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Salesforce’s Head of UK: “We Love Working With People With Passion and Curiosity”

Glassdoor Team

Glassdoor Team | Author & Career Expert at Glassdoor | 16 Aug 2017

Salesforce hasn’t just earned a reputation as a strong business — it’s also consistently been recognised as an incredible place to work. The company is currently #8 on Glassdoor’s list of Best Places to Work in the UK for 2017. With an overall company rating of 4.2 out of 5, a 98 percent approval rating of their CEO Marc Benioff, and with 86 percent of UK employees willing to recommend the company to their friends, Salesforce is highly attractive to jobseekers. And Salesforce, for their part, knows how to treat those interested jobseekers. On top of their many other accolades, Salesforce was just named among the top five Best Places to Interview in 2017. Want to be a part of this hot company? Glassdoor recently chatted with Gavin Mee, Senior Vice President and Head of UK at Salesforce, to get the inside scoop on interview deal-breakers, common interview questions and how their interview process has evolved in the UK. Glassdoor: What are the interview questions you ask all candidates? Gavin Mee: Aside from the questions that are specific to each role, we also want to ask questions that will give us a feel for each candidate’s personality and style. Some examples

Tell me about your biggest failure, why and what would you have done differently? What would your colleagues say about you? What is your greatest strength?

What are you most proud about in your career and why?

Who was your best boss and what have they given you that makes you who you are today?

What’s next for you? And will you get it if you stay where you are?

