The Hiring Edge

Salesforce Job Market 2026: The AI Skills Gap & How to Outrun Layoffs

• Josh Matthews • Season 4 • Episode 82

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Salesforce demand dropped 37% in 2024, but the 2026 recovery is already leaving "average" Admins behind. Are you catching the wave, or getting crushed by the coral?

In this episode of The Hiring Edge, host Josh Matthews and 27x Certified Architect Scott Stafford break down the "75% Delta of Pain" currently hitting the ecosystem. We move past the Reddit rants and look at the actual data: who is getting hired, who is getting $25k premiums, and why "manual configuration" is a career dead-end.

Key Insights for your 2026 Career Plan:

  • The Surfing Strategy: Why you must match the speed of the AI wave before it hits you.
  • The "Jimmy" Trap: How a negative mindset is costing professionals more opportunities than the economy is.
  • The Premium Pivot: Why RevCloud, CPQ, and MuleSoft are the "safe havens" for $150k+ roles right now.
  • AI Orchestration: Moving from "builder" to "architect" in the age of Agentforce.

Featured Guest: Scott Stafford, 27x Certified Salesforce Architect.

Stop guessing about your career. Listen now to get the 2026 Talent Roadmap.

Josh Matthews:

Welcome to the Hiring Edge, the podcast helping leaders navigate the age of AI, create teams that thrive, and build a workplace people never want to leave. My name is Josh Matthews. I'm your host. And today with me I have Scott Stafford. Scott Stafford, 27X certified Salesforce professional. He's a certified architect. He's a friend of mine. He's deeply involved in the ecosystem. We appreciate you, Scott, being here today. He's going to help me with a little bit of the flow of this and hopefully keep me a little bit grounded. What's the job market like? This is going to be great. Yeah, man. Yeah, it's it's a big deal, right? Um, I got invited by Salesforce Ben to contribute to a sort of 2026 talent update article. I think that was released last Friday, sort of third week of January. So definitely check that out. There's a lot of very bright people contributed to that knowledge base. What we're gonna do today is gonna kind of capitalize on that a little bit, but I'm not gonna really not gonna go over too much of what I shared on there. People are wanting to understand what's gonna happen in my career this year. Like, is my job safe? Or I can't find a job. How am I going to find one? Or I'm struggling to figure out what to do with my team. It's either bloated or it's understaffed. How do we solve that problem? Now, about a year ago, well, it's really probably exactly a year ago, um, I produced an article. It did quite well, and they were my predictions for what we can expect in the next one to three years from a hiring and employment standpoint in the ecosystem, specifically how is AI going to impact the job market. And I'm gonna give you the quick, uh, the quick, easy insight is this is everything that I said, a lot of what I said was kind of spot on, but the most salient points were that things have accelerated at a rate uh probably two to three times faster than predicted. Right. So right now, somewhere around 92% of software developers are utilizing AI. My prediction was that was gonna, it was gonna hit that number by the end of uh 2028, right? So I really missed the mark. And, you know, I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I've never been big into predictions. But what I did do is I tapped into over 150 sources to try and get the best, most reliable data around the state of the market. And so I want to go over, I want to go over some of that information, specifically what's the state of the job market right now. Like, are we in job recovery mode? Are we in like ecosystem recovery mode? Because not everybody feels that, right? Scott, I mean, you're on LinkedIn, you've got a lot of followers. You hear the rumblings, it's more like grumblings from the marketplace. There are a lot of people out there that are so frustrated. Man, they're so uh uh disappointed. They thought, you know, I'm gonna get this cert, and then I'm gonna make 90 grand a year, and I'm not gonna pump gas anymore. And they're still pumping gas, and they want to know what happened. Well, I can tell you what happened. First of all, uh job postings declined by about third, I think we had like a global demand drop in 2024. Global demand for Salesforce professionals dropped by 37%. That was just in 2024. Okay, that's 2024.

Scott Stafford:

That's a lot.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, it's a lot. And it was, it was about the same or more in 23, right? Everyone remembers the $10,000, or not $10,000, $10,000 million dollar bucks, 10,000 person layoff of Salesforce around Christmas of, I think it's, are we going back to 24? Is that 23? I can't even remember now. It's three years ago. So yeah, 23. So Christmas of 22. That uh was like a kick in the gut. And a lot of people never caught their breath after that. They got the wind knocked out of them, and the wind stayed knocked out of them. Okay. So we have some good news around global demand recovery. It is actually up 37%. Sorry, it's up 8% year over year.

Scott Stafford:

I was pretty impressed with that 38%. I was like, okay, that's some really good news, Josh. Right?

Speaker 1:

I know, right? Kind of crazy.

Speaker:

But I'm not sure that everybody's feeling that 8%. There's just so much happening, right, in the space, right? And you might hear those statistics, but you also want to know how does it affect like me, right? I'm still looking for a job. And though it's not 38%, but even 8%, you're just sometimes people aren't feeling that right now.

Speaker 1:

Well, 8% is nothing, right? I mean, 8% is a 25% correction against uh a 37% drop-off or 30% correction. Not even a 30% correction. You see what I mean? So have the 75% delta of pain.

Speaker:

That makes sense. I mean, I think that's what people are really feeling. We're still quite a bit down from where we wanted to.

