Salesforce is expensive to buy – but it can get even more expensive when you don’t implement or use it correctly. To ensure you are maximizing your investment you will need the help of Salesforce experts. However, hiring the right mix of staff can be a challenging task, as Salesforce skills are very high in-demand and the recruitment costs are high.
If you end up with a bad hire or struggle with making a hire in a timely manner, it means your Salesforce initiatives are put on hold, affecting the users in your organization. Bringing in contract Salesforce talent is an excellent way to onboard the people you need quickly and when you need them, but a lot of organizations fail to see the value that contract resources can have.
Here’s my take on the advantages of hiring contract Salesforce resources…
Try Before You Buy
We often hear that our clients are hesitant to hire someone because of the lack of tangible evidence that a candidate has the necessary skills. A number of clients have been burned by bad hires who seemed promising but were unable to deliver on key projects. When everything is said and done the cost of a bad hire can amount to $240,000, so we can understand their trepidation.
Contract-based hires give you the opportunity to test out the waters with a candidate without any significant commitment of time or money. You can almost think of this as a 3-6 month trial period or interview. If you end up really liking the way this employee fits into your team, then you can make the decision to hire them full-time! Otherwise, you can let them go without incurring a massive resource cost.
Less Risk
You have to deal with the hiring and firing paperwork with full-time employees, along with assuming the liability of this process. If you let one of those employees go and they disagree with the decision or feel that it was made for discriminatory reasons, your company could end up embroiled in a legal battle that takes away valuable resources.
Contract Salesforce talent falls under the management of the recruiting firm, like us, when it comes to risk. You also drastically reduce the administrative and HR overhead required with this approach.
Different Budgets
In larger organizations, often the budget, and the budget approval process, for contract staffing and full-time staffing are handled very differently.
There are a variety of legal and cultural complexities that go hand-in-hand with full-time hiring. Headcount approval, hiring paperwork, org chart modifications, recurring cost budgeting, required onboarding and training, and cultural sign-offs are all important factors in making a full-time hiring decision. For these reasons and many more, HR is essential for any full-time hire and often control the budget.
However, contract staffing is often seen as utilizing an external resource and can be budgeted into the P&L by the direct manager. Often hiring a contractor is seen as no different than if your team needed to buy a subscription service or piece of equipment, so you wouldn’t need to go to HR.
Keep Headcount Down
There are times where companies need work done but cannot change the headcount. A few examples: you’re pending an IPO, a merger, or an acquisition, on a hiring freeze, or at an uncertain pivot point in your business. Regardless of the why; hiring contract staff can allow you to keep pushing forward and producing at a high level during these times.
Without affecting headcount, you can get the most out of your Salesforce instance and not let an extremely useful (and expensive) tool go underutilized.
Faster Time to Hire
Urgent Salesforce projects come and go, but if you solely focus on full-time hires, you can end up in a difficult situation. If your Salesforce is not working properly it starts to effect reports, data, and user experience for the rest of your team. When looking for the best perm employee, the time to hire the right person can extend for weeks, or months, but often your urgent project needs cannot afford to wait!
You can hire a contractor in less than a week in most cases- so they can start helping with your more urgent projects. Not only does that help make a more seamless process for when you do make a full-time hire, but you could also find your full time hire in the contractor you use!
Not All Needs are Long-Term!
Contract talent is a valuable resource for your organization, especially within the Salesforce ecosystem. Sometimes you just do not need a full-time hire but need some extra resources to meet goals. You may need help building out new custom workflows, implementing CPQ, enhancing integrations, or moving to lightning – all opportunities to hire contract talent for the short term project!
Regardless, it is important that you ask certain questions to uncover the above – contracts won’t always be the solution, but we’ve seen plenty of instances where onboarding a contractor has saved organizations a ton of time and money.