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Salesforce.com gives its Trailhead learning service a LinkedIn-style makeover
Almost every enterprise tech company runs some sort of training program to help users familiarize themselves with its products, but few appear to put as much thought into it as Salesforce.com Inc. has.
The cloud giant operates a learning portal called Trailhead that is modeled after gamified education sites such as Codecademy. Professionals interested in honing their Salesforce.com skills can take free courses about its various services, earn badges and, as of today, actively use the experience they gain to court potential employers. The latter benefit is thanks to a revamped profile section that the company introduced today as part of what a spokesperson described to SiliconANGLE as a “game-changer” update.
In addition to completed badges, users now have the ability to display the amount of points they’ve earned from Trailhead challenges, the number of courses they complete and various personal details. The latter category can include everything from workers’ experience with specific Salesforce.com features to their complete job history.
In some respects, the profile revamp has similarities with LinkedIn, which the cloud giant unsuccessfully tried to acquire earlier this year. Salesforce.com certainly can’t compete with it head-on, but Trailhead could potentially be a useful complement or even replacement for the social network to users in the company’s immediate ecosystem. There should be no shortage of demand: A September study from International Data Corp. found more than 300,000 job postings that asked for Salesforce.com skills. The report projects that the cloud giant will create a total of 2 million positions by 2020.
Those workers are ultimately the main focus of today’s update. The more appealing Trailhead becomes, the more professionals will take its courses, which should in turn broaden the available talent pool for the organizations that buy Salesforce.com’s services. The learning platform also needs to be easily accessible for the same reason. That’s why the company is rolling out a social login feature alongside the new profiles that lets users quickly sign into Trailhead via Facebook Inc., Google+ and, of course, LinkedIn.
Image via Salesforce.com
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