Speaker 1:

By the way, look, the reality is not everyone's feeling it. Some people are thriving right now. In this conversation, Scott, what I'm not gonna do is I'm not gonna sugarcoat what the elephant in the room is. I'm not gonna sugarcoat what the reality is for a lot of people, but I'm also not going to be a doomsayer. You know, this is not a doom and gloom conversation. It's like, oh no, all is lost, right? It that's not the case. So, our goal here is to really just help people understand what's going on with the ecosystem in general and more specifically, what can they do about it? Because look, I've got all these numbers, and you guys can run your own LLM and AI searches, and you guys can dig in to whatever it is that you need to dig into. Um, if you're moderately good at prompting and you've got access to some decent LLMs like perplexity, deep research, and that kind of stuff, you can find this stuff out the same way I do, right? I'm just one guy. So I have my take on the market, and I have my actual interface with my clients, my interface with the candidates and the ecosystem. But I have to research this stuff, or else I, you know, all you're gonna hear is Josh Matthews' perspective. And look, it's not a bad perspective, but it's just a single perspective. And I want to give everybody a real clear vision of what they can expect. So here's what's dying right now. And everybody knows it. Like, this isn't gonna be a shock. Here's what's dying. Manual configuration tasks, right? That's dying. Entry-level support roles.

Speaker:

I mean, even the admins, they've seen their role change so much over the last year. I mean, you're no longer doing right what you used to be doing just just even nine months ago, right? There's so many new tools.

Speaker 1:

And why would you? You don't have to. Like, why would you be doing the same stuff? You know, it makes no sense. I'm not running my company the same way that I did two, three years ago. Why would I? I have fewer staff and I get more done with AI, right? But we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about what you can actually do to protect that. So manual configuration tests, basic cred operations, entry-level support roles, those are kind of going away, right? That doesn't mean that there aren't entry-level opportunities. Just remember, I said entry-level support roles. So the support roles are going away. We saw that back in the summer when Salesforce laid off 4,000 people in India in their support department. Everybody lost their freaking mind. I mean, they really lost it. But hold on, Scott, hold on. Hold on, hold on, Scott. The reality is, is when that happened, people lost their mind. But what they forgot is that they'd hired 7,000 people within the prior three, four years. Right. And so there's there can be this really um, you know, when you're just looking at a single data point, it can really kind of mess you up. This is what happens if you only watch Fox or only watch MSNBC. Yeah. Like you're gonna get a just a single point of view, and you're gonna start to kind of ideate in a single um, you know, with a sort of a single paradigm. You gotta get out of that, guys. And I I just want to say something real quick. I am constantly running into people who are AI resistant. You've met these people, Scott?

Speaker:

Yeah, I actually have a lot. And the weird part is I think it's just because they're afraid. I mean, it's not that they don't actually find technology interesting. They just saw something new and are really wondering what is that going to do to society? They're frozen. They're listening to Fox or CNN, but they're not pulling back and say, hey, what do I need to do now? Right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. Because look, here's the reality. We have an AI wave. I used to surf a lot back in the day. And for those of you who've never surfed before, the one thing that you have to do is you have to be going pretty darn close to the speed of the wave that you're trying to catch. If you're gonna catch a wave like 40, 50 foot wave like Jaws out in uh Maui, uh, you generally need a ski toe, you know, a jet ski, right? If you don't, one of two things happen. The first thing that happens if you don't go fast enough is you miss the wave. You don't catch it. That sucks. Okay. The other thing that happens is you could get the wind knocked out of you, you could be scraped on the coral down below. If you don't want to get caught inside without actually catching the wave, that's dangerous. But if you paddle hard enough early enough, and then you you catch the wave, you're cruising, man. Now you're just making little adjustments. I'm gonna slow it down so I can tube. I'm gonna lean forward so I can catch some speed so that I can catch the next wave and link a couple waves in a row. If you're really offshore, you can do that.

Speaker:

I love that analogy. I mean, because I think that's what people are feeling. I mean, you see the opportunity out there, but people want to make sure that they understand what to do, right? How do you catch that wave? I mean, how do you get in there and do the right things, right? There's so many places where you think, hey, do I do this boot camp? Do I do that? Right. How do I make sure that I'm getting the speed right and catching this wave?

Speaker 1:

That's right. Well, the first thing that you do is you make a plan. And I we can have a whole other show on exactly how to do this. First, I just want to start with the mindset, right? So, right now, I'm just gonna give you my overall thinking about what happens in 2026. It's gonna be a little weird. Hiring is taking longer. There are fewer hires being made, there's still demand for hiring. So, what does that mean to you? Look, the reality is most people can actually get a job if they have the right skill set, the right resume, they can interview and they can bring enough value. They're generally finding a job within 60 days. Okay. If people are taking six months, 18 months, then there's something wrong. There's something wrong with their resume, their LinkedIn profile, their phone voice, their ability to have a conversation, their ability to convey and articulate their talent or their value, or they're looking in the wrong place, or they're not trying hard enough. I know some people are going to be like, what are you talking about, Josh? I've been applying to, I signed up for this thing and it submits me to 200 jobs every single week, and it costs me $500, and I still don't have a job. It's like, well, this is where you put your trust in the wrong AI. Right.

Speaker:

Yeah. Well, that that would be a lot of resumes. 200 and you're not getting something, you better read the writing on the wall that you need to do. So that's different.

