came fourth in Fortune’s 100 best companies to work for.
These awards fall into three categories, which Salesforce places huge emphasis on: company culture, strong leadership, and social consciousness – fighting for gender and race related pay gaps, freedom of speech, and environmental issues.
Check out more about Salesforce and the type of place it is to work in this article: “Why Is Salesforce One of the Best Places to Work?”
Salesforce & The Ecosystem
Before diving into the details of landing a job at Salesforce, it’s a good idea to take a look at the characteristics of Salesforce as a company within the ecosystem.
Salesforce now exists as one of four types of companies in the ecosystem it has created. You’ve got Salesforce end users, Salesforce ISVs, Salesforce consultancies and Salesforce itself, each playing their own part to support innovation in the ecosystem.
Salesforce is, first and foremost, a SaaS company, selling their enterprise solutions around the globe. This requires an army of Business Development Reps, Account Executives, and Solution Engineers to push the sales element of Salesforce forward (much like any other SaaS company).
In addition, Salesforce has a customer success arm that focuses on ensuring their larger customers are getting value out of the Salesforce suite of products. This team contains Customer Success Managers, Solution Architects, Technical Architects, and Program Architects – all solving the customers’ most complex challenges.
Finally, Salesforce also offers professional services to – typically – very large customers. Salesforce has always offered professional services to some degree, but this has been accelerated since the acquisition of Traction on Demand earlier this year, which brought with it over 1,100 employees.
Common Roles at Salesforce
What are some of the most common roles that Salesforce professionals, and individuals from the wider tech ecosystem, look to join at Salesforce? Let’s take a look…
Solution Engineer
The Solution Engineer role is probably the most common career path for technical professionals to pursue at Salesforce. You will be tasked with supporting the Salesforce deal cycle with technical questions about the product, creating customized demos to suit customer needs, and playing the role of ‘storyteller’ to sell the value of the Salesforce platform.
It’s common for senior professionals, especially Salesforce Consultants and existing solution engineers, to pursue this role.
Account Executive
The Account Executive (AE) role is another career path that sales people might pursue in Salesforce. The AE role will own the relationship with customers, and guide them through the entirety of the sales cycle.
Sales professionals working in an ISV or consultancy are in the perfect position to land a role as an Account Executive.
Architect
Architects at Salesforce come in different ‘flavors’; you could be a Solution Architect, Technical Architect, or Programme Architect. You may be working in a pre-sales capacity (similar to the solution engineer), supporting some of Salesforce’s most complex deals.
You may also work across customer success supporting existing Salesforce customers, or perhaps even on the implementation side of things.
Other Roles
As you might imagine, Salesforce hire for a huge variety of roles, so whilst the above might be the most common, there will be hundreds of other options out there. This might involve working in the Trailhead team, workforce development teams, acting as a sales operation analyst, or even working as an Admin or Developer evangelist, speaking at events and creating content to evangelize the Salesforce platform.
What Does the Ideal Salesforce Candidate Look Like?
Salesforce has over 70,000 employees (at the time of writing), and the skills they are looking for will vary based on the department and role. However, from my research, as well as the interviews I conducted for this article, it’s clear that there are common skills and values that Salesforce expects from potential candidates…
1. Live and Breathe Salesforce’s Values
Part of the reason any company defines their core values is to ensure that they are hiring professionals who are aligned with them. Salesforce takes their core values very seriously, and ensures their hires, products, and company direction are constantly aligned to these values.
Before applying to Salesforce, ensure you do extensive research on their five core values: Trust, Customer Success, Innovation, Equality, and Sustainability.
Meeting these Salesforce values will ensure you are a cultural fit.
2. Learn the Salesforce Mission
Secondly, it’s important to learn the overall mission of what Salesforce is trying to do with their products and services. Salesforce’s mission is “to empower companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way” – in other words, Salesforce’s business is to help their customers grow their business.
This is at the heart of every conversation a Salesforce employee will have with a customer, so it’s important to understand how Salesforce do this through their products and services.
3. Commercial Skills
Salesforce is the fastest growing enterprise software company ever. They achieved this through innovation, putting the customer first, and being a sales and marketing machine.
Even though most people reading this will be from a technical background, Salesforce is a commercial organization, and depending on your role, a lot of conversations with customers could have a commercial impact – for example, selling a new product or more licenses.
These conversations require a certain level of commercial awareness (and common sense) to ensure you are aligning with the Salesforce sales teams.
4. Understand the Salesforce Ecosystem
The Salesforce ecosystem and the companies that live within it have a symbiotic relationship. Salesforce relies on its consultancy partners to deliver great projects, and it’s down to ISVs to produce innovative apps.
Salesforce is at the heart of this ecosystem, so it’s important to understand how everything fits together, including the types of companies, the roles in the ecosystem, and the responsibilities everyone holds.
5. The Salesforce Community
Salesforce evangelists are a big part of how the world sees Salesforce, and they are everywhere! They are hosting thousands of user groups around the world, writing blogs, creating YouTube videos, and presenting at various events.
This can also be referred to as the Salesforce community that surrounds Salesforce and its suite of products.
If you’ve been in the Salesforce ecosystem a while, you might have noticed that well-known figures in the Salesforce community often move to Salesforce themselves. These individuals will have been speaking at events, grabbing certifications, blogging online, and much more.
Salesforce loves evangelists!
6. Storytelling
Many of the common roles Salesforce professionals apply to involve storytelling. You will be customer-facing a lot of the time, selling the business value of Salesforce, and taking customers on a journey with you.
