Salesforce To Add 12,000 Jobs In A Year, As Part Of Fire-And-Hire Plan

Salesforce.com Inc CRM – the cloud-based platform offering customer relationship management services, announced the "Salesforce Talent Alliance" on Wednesday.

As a part of the initiative, Salesforce, along with its partners, plans to build a highly-skilled diverse workforce following estimates from market intelligence firm International Data Corporation (IDC). According to IDC’s forecast released in 2019, Salesforce and its partners could create 4.2 million new jobs by 2024.

What Happened: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff tweeted on Thursday that the company plans to add around 4,000 new jobs over the next six months and up to 12,000 over the next year.

The Salesforce Talent Alliance has almost 200 partners scattered around 40 countries. These partners have pledged to dedicate one-fifth of their open positions to newly qualified salesforce professionals.

The partners are also required to assure job interviews for location aligned individuals and use competency-based interview questions to streamline the interview process.

Why Does It Matter: In the last week of August, Bloomberg reported that Salesforce intended to downsize in the sales- and customer-support divisions with around 1,000 job cuts.

The cloud-based software company said in a statement at the time that its strategy involved "continuing to hire and redirecting some employees to fuel our strategic areas, and eliminating some positions that no longer map to our business priorities."

Salesforce also announced its earnings for the second quarter late last month, reporting a $5.15 billion revenues at a 29% growth rate.

In August, the company's stock was one of the three stocks included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average index after an Apple Inc AAPL stock split led to a readjustment in the index.           

Price Movement: During Thursday’s trading hours, Salesforce stock dipped 2.42%. However, it gained marginally by 0.19% during the extended trading session to close at $245.