Speaker 1:

That's a whole other topic, but honest to God, man, that's just a this whole other weird thing that's happening with AI trying to capitalize and help people get jobs through uh automatic one-click um applications. I would avoid those. Okay. Okay. You're gonna like I already have developed GPTs and software to screen those. So that means that if you think you can just you can't just outsource your career development any more than you can outsource your um, you know, landing a new job. Good luck with that. But what you can do is you can augment it. You can augment it utilizing AI, you can augment it working with professionals that specialize in helping people land jobs. You know, you definitely want to screen those people as though you're hiring them as an employee, make sure that they're actually good at what they do and get references, things like that. But this is not a career show about um what to do if you've, you know, you can't find work. There's a hundred hours of programming from this show that you can go dig in and uh talk about it ad nauseum. I want to stay focused on 26, okay? So here's the reality uh skills that command premiums right now. People are often asking that, like, hey, what certs should I get? Right? Where should I be focusing uh my attention? CPQ experience, revenue cloud experience, mule soft uh and APIs and marketing cloud, you're gonna get anywhere from sort of $10,000 to $25,000 more for that specialty, right? So it's going and getting the cert, that's a good place to start. But the reality is you need to have exposure to it. You need to know how to do this stuff. So you can do that either by being in a company that you know already has that technology and then trying to ingratiate yourself and start to learn it and use it. You can do it through boot camps, things like that. That's a way. I don't think it's the most, but I don't think it's the best way. But these are the skills that are commanding premiums right now. But there's a skill that uh sort of circumvents all of these, like, hey Josh, what cert do I need? Right. And that is AI competency for one. That's number one.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 1:

And then there's this other thing, right? Because the reality is is admins are becoming more like um orchestrators, right? They're orchestrating AI to solve problems at scale. I think I talked about last year project managers were likely to see a anywhere from a 50 to 70 percent um reduction in PMs who haven't adopted AI. And why is that? Well, the $4 million project that used to have two or three PMs now needs one, right? Or the PM that was managing two projects, now they can take on five or six projects because they can automate a lot of the scheduling stuff and you know, a lot of you know, just even just basic LLM stuff and writing. They can just do more with less, right? So it's it's the same idea here, right? You've got to be able to take on more work, but be more efficient at it. But the biggest thing is that anytime we have like a massive influx of like a new technology, something that's going to improve uh you know task automation, um low barrier entry level, repetitive tasks, Scott. Right? What happens when they when AI takes that from the workforce, then it maximizes the need to stand out as supremely human.

Speaker:

I love that though.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean in a weird way though, that's actually a good thing. I mean, that is what people want, is we want, right, the opportunity to be more human, to be more genuine, to be more authentic, right? But at the same time, you know, you you have to become efficient as an orchestrator with all the tools to allow yourself, right, the opportunity to make those deeper connections, to be able to have more insight. But I totally agree with what you're saying. People are asking more, right? Employers are looking for more and more um value, right, for per employee, right? And then they're also being asked to provide a higher level of service. So yeah, that's dead on.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And it's it's that human, it's that human connection, right? So it's a high level of service, yes. But really, it's that deep, deep, deep human connection and that human mind to be able to figure out business problems, to figure out strategy. And you can add, like, I don't know about you, but I'll ask AI to do some things for me. I had MANIS going through about 25, 30, 3,500 uh account records, right? All I wanted it to do was figure out if these companies are still open or under a different moniker from four years ago when they were added to my database. Man, that thing ran for 24 hours, cost me like 30,000 credits, and produced nothing. Every time I got within like 200 um records of it being like ready, it would say, Oh, I lost the sandbox. You know, like it just became, it was like a nightmare, right? So, like, what's that mean to me? Does it mean Manaus is bad? No, it means that I set it up for failure, right? I should have just put in one batch of 500 at a time instead of telling it to batch it for me. Like, okay, lesson learned, right? So, you know, we've got to learn those things and we learn it through pain, we learn it through hard knocks, and we learn it by trying. But if you're not trying at all, you're not gonna learn it. And if you're not learning it, you can't talk about what you learned in a job interview. So good luck with that. Have fun with that. Next time you get interviewed, you're like, uh bleep bleep blee, I don't know, right? So, you know, you just gotta kind of like be vulnerable here. But back to the human side. I'm really not at this point, clearly, I'm not really looking at my notes. I don't think I have been. But I want to talk about what that means.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 1:

So um Jimmy gets a job in in 2020, or let's say 2022, and Jimmy's an admin. All right. So he goes to work, he does his thing, he does all of his admin stuff. Then he finds out, you know, um after uh a few years, he can start to lean into the LLMs and this kind of thing. Um, but he's not into it, he's not really down with that. He just wants to keep doing what he's doing. But then AI hit. Like, and it hit hard. And he he was started to be more started to be asked of him, right? He started to get scared, he started to get a little bit nervous. He wanted to settle his nervous system down a little bit. So, what does Jimmy do? He jumps on LinkedIn, he jumps on Reddit and starts talking about his fears in a public way, and people are listening. He starts to get a bunch of followers now that he's talking about fears of like hey, Benioff said, you know, redu this about reducing headcount. All of a sudden, he's popular. He's getting some attention. He feels really valuable. Oh, this needs to be heard. Like, I've got a voice in the ecosystem. I'm really going to express myself now. What he's doing isn't actually improving his career. It's scratching an itch. It's helping him feel significant because he's not feeling so significant at work anymore. He's feeling afraid for his career. Does that make sense?

Speaker:

Yeah. I think what you're really learning in, right, is fear, right, breaks down love, breaks down movement, right? It can solve a need, right? You see that a lot of times on you know, different Fox or whatever. They sell fear. But everybody sells fear. It's not just Fox.

Speaker 1:

Everybody sells fear, Scott. So let's get real about that.

