If your Salesforce admin role has been open for months, the problem may not be the candidate pool. It may be the job description.
We've reviewed a few hundred Salesforce admin postings this year, and the most common issue is scope. Many postings ask one person to do three jobs: run the business admin work, run the platform (releases, security, integrations), and lead architecture and AI strategy. We wrote about why that happens in We Read Hundreds of Salesforce Admin Job Postings. Most Were Three Jobs in One.
This post is the practical follow-up: how to write a job description that attracts the right person and gets the seat filled.
Step 1: Sort your draft with the three-job test
Take your current draft and tag every responsibility with one of three labels:
- Business admin: users, permissions, page layouts, reports, dashboards, everyday flows, user support and training.
- Platform engineer: release management, sandboxes and deployments, the security model, integrations, code.
- Architect and AI lead: data model decisions, technical debt, roadmap, deciding where AI fits.
Count the tags. If more than about a third of the bullets fall outside the job you're actually hiring for, the description is too wide.
Step 2: Lead with the job they'll do every day
For most organizations that's the business admin. Put those responsibilities first, and make them specific. "Support users" tells a candidate nothing. "Own access requests, onboarding and training for 150 users across sales and service" tells them exactly what the job is.
Step 3: Cap the "also owns" list
It's fine to include some work from the other two jobs, but keep it to two or three bullets and say how much of the role it is. "About 20% of your time will go to release management with our implementation partner" is honest and attractive. Ten unranked bullets is not.
Step 4: Say which kind of AI work you mean
"AI fluency" now shows up in many admin postings, and it can mean very different things:
- Using AI tools to write formulas, documentation and requirements faster
- Connecting AI to Salesforce, for example Claude through MCP, with the right permissions and governance
- Building AI into business processes with Agentforce or Claude
The first is a reasonable expectation for any admin today. The second and third are more senior skills. Name the one you need, and don't list "define our AI strategy" as a side task.
Step 5: Name what someone else covers
If a partner, contractor or another team handles integrations, releases or a coming migration, say so. Strong candidates read a narrow, well-supported role as a sign of a healthy org. They read a wide, unsupported one as a burnout risk.
Step 6: Set the pay for the role you're actually hiring
If the description still spans more than one job after these steps, the salary should reflect that, or the scope should shrink. Postings that ask for admin, developer and architect skills at an admin salary tend to sit open the longest.
Before and after
Before:
- Manage all aspects of Salesforce administration
- Own release management and the deployment pipeline
- Design and maintain integrations with billing, marketing and the data warehouse
- Develop Apex and Lightning Web Components as needed
- Define the company's AI strategy and build agents
- Code-review the work of other admins
After:
- Own day-to-day administration for about 150 users: access, layouts, reports, dashboards and flows
- Gather requirements from sales and service leaders and turn them into working changes each sprint
- Use AI tools to speed up documentation, formulas and testing
- Partner with our implementation partner on releases and integrations (about 20% of the role)
- Help evaluate where AI and automation can improve our sales and service processes
The "after" version is shorter, but it's clearer about the job, more honest about the support, and far more likely to attract a strong admin who stays.
A checklist to copy
- Did I tag every bullet as business admin, platform or architect and AI?
- Does the everyday job come first, with specific examples?
- Are "also owns" items limited to two or three, with a share of time?
- Did I say which kind of AI work I mean?
- Did I name who covers platform, integration or migration work?
- Does the pay match the scope?
Where we can help
Not sure where your org's workload actually sits? Our free Salesforce Health Check shows you, so you can hire for the right job. If you need someone to cover releases, integrations or architecture while your admin focuses on the business, our managed service can hold that lane.
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