Suzana DelliSanti, vicepresidenta sénior de Futureforce, habla sobre el futuro de la contratación universitaria en un mundo virtual

From reimagining a global summer internship to disrupting virtual campus recruitment, Salesforce’s University Recruiting Team, Futureforce, has kept busy during COVID-19 finding new ways to connect with future Trailblazers remotely. 

After a successful virtual summer program — involving more than 700 summer interns — attention turned to a fully virtual fall campus recruitment, and what the future holds for graduates in a completely virtual jobs market.

Leading the charge in these uncharted territories is SVP, Employee Recruiting and Futureforce, Suzana DelliSanti.

In 2015, Suzana took to the helm of Futureforce, fresh from the professional recruiting leadership team at Salesforce. Bolstered by tenured recruiting roots, Suzana’s vision was simple: to bring Salesforce university recruitment on that path of digital transformation. 

Salesforce’s exponential expansion was in full swing half a decade ago, yet Futureforce was not well known on campus. Her mission was to educate the (then) first waves of the Gen Z demographic in a scalable manner, delivering relevant content on the right platforms and across multiple global academic cycles:

“We have new university classes every year who have never heard of Salesforce, who need to be educated early in their academic backgrounds about who we are. Why? Because they will either become a future customer, an employee, or a partner. We needed to build a self-regulating and scalable framework that would allow us to achieve that,” explains Suzana. 

And build they did! Futureforce has grown exponentially since its conception back in 2014, and continues to put the candidate at the center of the recruiting experience. Suzana’s Futureforce team of recruiters, talent scouts, programs and marketing specialists are driven to be at the very cutting edge of innovation and lead the charge in how to engage with the Gen Z audience.

“They are our future talent and they will be the ones who transform Salesforce into that envisioned $30b company. Gen Z are essentially the upgrade to the future. And they are in a unique moment in time now where they are learning, working, and collaborating in this new virtual world. They will bring their beginner’s mindset and this innovation in to the workplace. And this in turn will impact how our product will perform for our customers,” says Suzana.

Futureforce has a huge role to play in Salesforce’s mission to accelerate towards a workplace that reflects its customer base and global communities. “Our next generation will be inherently diverse, and we need them to bring that fresh perspective to our company,” adds the SVP.

And as the team moves its fall recruiting strategy online, Futureforce has seized the opportunity to reach further into the student community, unburdened by the confines of a traditional on-campus career fair. The question remains: Will Futureforce be able to make the virtual recruiting environment personable, useful, engaging and fun? 

“We have this amazing ability to be creative in how we’re sharing what it’s like to work at Salesforce, even in this virtual world, there is a constant content experience through Instagram, Youtube, through our campus ambassadors and Gen Z influencers. But I’m eager to get feedback from this next generation; they will be almost be a year in a virtual life when they join us in 2021. They will have a lot of ideas and it’s going to the type of feedback that we’ve never had before.”

It would be remiss to not to ask the original Futureforce champion to share some wise words. Here are Suzana’s top three tips for students and graduates-to-be as they take their first career steps:

1. Continue to learn. You may think you’re at the end of your formal education when you graduate, but this is just the beginning of your professional education journey. Now is the time to really take a good moment of reflection on the type of balance you seek in your life as you continue on your career path. 

2. The key is to focus on the role at hand and be the best. There’s always going to be excitement as we look to the future, for the next role and the next position.

3. Take inspiration from the Salesforce 1:1:1 model. I didn’t have the financial capability to give back to organisations I want to give back to when I was starting out in my career. But I gave back my time and I kept them close to me and as I grew in my career, they were the recipient of my personal growth. 

These words of wisdom should hold some weight for today’s graduate, who now has the odious challenge of navigating academic life both online and in a socially distanced manner. 

Adaptation is the word on many lips these days as we all continue to struggle with our own version of digital evolution. Crisis creates opportunity. And as we look towards the future; one thing we do know for sure; this pandemic has irreversibly changed the way we work. 

“As we think of business and how the digital economy is changing, I’m excited to see this change create more innovation in new ways; it’s not about translating the physical experience, it’s about adapting, evolving, transforming that in the digital realm.”

Salesforce is designing the future of digital industry, and we're looking for the next generation of bright, ambitious and curious minds to join us as we continue to blaze new trails. Interested in joining our graduate program, Futureforce? Check out our website to learn more.