Speaker:

So much opportunity out there, right? What you want to do is you don't want to get afraid of it. You don't want to actually take other people down, but you want to actually be optimistic about the opportunity and lean in that way for yourself, right? And it it's it's a hard, it's a mindset, right? If you wake up in the morning, you say, How am I gonna look at this cup? Right. I mean, to be honest, everybody always says, right, hey, whenever you have a lot of transition, there's incredible opportunity, but then there's a lot of change and some people get afraid. But if you lean in, you're gonna be able to start paddling and catch that wave that you said.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And you're gonna take advantage. You don't want to be on the beach, I can tell you that. And you don't want to be under the wave. Like neither of those are good. But I'm seeing this a lot. This Jimmy's story. Jimmy's not a real person. He's an amalgamation of about 300 Salesforce pros that I'm seeing. And there are a lot of people that listen to them. There are a lot of, you know, hundreds of thousands, thousands of people are listening. Oh, you're so right. Oh, you're so right. You're getting distracted. Okay. You're getting distracted by something that is making you feel safe temporarily, by something that's making you feel good temporarily. These people actually knew what was best for your career, they'd be giving you much different information. Okay. So if you see anything where they're bitching about layoffs or complaining about this, just be aware. Just I want you to, in your mind, go, is this this is what Josh told me about. I need to turn this off. And I want every time I hear someone, like I just saw the other day, information was leaked that uh Amazon's gonna lay off 30,000 operational people. 30,000 people, man. Well, you can start flipping your lid and losing your mind, but it's not like people haven't been talking about this for two freaking years, right? So I think number one, don't act surprised when you hear about layoffs. Two, don't be terrified when you hear about layoffs. If you're not like happiness is when expectations meet reality meets expectations. So let's set your reality here. There's gonna be a lot of there's gonna be a lot of layoffs. Okay. There's gonna be a lot of layoffs in 2026. That's just, of course, you're gonna see. Artists are getting laid off. Support people are getting laid off. I know, oh, but Salesforce, you know, Agent Force Service Cloud sucks. And it's not, whatever. Get over it. Okay. They're getting, it's gonna get better exponentially. Everybody calm down, right? It's the reality. So, what are you gonna do about it? People, you have got to, for 2026, here's what I want you to do. I want you to, one, recognize the fear articles. They want likes, it feeds their ego, it drives sales for their boot camp. It drives sales for, you know, whatever consulting they're selling you. It drives sales for their little $400 a month, AI this, AI that. Okay. Don't get left behind. Sign up now. Okay. The reality is, is they're not wrong. You will get left behind. I don't know if you should sign up now, though, but but you will get you will get left behind. Instead, when you hear that, I want you to think this is normal for the world we're in right now. Get comfortable with it. Don't want anybody to be surprised anymore. It's not 2022. So can we move on? Okay. It's like someone who's complaining about, you know, their ex-husband from 30 years ago. It's like, get over it. Okay. Like, time to move on.

Speaker:

When you recognize it, shouldn't you also keep yourself a little bit away from it? I mean, I think it's it's wise to see the articles and I recognize them. And then I actually unpurposely don't digest it because I am conscious of what I put into to my body, to my mind. And I'm like, I'm not gonna go on Reddit and read all this Debbie Downer stuff, right? I'm actually going and saying, hey, I see what's happening, but there is opportunity. Well, you're probably gonna talk a lot about the jobs, you know, that are changing, but there's lots of new jobs that are happening, right? Right. So talk a little bit about that though. Once you recognize it, how much of it should you should you ingest? What when should you tell yourself, hey, that's enough?

Speaker 1:

Well, look, I I think I think um a headline is enough to know like, yeah, I don't really need to get into that. Now it doesn't, it makes sense to understand what's going on in the market, right? Like I digest some of this stuff. What I don't do is, and I try not to, because I know how I am. If I start diving into all the comments, like I'll see an article or a post and I'll be like, this is just such drivel. Like there's a billionaire that is making you believe in this stuff somewhere, regardless of the side of the aisle that you're on. There's a billionaire behind it. Okay. Yeah. And they want, they want you to click on this stuff. And they, if it's not your idea, then then you're being used by the person who had the idea, right? To be at their megaphone. Right. It's like all these people who show up at protests and they're given a megaphone, and you're like, hey, where are you from? And they're like, hired actors, you know, like this stuff is real. So I just think that it's really important to just see it, recognize it for what it is, and move on. If you stay in your lane, you stay focused, I don't in your lane, but if you stay focused on what can I do today? Right. Um, have I created a career plan for myself? All of this stuff, by the way, Scott, it really starts with getting really good at prompting. Okay. So I know some people who are okay at prompting, and they've taken my advice and done this very simple thing where you go in and you say, okay, I want you to no fluff, rate, rank me on a scale of 100. Like, where do I sit in as far as you know, you know, prompters? Like, how are my prompting skills? No fluff. Gotta say that. No fluff. You can't hurt my feelings, be honest. Okay. And then by the way, tell me what I should do differently. What can I do to get in the top 5% of prompters? So I've had people do this and they come out and they're like, Josh, I scored. I'm in the top 20% of prompters.

Speaker:

Well, that sounds good, but that's not necessarily that great, right?