What’s the most memorable interview answer you’ve ever heard? I once had a candidate for a sales job who said, “I want to close a deal that becomes the keynote customer success story at Dreamforce.” That’s the kind of passion – which blends an understanding of sales, Salesforce and our culture – that always stands out to me during an interview and beyond. What is your interview deal breaker? Our culture is important to us at Salesforce - we refer to it as our “Ohana,” which is Hawaiian for family. It doesn’t feel very Ohana if a candidate shows a lack of respect for others by arriving late, being unkind to the receptionist or acting in an unprofessional or arrogant way. Aside from that, it concerns me when a candidate doesn’t have any questions at all, particularly when it’s early in the process, because it tells me that they’re probably not very passionate about the role - we love to work with people who have passion and curiosity! What’s the most creative/out-of-the-box question you ask at your company? A couple of my favourites that help to give a sense of a candidate’s style and personality are: When it comes to giving back, what are the causes that are most important to you? If you were taking to the stage at an event, what would your walk-on song be? What is the biggest misconception candidates have about interviewing at your company? We’ve had a lot of growth in the past few years in every part of our company, and for some candidates, that’s led to the misconception that they’re ‘too late’ to get in on the ground floor of our growth trajectory. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. With new technologies like AI coming to the forefront, and CRM growing faster than any other area of enterprise technology, there’s never been a more exciting time to join Salesforce. As head of our UK business, I’m also particularly excited about Salesforce right in this market. We’re expanding our offices in the Salesforce Tower in London - with plans to open a world-class executive centre in the coming year - and now also have offices in Manchester and Glasgow. Our ecosystem continues to grow too: according to IDC, from 2015- 2020, the Salesforce ecosystem will create 149,000 new jobs in the UK alone. How do you make candidates feel comfortable in an interview? People are the secret sauce for Salesforce growth, and as the head of UK, I interview a lot of candidates because keeping our Ohana full of passionate Salesforce employees is important to me personally and the company as a whole. So it’s no surprise that I genuinely believe it’s important to make the interview process an enjoyable and satisfying experience for our prospective employees. Interviews should always be a conversation and not an interrogation; we’re proud of our Salesforce Ohana, and we want this to come across when we meet people. So I might ask people what they do outside of work, or to tell me what they’ve done recently that really made them excited, because it gives me a potential connection point, and helps to make the interview feel more personal for both of us. Based on the answer, I also know other people in the company that I want them to meet and speak with. How has your interview process evolved in the last year? Improvements? You might know that Salesforce puts the customer in the centre of everything we do. Well, as it relates to the interview process, we’ve also ensured that we’re putting our candidate experience at the centre of this too, and my team and I are keen to ensure that we are delivering on that promise with every interview. The biggest change we made was reducing reschedules. We started to take a look at the impact that it was having on our candidate experience. Reminding our teams that candidates have choices and they are assessing us too, along with data, has helped minimise reschedules across the globe. We’re all busy - but so are our candidates, and it’s important that their time is valued. We also have a strong focus on avoiding ‘ghosting’ - or disappearing from communication with a candidate without explanation. It’s just not acceptable to me in my personal or professional life - and so whether or not a candidate’s application is successful, we ensure they receive a timely response from us and know where they stand at all stages. What is one piece of feedback you’ve received about your interview process that changed how your HR team approached candidates? As a team, we closely watch the feedback through sites like Glassdoor to understand the feedback on our interview process. As I said, it’s important to us that candidates have a good impression of Salesforce from the experience. Unfortunately, that wasn’t always the case and in some cases, candidates felt we weren’t treating them as if the interview process was a two-way street, meaning we needed to sell to them as much as they needed to sell to us. We’ve taken that feedback on-board and have been training managers to be ready to talk about the benefits of working at Salesforce and what they’ve personally gained from their time with the company. We’ve even added educational trails on Trailhead - our free, online learning tool - so that hiring managers can learn about the best engagement and recruitment practices. It’s clearly helped, and I’m delighted that we’re now on Glassdoor’s list of the Best Places to Interview! How do you define a great interview process? As we continue to grow at Salesforce, we’ve really taken a look at our interviewing process and the ongoing feedback from candidates on their experience. It’s important to make sure we can grow with the right people and culture in place. When we interview a candidate, we want them to be well prepared and excited about Salesforce, so our recruiting managers always make sure to help by sharing information resources in advance. Of course, it’s up to the candidate to prep, but we are really transparent about what information is available to them. And when they go farther - believe me, the interviewers know and appreciate that! We also want to make sure our hiring managers are adding to the experience. While we’re interviewing them, the candidates are also interviewing us. We know it’s a competitive market and the best candidates are probably speaking to more than one company. So it’s important that, as an interviewer, I’m ready to talk about my own experiences at Salesforce and why it’s rewarding to me. Outside of the interview itself, we want to make sure that each candidate feels informed, so our recruiting teams work to update them on where they are in the process and provide feedback throughout the journey. How do you evaluate an interview? I’m proud to say that we’ve recently introduced new interview feedback tools to ensure that all candidates are evaluated based on the same criteria, regardless of who is interviewing them. It’s important that we’re consistent and following up with quality feedback to candidates. What interview question stumps candidates the most? “What is the one thing you bring to the table on day 1? So if you start tomorrow, what will everyone be talking about at the end of the day?” Thank you notes: important or not necessary? Ongoing communication is the most important thing. For example, I’ll often give immediate feedback to the candidate at the end of an interview to show them that I value the time they’ve taken to come and meet with us. I think that level of communication is more important than a templated thank you note. But of course, they’re always appreciated! Paper CV on site: must-have or don’t bother? Don’t bother - just like we ask candidates to come prepared, we pride ourselves doing our homework in advance, and we will have all reviewed their resume and LinkedIn - and usually, any other social media that is open/public. More important is that they are prepared to have a conversation about their experience, what they’re proud to have accomplished and why that’s important for the role they’re applying for. We’re looking for their narrative - what they’re most proud of, what excites them, and why they’re interested in Salesforce. Early arrivals: annoying or appreciated? My personal take: Always make sure you’re there with enough time to spare so you’re not flustered and you’re ready to go. Five to 10 minutes is a good standard.

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Salesforce’s Head of UK: “We Love Working With People With Passion and Curiosity”

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