Five Tips to Quickly Recruit and Hire a Salesforce® Administrator

Today’s Salesforce Administrator is frequently overseeing a six, or seven-figure technology investment and directly interfacing with a wide variety of business users. In addition, the number of companies utilizing Salesforce continues to increase, creating strong competition for this key hire.

Tip #1- Address Issues due to Departure of a Previous Administrator

Deactivate the User

• A Salesforce Administrator has full system administration-level access giving them the ability to delete all data and configurations. This presents an enormous security risk for companies if the departed Administrator is not frozen or deactivated immediately.

• Salesforce is a web-based application, not an internally housed application, and companies sometimes forget that although the user may have been deactivated from all internal company systems and networks, Salesforce continues to run and be accessible over the web to all active users with a user name and password.

Review Workflow, Approval, Alert, Support, Lead and Queue Settings

• The Administrator may have been the approver on, or recipient of, various system functions. Web leads or cases may have been routed to this key individual through automated settings and these settings may need to be updated. And ensure that any integrations that may run through this user account are updated.

Reassign Records Owned by Previous Administrator

• Deactivating a user does not change record ownership. This means that (depending on the organizational settings) all the lead, contact, account, case and other records that may have been connected to the now departed Administrator may no longer be visible or accessible by other users.

Tip #2- Define the Job Accurately

Avoid Filling the Job Description with a Long List of Desired Credentials

• HR will frequently write job descriptions by copying other public postings. It is common to see Administrator postings asking for Developer, App Builder, Pardot®, Community Cloud as well as strong Apex and Visualforce experience. Most Administrators are not Developers, and some skills are easily obtained; with each new credential demanded, you are limiting your respondents.

Determine What the Job Really Requires

• Salesforce Administrators wear a variety of hats; technical expert, training leader, marketer, business analyst, even project manager. Outside of the technical skills required, each of these tasks demands different personality types.

Identify How Salesforce is Being Used

• Companies using Salesforce may be at various levels of adoption; complete newbies to the system, experienced users, or struggling with a configuration that no longer works. Different skill sets and personalities are required in each phase. In addition, the organization may be using a variety of Salesforce applications and many integrated apps with heavily customized code built by others who are no longer involved.

Tip #3- Respond Quickly to Candidates that Apply

Competition is Fierce

• The number of companies utilizing Salesforce continues to increase creating a large demand for this key individual. Companies will spend thousands of dollars on recruitment advertising only to let the applications sit unopened.

Interview and Hire Quickly

• The current expanding economy has presented an environment of very low unemployment. ‘True’ (and qualified) candidates will experience multiple, competitive offers. Sometimes being ‘first’ is more important than offering the highest compensation. For this reason, companies should ensure they respond to candidates and schedule interviews quickly; internal decision-making should be efficient, and generating new hire offer paperwork speedy.

Tip #4- Consider Outsourcing Your Administrator Needs

Outsourcing Saves Money

• Our research at Snowforce, has found that the average salary for an experienced Salesforce Administrator in Los Angeles is $78,791. With benefits included, the total cost to a company is $103,531 annually (not including recruitment fees and training). See salaries for multiple cities at https://www.snowforcedata.com/salary-information

Outsourcing Provides Continuity

• Many companies have experienced a ‘revolving-door’ of Salesforce Administrators for a variety of reasons; the position is often a springboard to other positions that may emerge inside the company but more commonly the turnover occurs because as the Salesforce Administrator gains experience and additional credentials, he or she becomes actively recruited elsewhere. Every time a new Salesforce Administrator leaves, a tremendous amount of corporate knowledge leaves with them, and there can be a very long learning curve for a replacement hire.

The Evolution of Managed Services

• It is now possible to find outside resources to manage your Salesforce system on an ongoing basis. While previously many IT providers would provide network management it was difficult to find any who would take on day to day management of Salesforce.

• At Snowforce, we have built our entire business around day-to-day Salesforce system management. We view ongoing administration as the critical element to Salesforce success and adoption.

Tip #5- The Role is a Learning Role

70% of the Role will be Understanding Your Business Processes

• The Salesforce Administrator will need to truly understand the business, to provide real value. Learning each department’s business processes and routines helps to create a great system. And as these processes change and evolve, the Administrator will need to modify the system.

Ongoing Education is Critical

• Your Salesforce Administrator will need to continually learn about new features, functionality and releases. Investing in their Salesforce-related skills is critical. In addition, your Salesforce system will likely be very different than the system they may have previously managed, and in an industry or business that will be completely new to them.

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors. Examples cited in this article are only examples. Salesforce®, Pardot®, AppExchange® are trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.

© 2018 Edgemont CRM, LLC. All Rights Reserved – January 2018