Speaker 1:

It's it's not good at it's not good at all. Because if you're in the top 20% of prompters, um, that means that, first of all, that means that you're probably in technology. Okay. So it probably means you're in like the bottom 50% of all technologists. So everything's relative. Yeah. Right? It all it all matters. So it doesn't matter what it comes back and says. You just want to say, I want to be in the top 5%. Create a lesson plan for me where I can learn how to do the two or three things that are most important that will get me better results. You know, some and by the way, LLMs won't always tell you this, but like push back. Yep. How do you come up with that? That doesn't make sense to me. Oh, yeah, you're right, my bad. Right. I do this every day, all day long. Or I heard this one from a friend of mine at a group that I go to um the other day, and he said, Yeah, I tell it to give me uh an estimate on its confidence level with its response for everything. It's just a quick text, you know, um, you know, like shortcut, like drops it in on every prompt. And so it'll come back with this information. It'll speak very confidently. Oh, this is how you want to do that. Go this and then do this. And then confidence level, 77%.

unknown:

Right.

Speaker 1:

Then he's like, how come it's not a hundred? It's like oh yeah, it's actually 50%. Here's why I forgot to look this up. I forgot to do that. I didn't do this. Okay. Come up with an answer that you're 90% sure of.

Speaker:

You have to learn, right, to use the tools, all the tools, right? You you use the tech tools in the Salesforce ecosystem, but then you you learn to use other tools, right? Where there's more tools for us to learn, right? And then we also have to learn to use ourselves as a tool, like we were saying before, right? Your mindset, be be right intentional about what you ingest and talk to yourself positively about like what you're gonna do so that you can paddle up really quick and ride that wave. That's right. It's really important. This is a really good advice. I love this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's good stuff, man. All right, we've got a lot to cover and only 20 minutes left or 15, 20 minutes left. So I want to dive into this a little bit more. Okay. Um, we've talked a little bit about what's most valuable right now from like, you know, the big shift into like Rev Cloud, marketing cloud. This is where you're gonna see a little bit more money. Um, the return on investment question around uh what specific certifications, look, uh platform developers, certified admins, admin cert path, you know, boot camps, like these sorts of things. And the reality is I think that anyone who's doing anything, whether you're a developer, an admin, architect, whatever, where to spend your phone. Look, you've got 27 certs, Scott. I would bet you $1,000 that you haven't actually had to use every single one of them. Would I be accurate? That would be very accurate. Okay, and I would make myself $1,000 very quickly if you actually took that bet, which you're smart enough not to, because you already know the answer. But but the reality here is that getting uh certs is great, but getting good at understanding how to communicate your value, how to deliver good business insight, how to orchestrate multiple AI uh platforms together to work together, how to create flows and automations, that's where your value is gonna be. This isn't necessarily just about, hey, Josh, I want to make more money, what do I do? This is more about like, hey, I don't want to be left behind in two years or by the end of the year, I don't want to lose my job. I need to demonstrate to my current employer that if I'm on a team of 12 and they're gonna cut it down to seven or eight, that it I should, it should be obvious that clearly I'm definitely one of the ones that they want to keep.

Speaker:

Okay.

unknown:

Right?

Speaker 1:

Does that make sense? So whether you're looking for a job or here's the thing, Scott. Whether you're looking for a job or not, you should always be looking, at least minimally, to keep the job you've got.

Speaker:

Right.

unknown:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's different.

unknown:

Go ahead.

Speaker:

I'm hearing that a lot. I mean, I've actually had someone that called me up and they said they were sat down by, you know, their CEO, and they said, you are really good, right? You know a lot about technology. You're a great developer, but we're you're on notice here that you need to offer more with your human skills. They said that we want you actually speaking up more. We want you contributing more to the strategy. And they came to me and they're like, scared. What programs do I do? And I said, Yeah, I think the good part is that they didn't just let you go, right? They valued all of your experience, and now you have an opportunity, right, to actually strengthen that. I think you guys have probably already heard. I always say that, hey, what differentiates us, right? We have machines here, right? AI is a machine. And what's different between AI and us? And you would say, well, it's some of your human skills, right? It's your inspiration, it's your wisdom, it's your insight, and it's your heart. So strengthen those. And then also, right, make sure you're peddling, right, and keeping up to date with all the technology, right? Now, you know, find which certs are gonna be of value, but also complement that, understanding that you're an orchestrator, right? You're gonna use all the tools, right? But the human skills are becoming really important.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And look, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna plug my friend's um training academy real quick. It's um uh people first method. That's John Klein's group.

Speaker:

He is incredible, right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's so good. And and I've I've placed two of his graduates. Um, it's he really knows how to, he's he's just got this very special, in-tune talent um and a level of patience that doesn't match mine. You know, I'm like, just do this, why not? Just get it done. Um, you know, he's very compassionate, he's very patient, um, and he's a very understanding leader, and he teaches people how to how to be that, you know, in their own careers, in the current jobs and the jobs that hopefully they they'll get someday. Okay, a little bit more to cover. I want to give some people some practical, practical um advice before we bogue out here, and then I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. We did not get any questions on our live show because I botched the start and stop. Sorry, people. My bad. Won't happen again. I hope I didn't lose you forever. Probably did, but I don't know. We'll see. Okay.

Speaker:

So uh I think with this content, right, and helping people right to really adapt. And you're I'm gonna ask you, right, for three right core things that people should do right now. Sure, you already said one of them, right? That really just blew me away, right? Make sure that you take care of your mindset and be conscious of what you're ingesting. But give people three tips, right, right now, the beginning of 2026. What would you do if you have been looking for a job for three months and you're not getting any traction?

