Salesforce onboarded 1,839 new employees last quarter as the CRM leader looks to replenish its workforce with AI experts and boomerang hires.
Indeed – as of January 31, 2024 – the CRM leader has 72,682 employees. That’s up significantly from the headcount of 70,843 reported at the end of the previous quarter.
It’s unlikely the vendor will stop there, either. After all, Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, pledged to onboard 3,300 new employees in September 2023.
As such, expect Salesforce to add another 1,500 team members over the coming months – or perhaps even more.
Indeed, when announcing the onboarding plans, Benioff stated:
Our job is to grow the company and to continue to achieve great margins. We know we have to hire thousands of people.
The CEO also suggested those thousands of people may feature “boomerang hires” – including some of those 8,000 employees let go last year, equating to over ten percent of its workforce.
That move came as Salesforce fell under activist pressure to achieve profitability.
Yet, since then, the CRM leader has gone on quite the hot streak, with its stock up 70+ percent year-over-year (YoY).
Moreover, it has maintained double-digit revenue growth and launched the Einstein 1 Platform, which pulls its apps and solutions into a single environment.
With momentum, Salesforce has since aimed to increase its pool of AI experts – even courting OpenAI employees – and bring back former employees.
Yet, instead of grabbing headlines and drafting in staff in big batches, its hiring process is more cautious and – as Amy Weaver, CFO of Salesforce – puts it “cost-effective”.
In addition, Weaver noted that the vendor is targeting recruitment in areas with “high talent pools and low cost of living.”
That comes after Benioff himself admitted to over-staffing during the pandemic-driven SaaS boom.
The CEO noted last year: “As our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that.”
Perhaps this new approach shows that Salesforce has learned from its mistakes – and that Benioff has taken inspiration from his mentor Larry Ellison, co-Founder and CTO at Oracle.
After all, Oracle announced last year that it won’t hire tech talent from high-cost cities, such as New York, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Yet, as Salesforce becomes more strategic in its hiring, layoffs may continue as the firm aims to focus its spending.
In late January, reports suggested that the firm was set to lay off 700 employees.
However, many CX tech firms are taking similar steps to restructure the workforce for the age of AI – with the likes of Cisco, Talkdesk, and Twilio announcing job cuts.
However, Salesforce rival SAP is taking a more novel approach by reskilling 8,000 employees to ride the GenAI wave and “seize the greatest opportunity since the rise of the cloud.”
For more on the SAP story, check out our article: SAP Announces Mass Restructure, Aims to Reskill 8,000 Employees
