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.”
