Event Details
October 14th - 16th,
2025
Moscone Center,
San Francisco
Salesforce is the heartbeat of many modern businesses. From managing customer relationships to automating sales and marketing processes, this powerful CRM platform can transform how companies operate. But even the most advanced systems fall flat without the right person to manage them. That’s where a Salesforce Administrator comes in—and hiring the right one can make or break your Salesforce investment.
A Salesforce Admin is a highly skilled professional responsible for managing, configuring, and maintaining your Salesforce environment. They are the gatekeepers of your CRM’s success, ensuring data integrity, optimizing workflows, creating custom reports, training users, and staying ahead of platform updates.
More than just tech support, a great Salesforce Admin acts as a strategic partner—aligning system functionality with business goals. They create automations that save hours of manual work, generate dashboards that guide decision-making, and maintain data accuracy that fuels marketing and sales efforts. The best admins can scale with your business, evolve with your goals, and actively contribute to revenue growth by improving user experience and system efficiency.
Now that we’ve covered how important the role is, let’s look at the biggest mistakes companies make when hiring a Salesforce admin—and how you can avoid them.
One of the most common and costly mistakes is failing to define exactly what you need in a Salesforce Admin. Are you looking for someone to handle day-to-day support, or someone who can lead strategic CRM optimization? Should they have experience with specific integrations, like Pardot, HubSpot, or CPQ?
Without a clear scope, you'll attract candidates who may not align with your expectations. Take the time to outline technical requirements, platform expertise, and long-term responsibilities. This not only helps you hire smarter but also gives the admin a clear path to succeed once hired.
Salesforce is an evolving platform, and credentials matter. Hiring someone without a valid Salesforce Admin certification—or ignoring their actual hands-on experience—is a gamble you can’t afford. A certified admin understands platform best practices, data modeling, user permissions, and security protocols that are crucial to keeping your CRM running smoothly.
Look for professionals with both certification and proven success managing Salesforce environments in businesses similar to yours. Don’t hesitate to ask for real-world examples or portfolio work.
A common trap in hiring a Salesforce admin is focusing only on technical skills. Yes, your admin should be fluent in dashboards, objects, and automation—but they should also understand business processes.
An effective admin sees beyond the platform. They understand how sales teams work, what KPIs matter to marketing, and how to tailor Salesforce to support real business outcomes. Someone with a sharp eye for workflow optimization and user experience will create a system your team actually wants to use.
Your Salesforce Admin will interact with multiple departments—sales, marketing, customer service, leadership. If they can’t clearly explain a process or gather accurate user feedback, your CRM efforts will hit a wall.
Strong communication skills are essential. During the hiring process, pay attention to how well the candidate explains their previous work, how they translate technical terms into plain language, and how they approach problem-solving in a team environment.
Many companies wait until their Salesforce system becomes chaotic before bringing in a qualified admin. By then, poor user adoption, bad data, and inefficient processes are already entrenched.
Instead, prioritize hiring a Salesforce Admin early—ideally during or right after your CRM implementation. A good admin helps build a strong foundation, educates users from day one, and keeps the platform aligned with evolving business needs.
Hiring a Salesforce admin is not just about filling a role—it’s about investing in the long-term success of your CRM strategy. At BKONECT, we understand how critical this position is to your business. That’s why we help you find Salesforce professionals who are technically sharp, business-savvy, and ready to take your operations to the next level.
Avoid these common hiring mistakes, and you’ll gain more than just an admin—you’ll gain a partner in your company’s growth.
