San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Salesforce hits 1 million users training for work on website
Ask Salesforce chief Marc Benioff how his company’s going to create new jobs to replace those eliminated by artificial intelligence and automation, and he starts talking about Trailhead, the company’s free training and education website.
“I want to make sure everyone has access,” he said. Salesforce directly employs 30,000 people, Benioff observed, but with training on Trailhead, “we’re talking millions of jobs.”
Salesforce’s Trailhead training program, originally developed to teach customers how to use the company’s software tools and now also offering courses on management and philanthropy, reached 1 million users this month. The company has a goal of 10 million by the end of next year.
Trailhead learners — Salesforce calls them “Trailblazers” — are able to gain skills for tech industry positions and work toward badges and certifications by completing modules like Security Basics and Account Data Strategies. The program, created in 2014, teaches more than just Salesforce skills; through partnerships, it teaches how to create a Google Cloud project or upload code to GitHub.
Sarah Franklin, the executive vice president and general manager of Trailhead and developer relations at Salesforce, pointed to the lack of
diversity in tech and the rising cost of education as two factors that highlight the need for a free training program.
“We’ve removed the friction,” Franklin said. “You look at cost, that’s not a friction. You look at location, we remove that friction.”
Learners are able to use the skills for other jobs. Many of them do contract work for Salesforce customers, whose needs include administrators, developers and technical architects — positions the courses are designed for. The company estimates there will be 3.3 million jobs created in the “Salesforce ecosystem” by 2022. Indeed.com, the joblistings
“We’re going to bring people to the new jobs that are being created.” Sarah Franklin, executive vice president and general manager of Trailhead and developer relations at Salesforce
site, ranked “Salesforce developer” at No. 6 in its 2017 list of best jobs.
A survey by Nucleus Research, a firm that looks at technology’s impact on business, found that 1 in 4 Trailhead users found a new job because of the program and that two-thirds of participants received an “above-average” salary because of the skills they acquired.
“All these industries, there’s opportunity in them, and companies — big, small, private, public — they all need people who have Salesforce skills,” Franklin said. “So what Trailhead has done is brought these million people to these jobs that people are hiring for.”
One such person is Lauren Zolp, 23, who began using Trailhead after she left the military. Zolp said she went through the Trailhead courses while her newborn was sleeping and received her certification within eight weeks after starting the program. She now works as a Salesforce consultant in Wisconsin, making about $70,000 a year.
“We’re not going to automate people out of jobs,” Franklin said. “We’re going to bring people to the new jobs that are being created.”
Trailhead is hardly the first program to teach skills through online modules. Lynda.com, acquired by LinkedIn for $1.5 billion in 2015 and now owned by Microsoft, also has courses in computer science and web development. Trailhead, though, is free. The only cost is a certification exam — about $200 on average.
Khan Academy, another free learning service, had 60 million registered users in 2017, according to its annual report.
Users say they find Trailhead’s focus on job-specific skills helpful.
Cynthia Hill of Oakland had a background as a business analyst, but said her training helped her better serve clients. She now works as a Salesforce consultant with WiserSpread.
“You don’t have to have a technical background,” Hill said. “It’s set up in layman’s terms ... so anyone can do it.”