Salesforce is very serious about recruiting people that they believe will help their company grow. They also seem to have the luxury of having a large applicant pool of candidates. I guess that makes sense when you are on Forbes's list of Best Places to Work.
For me, getting an offer at Salesforce was one of the hardest things I've done, and took a long time (about a year after applying 3 different times). If you are applying for a non-entry level job, they want to see familiarity and experience with the business/ platform/technologies and ecosystem that they have. This really isn't something you can study for a few weeks, and "fake it till you make it" (I tried that the first time). There are concrete things they look for like certifications, experience in implementing Salesforce solutions, working as an ISV parnter, etc.
By the third time I applied to Salesforce (when I eventually received an offer), I had gotten certified as an Admin, Built an app on the AppExchange, and gone to many of the Customer events (DF, World Tours, Base Camp, etc). Being an active member of the Salesforce community (a Trailblazer!) over the past year as a customer/partner is really what helped me demonstrate how dedicated I was to the Salesforce vision, and made me stand out.
The logistics of the interviews were pretty straight-forward:
1. Interview with a phone screener (if your application was received by recruiter and not a referral to a hiring manager): Here they just want to check the boxes that you sound capable and have a background that aligns with the job description.
2. Interview with the Hiring manager: Here they want to to really understand your background and if you could be a good fit for the team.
3. Various Interviews with team members/managers: I think this is about the hiring manager getting some re-enforcement from their team that he/she thinks that you are a good candidate.
4. Panel: This is the big show, and where the real decision is made. They want to see you demonstrate your abilities (often revolving around topics/concepts that may not be too familiar to you). For me, as a Solution engineer, I had to "pitch" a Service Cloud solution to a mock company. In the room were various mock stakeholders from the business, and I needed to make sure I addressed each of their concerns. Also, the people I was pitching to knew 1000x more about the topics I was presenting than I did. Talk about a humbling experience.
Something really interesting (that I have never seen before) was that the hiring manager offered to do a "dry run" with me in prep for the panel. That, to me was very telling of the culture at Salesforce: They truly are all about trying to make people successful. It's in their blood, their culture, their secret sauce.
After that long process, I couldn't be happier to join the #Ohana.