Speaker 1:

Okay. Um first of all, uh accept that holiday and January time is not the best time for the job market. Right. So a lot of people are like, oh yeah, I'm gonna start looking for a job in the new year or, you know, after my kids are back in school or right after Thanksgiving, things kind of quiet down and I've got more time. I don't know if that's the best idea, you know, because it's quite quiet in the job market in the Salesforce ecosystem until mid-February, after after, you know, after the February shuffle at Salesforce. A lot of clients are having their budgeting meetings throughout the month of January. I know I've had a three jobs that I was working on, all got put on hold with a couple different companies because of that. It's pretty normal. It's not like I don't see it every year. It's pretty normal. So just understand that one of the components might be the timing. The other thing that I'd say is you want to take full responsibility for what your assets are, your LinkedIn profile and your resume. There are people out there who are targeting 300, $300,000 and $400,000 jobs. And guess what? They spent money on their resume. I interviewed a guy for a three, $400,000 job the other day. Kind of an old guy like me, like us. And he was self-professed, uh, very good at AI, used AI to create his resume. His resume sucked. Like it sucked garbage. Um, it wasn't good. And I told him straight up, like, I'd be happy to interview you, but I'd need to see a better resume first because I couldn't even just float this to my client. It's not, you're you're not even close to competitive with the other candidates that I'm working with. So if you fall in love with your resume, that's like falling in love with your dog and thinking that your dog's the most beautiful dog in the world. Half of dogs are the ugliest dogs in the world. Okay, so try to remember that. By the way, we're getting a new puppy. I just put a deposit down yesterday, so I'm really excited. But um but but it's true, like half of dogs are the ugliest half of dogs in all the world, right? Do we have any tips for people to actually evaluate? Hold on, I'm I'm I'm telling you, Scott, hold on a second. So so what you need, yes, so what you need to do is you you need to stop falling in love with what you've created, right? And that means you need to get a second, third party opinion, not from someone who loves you, from someone critical, right? From someone very critical, and not just AI. Talk to someone who's a hiring manager that you're friends with, an old boss. What do you think of this? And you gotta tell them, like, be straight up with me. Like, I don't want any fluff. Don't kiss my ass. Like, tell me, right? Here's here's an idea. Read it out loud. If it sounds not good or not compelling, then you've got a problem. Here's another thing. Go look at other resumes of people who've been hired or read their LinkedIn profiles of people who've been hired at the kind of jobs that you want. What do their LinkedIn profiles look like? What does their about section sound like? Right? Like start comparison, but get out of your own head. Usually people build something, develop it, and then they wonder what's wrong and they don't look at themselves. It's you. I'm just gonna tell you, if you're not getting a job right now, it's you, okay? It's not the market. And that's gonna sting for a lot of people. Sometimes it's timing, but most often it's you. You've chosen to not do certain things that you should, not write things that you should, not research things that you should have, not change things soon enough that you could have, or maybe you didn't conduct yourself in a way that you should have in past jobs, and now you're the person who's got six jobs in six years, and you're wondering why people why the phone's not ringing off the hook. There's going to be some market to that, like stuff to that, but it doesn't matter. You know, I really like this idea that the world is an anvil and experience is the hammer, and you're gonna get hit. Like you're gonna get hit. But man, if you analogy if you if you're not if you're not getting sharper by all of these smacks in the face, by all of these hammers that you're taking in the job market right now, then you're not learning. And you have to ask yourself, what is it about me? What level of hubris, ego, self-protection, nervous system protection? What am I so afraid of if I actually look at myself and say, I've got a problem. So you've got to get really, you've got to do two things. You've got to be vulnerable with yourself and look at yourself in a really deep way and say, how am I like responsible for this? And then gird yourself because you're going to be faced with a challenge. And everybody's heard me say this before. A challenge is uh nothing's a challenge unless you seriously, seriously want to quit it at some point. Okay. So you've got to be willing to go through a little bit of hell. It won't take too long, go through a little bit of hell. Do things you don't want to do, be a little bit uncomfortable, right? And just not quit for a period of time till things get easier. So do that. If you're anti-AI, get over it. If you don't, you will screw yourself and everyone around you. And by the way, I'm just going to appeal to your ego for a minute. You'll look like an idiot. Okay. You will look like an absolute moron if you're like Mr. Anti, Mr. and Mrs. Anti-AI, whether that's, oh, the data centers are killing the environment, whatever. You're going to have to get over it because this wave is not stopping. And by the way, AI is not going to put you out of a job, but people who know AI will.

Speaker:

Right.

Speaker 1:

That's your biggest problem right now. Does that make sense?

Speaker:

No. I think also really what you said too, where you have to be honest, right? You have to be intentional about what you're ingesting, right? And then be honest with yourself. Like if you're not getting a job, like you were saying, right? Be honest and say, hey, maybe I think what I'm doing is right. Go to somebody and say, hey, take this thing and rip this apart. Tell me what I could do different, right? Yeah. I I actually got the opportunity that to get on the call with you before you made that decision. And we both talked back and forth about 2026. And we said, hey, what are we going to do? And for me, I was actually not actually jogging as much. And I said, I'm going to get out there. And you said, Me, I'm not going to do these things so I can sleep. And we both leaned in. We both said, Hey, well, we're going to hold each other accountable. Right. It was we were brutally honest, right? On that call. And it wasn't comfortable, but you know, it made a difference. So no.

Speaker 1:

And you can get really comfortable with discomfort over time. You do it enough.

Speaker:

Yeah. You know, it's just a good friend of mine, um, Anna Marie Boss, always says, a little bit of suffering can become addictive. You can get used to, you know, that challenge, right? And pushing through.