This means that your soft skills, presentation techniques, and ability to condense technical Salesforce and business jargon into a well-crafted story is extremely important.
Salesforce Interview Process
The interview process at Salesforce will typically span a few rounds. It’s clear that the process will change depending on the role and your experience level, but there are typically three or four core stages that most applicants go through:
- The first stage will be a call with a recruiter. This call will cover your basic experience to ensure you are suited to a role at Salesforce. It’s important to impress at this stage as the recruiter will move you forward, or not!
- Next there will often be a call with a manager or a team lead to further evaluate your skills and competencies. Questions typically asked by the manager at this stage are “Why Salesforce? Why now? And why you?”
- Next up, if you are applying for a particularly technical role (for example, a Technical Architect in Customer Success), then you may have a technical test at this stage to ensure you are suitable to move forward.
- Finally, a panel interview is often held as the last step before the job offer. In most Salesforce roles, you will be customer facing, so it’s important you have relevant soft skills and presentation skills. It’s also useful to be comfortable answering questions while under pressure.
Specific Roles
If you’re applying for a Solution Engineer role, you will need to set up a demo and present this back to a panel.
If you’re applying for a technical role in customer success, you will typically need to present back a technical solution, including architecture diagrams.
If you’re applying as an Account Executive, you will be expected to pitch the Salesforce platform.
- Again, the first call is with the recruiter – an introduction call. The recruiter has a fair bit of influence in the decision, so be sure to impress. They can also help you with feedback.
- The first interview is competency based, and will involve going over your resume and various scenarios e.g. “tell me about a time you dealt with a bad situation”, “how did you deal with a tricky stakeholder” – these will obviously change with different roles. A lot of this information is on Glassdoor so make sure you check it out (do your research). Also make sure the answer is personal to you – you need to be genuine, and you can’t just give them an answer you think they want to hear, as they will see right through it.
- Next up is the technical interview – typically a quickfire interview (again, check out Glassdoor). You could be asked to explain cryptography or 2FA. Just be honest if you don’t know the answer to something.
- The final interview is a panel of three or so people, who will give you a case study and time to prepare for it. For example, the CEO of a telecoms company went to Dreamforce and wants to buy lots of products. Your job is to get the buy-in, design the architecture diagram, and link these to commercial objectives.
Tips to Land a Job at Salesforce
So, as you might have imagined, the Salesforce recruiter process is pretty thorough. Salesforce is a world-class organization and wants to ensure that all new hires are aligned with their values and mission.
So, if you want to maximize your chances of applying, read on to discover a few ways to help your chances of success…
Maximize Your Existing Salesforce Network
If you have an existing network of Salesforce employees, ensure you maximize these relationships. Existing employees can refer you into the business, meaning that you can “skip the queue” when it comes to submitting your application, and of course, coming with a referral is better than not having one.
In addition, you can ask them questions; ask them about the role and what is required to ensure you are ready to meet the challenge.
Industry Knowledge
Salesforce have verticalized a lot of their teams internally – meaning that each role will fit inside a team, aligned to a certain industry such as Financial Services or Real Estate.
When applying to Salesforce you will see that a lot of the roles are aligned to an industry. To maximize your chances, draw from your previous industry experience and highlight this in your resume, as well as during the interview process.
Research
Hopefully this article has given you a good starting point in terms of what Salesforce expects from their candidates, but ensure you do your own research before applying. This should involve:
- Knowing the Salesforce website inside out. Pay attention to the language used, the business value they are selling, and read up about their company culture.
- Check out Glassdoor to understand the interview process in more depth.
- Check out great resources, such as this video, to hear from Military veterans on their journey to landing a job at Salesforce.
Presentation
Although presentation skills are important at Salesforce, I’m now talking about how you present yourself.
Although Salesforce is a fairly laid back company when it comes to remote working and the attire that is acceptable at work, they are still an enterprise software company doing million-dollar deals. This means you could be presenting to CEOs of large companies, and you need to impress them with both your knowledge and how you present yourself.
If you are interviewing at Salesforce remotely, ensure you are dressed as professionally as you would be at an in-person interview, and that the area around your desk is nice and tidy.
Ensure you dress appropriately for an in-person interview too!
Persistence
If you apply to Salesforce and fail any number of the rounds of interview, don’t be disheartened – I’ve heard plenty of stories of individuals that have applied multiple times, only to fail, fail, fail, and then land a job.
The Salesforce hiring process is unique, with a large focus on customer-facing and presentation skills. Think of each application as a learning experience – one that you will grow from each time.
Tailoring
After reading this article, ensure that you tailor your resume and application to highlight the skills and values that we’ve mentioned.
This can include commercial skills, volunteering, large presentations you’ve conducted, and any other highlights or achievements you deem to be relevant.
Summary
Hopefully this article has given you some deep insights into Salesforce’s hiring policies and what they look for in the perfect candidate. This does lead us to an answer for the question: “How hard is it to get a job at Salesforce?” As you can imagine, it’s fairly hard! Salesforce is one of the world’s leading, award-winning technology companies, and the “best place to work” around the globe is going to have a huge number of applicants.
Whilst it’s possible for anyone with the required skills to land a job, if you are currently working in the Salesforce ecosystem, you already have a massive leg up.
Salesforce love to hire from within the community, as these people understand how the platform works, along with the intricacies of the Salesforce ecosystem.
N.B – On the 12th of October 2022, various news sources announced Salesforce had laid off 90 recruiters and was implementing a hiring freeze. Salesforce still has over 1,500 open job vacancies on their career portal, and is posting jobs daily. But you can be sure that Salesforce is definitely slowing down hiring based on current economic factors.
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