The recent growth of Salesforce confirms its continued dominance in the SaaS space. The company has been able to generate a cloud-revenue backlog of $20 billion of business on and off the balance sheet, up 40% from a year ago. And the surging demand industrywide for the enterprise cloud—whether SaaS, PaaS or IaaS—has blown away any possible doubt anyone could have about its ability to handle any type of IT workload, business challenge or growth initiative.

With an increasing number of companies adopting Salesforce, the demand for experienced Salesforce developers and consultants has sky rocketed. As such, you may find yourself struggling to find one that meets your requirements.  You are not alone: Salesforce talent is scarce. 

Here are 10 staggering Salesforce stats that explain why Salesforce professionals are so difficult to come by, and why you may want to consider using a niche tech recruitment firm to find your next one.

1.      $20-Million Customers: Salesforce said that in the past 12 months, it's doubled the number of customers at that spending level

2.      $1-Million Deals: up 43% in Q4 2017 versus year-earlier period

3.      40% of FY18 New Hires: Joined the company outside of the Americas, underscoring its evolution from an international company to a global company

4.      55% of New Business: now generated with partners, showing the carefully cultivated expansion of the Salesforce ecosystem

5.      540 Million Unique Shoppers: used Salesforce Commerce Cloud last holiday season, demonstrating enormous scale and reach

6.      $150 Million: raised full-year FY19 revenue guidance by that amount, with new range being $12.6 billion to $12.65 billion

7.      4-Year Spurt: In Q4 2017, Salesforce closed more new business than it did in all of FY 2014

8.      10 Top Customers: of the company's 10 largest customers up for renewals last year, 8 expanded their relationships with Salesforce

9.      $20 Billion Stash: CEO Benioff said that outside of reported revenue, Salesforce has $20 billion in booked business on and off its balance sheet, representing a 40% jump from one year ago

10.   $20 Billion - $22 Billion: long-term revenue guidance for FY 2022

With this kind of growth, the Salesforce talent deficit is only going to get worse. A recent report from Burning Glass analyzed the research firm's proprietary database of more than 100 million job postings collected across over 40,000 sites. According to the report, Salesforce is now the 7th most in-demand software skill, up from number 18 just four years ago. That puts demand for Salesforce skills ahead of other major players such as Python, .Net, and C++. 

Increased demand leads to higher salaries. On average, jobs that request Salesforce skills pay more than $70,000 per year, and for Salesforce Developers, more than $100,000-$130,000 per year—particularly for specific advanced skills, such as Visualforce and Sales Cloud. Salesforce administrators in the New York city area can command between $80,000 to $90,000 a year.  And Salesforce project managers, those professionals who assess what a company's doing and manage the implementation of new deployments, or that do customizations, could get anywhere from $130,000 to $150,000. (Source)

The bottom line: it is a new world out there when it comes to finding the right Salesforce talent.  Technology recruitment firms that have long standing relationships with the best candidates will be able to help you locate and recruit individuals that you would never have been able to find otherwise. And with technology platforms such as Salesforce underpinning critical elements of business operations, it is one hire you don’t want to get wrong.

About Oliver Parks

Oliver Parks Consulting offers search-based recruitment solutions to the technology sector, specialising in the ERP, CRM, CMS, ECM, BI and Open Source Technology spaces. The firm’s multilingual consultants operate in narrowly-defined niche market segments, enabling them to gain extensive knowledge of the people and companies operating in each technology.  Oliver Parks has a proven track-record with more than 100,000 candidates worldwide and more than 300 clients globally.