What a whirlwind 2018 was in the Salesforce eco-system! It was full of mergers, acquisitions, client growth and product investment – all of which is great for all of us intertwined in this world, but has also led to a huge shortage in the associated skills needed.

Indeed, the main pain point for the majority of projects has been a lack of skilled Salesforce developers, which ultimately slows projects down and creates solutions that are not up to the standards required, mostly due to a lack of the code needed for the customised systems different businesses need.

I have highlighted a few reasons for this below with what I see as solutions and actions that can be taken to remedy this.

1. An inability to engage the top passive talent needed to complete the work.

With the introduction of IoT, it is so much easier to identify the right talent through channels like LinkedIn. Unfortunately, this has also resulted in professionals being bombarded by opportunities – to the extent that they have become numb to engagement on this channel. So how do you combat this? The answer lies in moving away from these platforms, which are becoming increasingly spammed, and instead creating a community of the top-rated talent in the market that you can constantly keep up to date with and engage in different ways such as events, recommendations and creating content that is useful to these people. In today’s inundated market place, you simply need to move away from the common engagement methods, and do something that enables you to form a genuine relationship with potential candidates. It is only by doing this that they will trust you enough to *want* to listen to you when an opportunity arises.

2. The plethora of open positions

With the demand being so high for skills in this remit there are now more jobs than skilled individuals to do them. Indeed, there is almost a 4-to-1 ratio of jobs to skilled individuals; which makes it increasingly harder to attract the talent to your company over others. It ties into the above, but a good way to combat this is by building robust, trusting relationships with potential candidates. Again, if you have this genuine relationship then you are much more likely to be able to break through the noise, and to advise candidates on why your opportunity beats out all the others on the market. In line with this, make sure your marketing value proposition is on point; you could lose out on a hire to a competitor if you can’t articulate your business proposition, and voice why you are an emploer of choice, through your messaging and branding.

3. Salesforce releases

With Salesforce doing 3 main releases of new products and functionalities every year, it creates the need for specific skills to come up at the same time for a multitude of businesses which ultimately creates a bidding war at very specific times (which no-one wants to be involved in unless it’s for that antique you’ve had your eye on for the mantelpiece). I feel the best way to combat this is to plan your strategy before this happens, and get ahead of the curve – which some of our clients have adopted and are seeing some real success from. If you can anticipate when you’ll need to hire someone, then you’re much more likely to have your eye on the market and be engaging candidates before your competitors.

There is a massive skills gap that is only getting bigger across the eco-system and getting ahead of the curve by having your change strategy in place is the key to a productive project that will ultimately drive your business forward and streamline processes in the long run.

These are my opinions based on my experience in the Salesforce world, and I’m always keen to hear people’s opinions and experiences on things like this in order to help each other to progress. Agree or disagree, it would be great to hear from people in this space, and I am always free for a discussion around these topics……..Happy hunting!