Meet The First Talent For Good Cohort

Written by Susan Wright, John Stallings, Madeline Bergstrom, and Blake Becker

We are thrilled to formally introduce the first Talent for Good cohort on January 31, 2022. The first cohort consists of fifteen individuals who will spearhead the next wave of highly talented Salesforce professionals. They will not only be an asset to Cloud for Good but an asset to the nonprofit and higher education clients we serve.

An Elite Group Chosen from 1,200+ Applicants

Acting as a lock and key, Talent for Good seeks to address the Salesforce skills gap while simultaneously welcoming historically overlooked talent and helping to diversify the tech field. The Talent for Good recruitment team carefully culled through a pool of over 1,200 applicants to ultimately narrow selections down to just fifteen candidates. Many of these candidates had been exploring the opportunity of a career in the tech industry but were bumping into barriers of entry. Talent for Good exists, primarily, to remove those barriers and provide an exceptional opportunity for exceptional people.

A Robust Screening and Selection Process

The process of screening and selecting fifteen individuals from a pool of over 1,200 required an extensive application process conducted by the Cloud for Good recruitment team. With so many applicants competing for a select few spots, an eagerness to learn helped set apart our fifteen ultimate selections. Most of this first cohort has pursued additional learning opportunities, whether through previous work experience, continued higher education, technical courses, or extensive time spent learning the ins and outs of Trailhead.

In addition to an eagerness to learn, it was also critical for selected analysts to have a desire to make an impact in their careers in the nonprofit and higher education sectors at large. Cloud for Good is passionate about creating transformational change through technology, and selected cohort members needed to reflect that passion. This led us to our next step in the selection process: Salesforce demos.

More than resumes, past experiences, or showing promise, the Salesforce demo section of the application process really helped our selected cohort stand apart from the considerable competition. Selected applicants were asked to create a Playground in Trailhead and to clearly articulate the impact a platform like Salesforce can have for Cloud for Good clients. This section of the application process was particularly illuminating, as it was able to showcase an applicant’s unique ability to break down complex concepts into actionable steps, something that will be relied upon heavily when these skills are translated to working with real-world nonprofit and higher education clients at Cloud for Good. For Talent for Good Data Analyst candidates, background knowledge in SQL was required, and all candidates were provided an assessment to demonstrate their knowledge.

80% of the first Talent for Good cohort identifies as BIPOC, illustrating Talent for Good’s priority of creating spaces in the Salesforce ecosystem for those who have historically experienced greater difficulty breaking through.

Talent for Good is made possible by a strategic partnership between Cloud for Good and Achieve Partners. Further partnership with forward-thinking organizations, such as COOP, Pathstream, and Millenial Bridge, and higher education institutions, like Pepperdine University, the University of North Texas at Dallas, Dallas College, and the Community College of Rhode Island, and Salesforce through the Salesforce Talent Alliance Employer and Salesforce Authorized Training Provider programs have helped to further the reach of Talent for Good’s opportunity to aspiring young tech leaders across the country.

If you applied for the first Talent for Good cohort and were not selected, please do not be discouraged. If you were unaware of Talent for Good and are curious about applying to be selected as part of future cohorts, please be aware that Cloud for Good is actively seeking applicants for our next Talent for Good cohort.

If you’re ready to launch your Salesforce career and join the Talent for Good team, click here to apply.

Are you a nonprofit or educational institution looking for talent? Contact us today to talk about how our analysts could be embedded in your current implementation project or join your Salesforce team.