Are Salesforce Professionals Still in Demand?

I work in data management for a bank, huge demand for Salesforce people in the market these days

Ziggy007 wrote: ↑ I work in data management for a bank, huge demand for Salesforce people in the market these days

I also asked couple people at banks, answer was yes high demand. Can't find enough people.

Yes its pretty huge here, and in the south.

Mind you the Salary is almost half of US for Salesforce professionals (admins and consultants) in Canada.

But you will have to get experience under the belt to be considered. Certs alone won't be enough.

There are a lot of linkedin profiles I've seen that have multiple salesforce certs but no experience to show for it. You get skipped over fast.

Ziggy007 wrote: ↑ I work in data management for a bank, huge demand for Salesforce people in the market these days

Data management and analytics also seems quite hot right now

YourManager wrote: ↑ Data management and analytics also seems quite hot right now

Very hot.

Anything data related (governance, engineering, analytics) is booming

Adjacent to Salesforce, I work with Salesforce Marketing Cloud doing email development/automation/deployment and this market is also really hot at the moment. I'd echo what others are saying though, it's unlikely you'll land something if your only experience is Trailblazer/certs. I have multiple certs, which definitely gets me a lot of LinkedIn pings, but the job experience is what matters. Certs can definitely help grow your career pretty quickly once you're in the industry though.

Another data point on salary, yes, you can definitely earn a decent salary by Canadian standards, but Canadian tech salaries are significantly lower than in the US overall. In an industry networking group I'm in I regularly see US postings for jobs equivalent to mine in the 120-150k USD range, and I'd put Canadian salaries around the 90-120k CAD range.

ABSOLUTELY. I'm regularly getting contacted by recruiters due to having some Salesforce experience (ie worked on SF projects) and I'm not technical myself. We can't keep developers. It's one of those careers where it's relatively easy to get into but if you're GOOD, you can make a name for yourself....hence the above problem.

There are a lot of 70-90k entry level jobs for Salesforce dev and admins but with a few years under your belt, no reason you wouldn't be comfortable sitting in the 100k+ range here in Canada, especially Toronto. US salaries are higher but then....personal choice whether you want to go there.

Agreed that Salesforce continues to be pretty hot as an ecosystem and talented folks who have some experience within that realm are often pounced on pretty quickly (I even recommended it as something to seriously look at for someone questioning their future last year) for at least interviews, if not resulting job offers.

I would concur with the other opinions in this thread about certifications and the Trailheads vs. real-world experience and other experience (in one's field) that one can leverage. There will be an ideal "sweet spot" where both compliment each other. For example, some people change industries or are miserable and do crash-courses in certifications over the span of 4 or 6 months and obtain a pile of those Salesforce certifications. Any decent recruiter or company will see through the "flash" of them all listed and might note their real-world experience in general, and certainly that following those shiny new certs, is limited. Then on the opposite end of the spectrum might be marketing professionals that, say, know about campaign building, marketing analytics, and other marketing techniques, or let's say data professionals who know database platforms and ETL tools. The marketing professional or the data professional can certainly leverage those skills towards different parts of Salesforce. But if they have zero Salesforce certifications, they might be seen as less attractive to a company hiring those for roles where Salesforce is partial or heavily the role. So blending certifications and industry/real-world experience is great.

And yes - I've noted U.S. firms tend to pay more for Salesforce talent. It's said the market is tight with trying to find good U.S.-based Salesforce professionals especially in very niche Salesforce areas. Some companies outright advertise "For U.S. or Canadian applicants" and are going to Canada to try to find more.

azia wrote: ↑ ABSOLUTELY. I'm regularly getting contacted by recruiters due to having some Salesforce experience (ie worked on SF projects) and I'm not technical myself. We can't keep developers. It's one of those careers where it's relatively easy to get into but if you're GOOD, you can make a name for yourself....hence the above problem.

There are a lot of 70-90k entry level jobs for Salesforce dev and admins but with a few years under your belt, no reason you wouldn't be comfortable sitting in the 100k+ range here in Canada, especially Toronto. US salaries are higher but then....personal choice whether you want to go there.

Have heard the same from someone who I worked with on a SF program. He is focused on SF and mentioned that a firm he was working at, one of the majors in the financial sector, wanted to convert all their contractors to FT. He said a few will due to personal circumstances but the majority won't because of how much work there is along with the higher rates.

We are a salesforce company and although we have a lot of internal salesforce "experts" we end up contracting out a LOT of work for specific projects. Salesforce experts are very well compensated and in high demand imho. US salaries are minimum 1/3 higher than Canada for Salesforce btw. I think only the Teaching area (public school anyway, not university) where salaries are weighted towards Canada due to Unions.

sleepyguy wrote: ↑ We are a salesforce company and although we have a lot of internal salesforce "experts" we end up contracting out a LOT of work for specific projects. Salesforce experts are very well compensated and in high demand imho. US salaries are minimum 1/3 higher than Canada for Salesforce btw. I think only the Teaching area (public school anyway, not university) where salaries are weighted towards Canada due to Unions.

Is the contracting work mostly for the developing/coding stuff?

So once you get Salesforce admin certified, how do you even get into a role? All the roles I’ve seen require 3-5 years of direct Salesforce experience…?

lovely7 wrote: ↑ Adjacent to Salesforce, I work with Salesforce Marketing Cloud doing email development/automation/deployment and this market is also really hot at the moment. I'd echo what others are saying though, it's unlikely you'll land something if your only experience is Trailblazer/certs. I have multiple certs, which definitely gets me a lot of LinkedIn pings, but the job experience is what matters. Certs can definitely help grow your career pretty quickly once you're in the industry though.

Another data point on salary, yes, you can definitely earn a decent salary by Canadian standards, but Canadian tech salaries are significantly lower than in the US overall. In an industry networking group I'm in I regularly see US postings for jobs equivalent to mine in the 120-150k USD range, and I'd put Canadian salaries around the 90-120k CAD range.

As a SFMC person, do you see contracting opportunities that could yield more $$?

cleanvibe wrote: ↑ So once you get Salesforce admin certified, how do you even get into a role? All the roles I’ve seen require 3-5 years of direct Salesforce experience…?

It'll be in baby steps unless you really get lucky.

Salesforce is really a CRM software that Sales, Service, Marketing and Field operations use. And many more. Its a monster that keeps getting bigger, its ridiculous. If you find yourself a role in one of these operations, you will have to use the job to showcase your inner expertise of the program during your daily routine work. A former colleague of mine who was a Sales Rep googled the crap out of Salesforce in our previous role, and within a year he was the go to guy for the system. Transitioned internally into solutioning roles.

What people usually do is get caught up on the daily duties, so this stuff never crosses their mind. This guy was very ambitious and was willing to learn, took it on himself and is in the CRM space now. But keep in mind the role comes with its headaches. That's why they will take someone with experience over someone without a certification.