Speaker 1:

So that's right. Absolutely. Scott, let's do this. I want to cover some basic things and then I'll answer any last questions that you might have. Um, just real quick, MuleSoft, we've got almost 10,000 jobs open on Indeed, Data Cloud, over 185,000 jobs nationwide that are citing data cloud right now. I don't know if that's true or not. CPQ, right around a thousand jobs. This is so much less than 22, but it's so much better than 24, 25. So it's not, it's not bad. They cover some quick demographics. Women, female developers, about 28%, female admins, about half. Um, and uh women who are remote, about 61% higher than men. That tracks. I I mean that shouldn't shock anybody. Um I do have people like, well, there should be 50% of female developers. It's like, no, there shouldn't. Not any more than there should be 50% of nurses should be male. Um, men like things more than women like things. Developing is a thing-oriented thing. Most women lean more towards people. I actually spec to the category. I'm I'm like a man who specs more to the female interest, human behavior, and people more than most guys. I'm less about things. Um, so you know, you can cross over both sides, doesn't matter. Um entry-level reality, uh, with the smallest percentage of jobs out there, about 9% of job postings right now are for entry level. Um, there's also a massive oversupply of entry-level people. So people are like, hey, Josh, I'm gonna get my certification in admin. I want to be an admin, I want to do this. What should I do? And I'm just gonna tell you right now, just stop. Just stop with your thinking.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 1:

Just slow down. You want to get your certification, that's fine. If you're banking on Salesforce as an entry-level admin, you're probably gonna be um in for a rude awakening. I mean, you could always just learn acting and go to Hollywood and make yourself a movie star because it's not that different than trying to do that right now. It's difficult. It's really difficult. So if you're not bringing to the table some other skill set like you're, you know, dyed in the wool over a nonprofit, right? Or you really understand military and defense, or you've got a secret clearance, or you know, you came from an engineering background, or you used to code C sharp and C, or you know, something that's gonna give you some sort of advantage in the tech market. I would say that there are other jobs you could do that are going to be easier to get. You know, you could also start your own business on AI. I mean, you we all hear these stories like, oh, in four hours I built a system that makes me $10,000 a month. Okay. That's not um everybody, by the way. But getting really, really good at that and having all the time in the world, you you can do it. You know, you you could do it. So I'm just dissuading people who have no idea what tech is about picking Salesforce as the thing that they want to get into. I'd pick AI in general. If you want to get an admin cert, go for it, but I'd be careful. Um, should you get certified before applying? Yes. Contract or full-time, which is better. Well, people were gonna see a lot more contract in the next year. Anytime we're seeing a slightly shrinking market, companies are afraid to overinvest too fast. So they'll go probably see a little bit of a bump in contract hiring in 2026 from 25, I think. Um for sure. Uh sometimes people are asking me, like, hey Josh, how do I compete with offshore talent? Well, you know, one, you either compete with them or you don't. Like, I don't. You can go get a recruiter for 1500 bucks a month. Good luck with that. You know, like it's not the same thing. Okay, so uh I really wouldn't worry about that. If you're in the US and you're a citizen or a green card, like just like you've got a you just know you've got an advantage, like uh automatically. Um, as far as which industry cloud has the most opportunity, I'd say finserve and healthcare are probably the biggest. Rev cloud's great too. We're seeing some with field service. There's a little bit more demand. I was just walking down the hall and I saw Brett who I think just sold um Ner Neuroflash to um to Accenture this year, right? So he's like right here in the building sometimes. Like it's clearly you can grow a business like that and sell it and do quite well. Um it's not easy, the easiest thing in the world, but special specializing is just that it's specializing. And you can usually make more money as a specialist, but you can also get cut out faster when tech takes over that specific sector or the specialization with unique skill sets no longer matter. Um, that kind of thing. Okay, so 26. In summary, what can you expect? Um more jobs than 25, longer times to get hired than 25, um, more layoffs of uh entry-level or basic repetitive task employees across the board, across the whole world, not just in Salesforce. Um, how do you stay on top of it and get really good at AI, starting with getting very good at prompting, um, taking a good hard look at yourself, being honest, being vulnerable, and then attacking these specific behaviors or philosophies that are holding you back. So if the philosophy is corporate America is bad and you're trying to get a job in corporate America, you now have a problem. Okay, you're not gonna win that. You're always gonna be in conflict. And guess what? If I interviewed you and that came across, I'm not gonna hire you. Period. No freaking way, man. Okay. If I look up your LinkedIn and you're bitching and complaining about the job market all the time, um, am I gonna hire you? No. Why? Because you're negative. Why does that matter? Because there's enough of that internally inside all of us anyway. Those people repeat, you know, we repeat like 90% of our thoughts. We just repeat over and over again, and the majority of those are negative thoughts. Why would we want to bring anyone else into our loop that's going to just amplify that? We don't need it. And the walls calm down, everybody, focus on yourself, focus on your family, be kind to one another, do good things, right? This kind of stuff, do that. You know, lift people up. And I like to lift everybody up here by continuing this live program. And my commitment to you is that I'm not going to screw up the uh live login like I did this week. Boy, did I blow it. And I'm so embarrassed. But we'll be back in two weeks. Um, Scott, any last questions that I can answer before you go ahead and call it a wrap for today?

