No. A Salesforce certification shows what someone has learned. It does not show how they reason through a real process. I'm Juan Manuel Garrido, founder of EGA Futura, a native ERP built on Salesforce, and co-founder of Vantegrate, where we build AI agents for companies. When we hire, I care far more about how someone thinks than about how many badges sit on their profile.
That's a slightly controversial take, so let me explain where it comes from.
My own path was never a straight line
I founded EGA Futura in 1994, when I was 20. Interfaces were text-based and Windows was just getting started. Then came the cloud. Then Salesforce, where we have been a Partner since 2009. Today I'm fully focused on AI agents with Vantegrate.
That's more than 32 years building software for businesses, and almost nothing I know arrived in the tidy order a résumé suggests. Most of it came from real problems, real customers and things breaking at the worst possible moment.
The five signals I look for
When we build a team at Vantegrate, I put a real case in front of the candidate, deliberately leaving some information out, and I watch for five things:
- How they structure the problem before touching a single line of code or configuration.
- What they ask when information is missing. The questions often say more than the answers.
- Whether they see the limits and edges of the system before those edges collapse.
- How they explain in writing what they did and why.
- What they do when something breaks. Do they own it or look the other way? For me, this one is key.
None of that shows up on a certification.
A simple way to run it
You don't need a complex assessment. Take a problem your team has already solved, strip out a few details on purpose and ask the candidate to think out loud. At the end, ask for a short written summary. Halfway through, tell them their proposed solution failed in production and see how they react.
A lightweight rubric helps the panel stay honest. For each signal, note one of three levels: not present, present with help, present on their own.
Certifications still matter. A lot.
I want to be clear: certifications are valuable. They are an excellent starting point, they give structure to learning and I strongly recommend them. At EGA Futura we even run free live Salesforce classes (in Spanish) so more people can start that journey.
The problem is using certifications as the only filter.
Non-linear careers are the new normal
More and more people arrive with non-linear backgrounds. They come from other industries, they changed paths or they learned on the job. If you evaluate them only by their certification, you lose some of the best. Worse, you may hire someone who knows the theory and gets lost in the first real mess.
The same applies to systems
There's a parallel I see constantly with mid-sized companies: a tool does not replace a process, just like a badge does not replace judgment. That's why, when we implement our native ERP for Salesforce, we start by understanding how the company actually works. And as hiring volume grows, it helps to keep the process out of loose spreadsheets, which is what our recruiting and selection app is for.
At Vantegrate the same idea holds for AI agents: when everyone has access to the same models, the team's judgment is the real advantage.
Over to you
Evaluate skills. Put a real case in front of people. Watch how they think.
What do you look for when someone doesn't have a linear career?
The original Spanish version, with an FAQ, is on EGA Futura Discover.
