Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow, has revealed plans to hire up to 3,000 people.
The move will support the company’s bid to become the “ultimate” AI platform for business.
In 2024, ServiceNow reportedly had 1.5MN people apply for positions at the company.
Now, it’s ready to offer jobs to more of its burgeoning talent pool.
“We’ll hire a few thousand people, maybe 3,000 people,” said McDermott during an interview with CNBC. “It’s truly unbelievable how we are procuring the best talent in the market.”
Yet, McDermott stresses that it’s not just ServiceNow that’s hiring. Also, its ecosystem partners are recruiting, adding to its platform, and pushing the company forward. He continued:
For every person we hire, our ecosystem is hiring ten times that number. So, not only are we helping people that are brilliant get jobs, but we’re expanding the ecosystem at an exponential rate, which is why we grow so much faster.
Ultimately, the CEO hopes to make ServiceNow a business earning $30BN in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
Currently, it’s set to break the $10BN ARR barrier for the first time and is consistently growing its revenues at 20+ percent year-over-year (YoY).
Agentic AI offers a lever to push these earnings further, with numerous other enterprise software vendors lauding the technology as a game-changer.
Salesforce is one such company, which also plans to hire in the name of AI.
Last month, its CEO, Marc Benioff, shared his intention to recruit 2,000 people to help sell Agentforce as he unveiled the next generation of the platform.
Recognizing this, CNBC drew parallels between ServiceNow and Salesforce. Yet, McDermott nipped the comparison in the bud.
“They (Salesforce) have a very bespoke sales (and CX) application,” he said. “When you’re trying to put AI on that, you might optimize for that function.
When you talk about ServiceNow, we not only optimize for that function, but we optimize for all the functions. And our AI agents integrate with all the other AI agents to make them better.
An excellent example is the tech giant’s partnership with Microsoft. Here, Copilot interacts with ServiceNow AI Agents, so employees on Teams can retrieve knowledge from and automate actions within ServiceNow without leaving the UC platform.
Alongside Microsoft, ServiceNow announced co-innovation partnerships with everyone from Databricks and Siemans to Genesys and Zoom.
As AI Agents promise to flitter between these platforms, ServiceNow is well-positioned. After all, it already offers the tools to build, monitor, and optimize cross-function processes. AI Agents could augment these existing workflows in powerful ways and bring new possibilities to life.
“If you think about the marketplace today, it’s largely built on companies that are 50+ years old,” noted McDermott.
Those systems of record, they’re good, but they were built in silos. We have a platform that spans all of them because we integrate with them.
“We give the CEOs… and the great management out there one clean pane of glass powered by AI that integrates with all that and gives you the opportunity to go to one portal, one consumer experience. That’s gorgeous for getting work done.”
Moreover, ServiceNow is also benefiting from IT teams having more say in software buying decisions as interest in AI rises across various departments.
Critically, ServiceNow is a leader in IT Service Management (ITSM). As such, more IT teams are looking for solutions that integrate into that familiar environment.
ISG recently noted how this trend is supporting the growth of ServiceNow in customer service and helping the vendor pull the contact center into the broader enterprise.
In itself, this is a fascinating study, which CX Today explores deeper in the article: ServiceNow Is Co-Innovating With CCaaS Leaders: Why?