Speaker:

I actually have one question, really, I think important. How long should somebody take, right? If they're applying for what period of time? Is it two months, three months, and they're not seeing some traction, how long should they stop and actually say, hey, this isn't the market. This is me. Right. I I'm asking this question because I actually ran into somebody quite a few years ago. And she told me, she goes, I've been looking for a job 14 months. And I said, Whoa. I go, number one, I'm not sure you should tell anybody that. And number two, what are you doing? And I found that she was, she wasn't in Salesforce ecosystem, she wasn't in anything. I said, like, you have to be intentional. Like you're going to just keep doing this for years. And I I helped her, mentored her, and I got her a job. I said, I told her what to do and what to be intentional. But a lot of people might be starting to go for six months and they're not realizing, hey, now it's time to go for a walk, or or when is it time to take a serious look at what's going wrong and say, hey, maybe it could be what I'm doing or my mindset or something else. So what is your timeline there? Do you usually think?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, day one. Day one right away. Yeah. Like, do you like here's the thing? You run an email campaign, you do some A-B testing, you're gonna know inside an hour what emails are what, you know, what subject line's getting opened or not. Right?

Speaker:

Right.

Speaker 1:

Like if you don't like here's the thing. First of all, if you have to go hit the open market, in other words, if recruiters aren't contacting you with viable jobs that you're qualified for, that you would say yes to, that pay what you want and you're doing what you want, you already have a problem. Right. Like if if I have a business and people aren't referring people to me and companies aren't calling me up and saying, hey Josh, I need some help. I found you online or whatever. Um, can you help us hire this person? If if the only way I can get business is by cold calling or hunting and pecking and trying to meet new people all the time, I've already got a problem. Right? So, unless you're in three or four high-quality conversations with several different companies about jobs that you really want, then you've already got a challenge. And you should start looking at yourself right away. Okay. And the first thing that I would look at is what have I done from a decision-making standpoint on my job transitions? Like, have I jumped chip too often, been fired too frequently? Right? Start there. And then you need to do some real deep dive, talk to a therapist or someone, and figure out what is it about you that has you accidentally creating hostility or pointing blame at others that makes you someone that other people don't want to work with. Okay. So that's part of it. Okay, sometimes things just bad things happen, can happen three times in a row, but they don't happen five times in a row. So if it's four or five times with you, it's it's I promise you, if you every place that you've worked at, worked at is quote unquote toxic, you're the toxic person. You're the toxic person. Crazy, batshit, crazy person. It's you, okay.

Speaker:

Sorry. No, I mean so it's true.

Speaker 1:

So start right away. So start right away, okay? Next thing, look at your resume. Um, what would you earn if you got a job in 30 days for the subsequent five months? And what would you earn if you didn't get a job for six more months? You need to take an appropriate people are like, oh, I'm gonna buy an engagement ring. It's three months' salary. It's like, well, how much would you spend to get a job? A life coach from Tony Robbins, maybe, or People First um uh methodology, you know, training course with with John Quine, or you know, Jules Bracy DeMaio, expert job hunter, if you're director level and above, expert at job hunting, LinkedIn and resumes. Like if if you're not spending, it's like if you're not spending money on advertising, you're wondering why you're not selling anything, then you've got a problem. So you've got to spend to receive. So think, and you're either spending your time and expertise. My guess is you don't have the expertise. Okay. So that means you have to spend some money, you know, to consult with people. I mean, I'll I I do it for free for people sometimes. And sometimes people like Josh, I really need your help. I'm like, great, it's 500 bucks an hour. You know, you're gonna walk away with stuff that you could have learned by listening to my show for free, but that's what it costs, right? So, but find people who are gonna point you in the right direction, make your resume shine. Here's the other thing you have to ask yourself, am I getting invitations, but that I'm bombing in interviews? Right? Or am I, you know, not getting any invitations. So if you're getting invitations, a lot of them, your resume and LinkedIn are okay. If you're not getting pushed to second and third rounds, there's either a problem with your interviewing, or there's a problem with your ability to articulate, or your resume is full of crap, and you over, you know, sort of like painted a slightly more favorable picture of yourself than your actual experience can hold up under pressure, under a live interview pressure. Do you see what I mean? So there's a lot of adjustments here. We're not going to solve it right now, but that's what I would be doing. I'd start day one.

Speaker:

That's really good. I mean, I think that's actually even more than I would have said. I would have said, hey, give it two months, and if you're not getting some traction, but you're saying just be honest with yourself, right? If if you sent up something and you're not getting any traction back, evaluate what's wrong, right? And you gave really practical um insights there, right? If you're sending out a resume and you're not getting any invitations, then that's the problem. If you are getting invitations, but yet you've had 10 interviews and you weren't able to get a job, then you need to work on that skill. Very, yeah, that's with this. Very good insights.

Speaker 1:

That's what's up, man. All right, guys. Thank you for being on the show, Scott. And uh thanks for everybody who's listening to this program. We're going to uh be back in two weeks. I'm not exactly sure what we're gonna cover, but I have a feeling that I want to talk about how the Salesforce career ladder is broken. Okay. Salesforce career ladder is broken. So that'll hopefully offer even deeper insights into how to uh hire, better, grow your career. Uh again, check us out on um BuzzSprout. You can check us out on um uh Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the Josh Force channel on YouTube. This will be up probably in about a week, something like that. So you can check that out. You can also check it right back here on LinkedIn. If you're listening to this program and you want to see me and Scott's uh mugs um yapping away, you can just go to LinkedIn or go to YouTube. Okay, until then, take care. Good luck, everybody. Bye, and have a great 26.

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Josh Matthews

Host
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Scott Stafford

Co-host
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Vanessa Grant

Co-host