Salesforce gave former employees stuffed toys wearing boomerang shirts as the company seeks to bring back ex-staff amid a hiring drive

• Salesforce held an alumni event last week with 50 former executives who were gifted with stuffed animals.
• The company is encouraging former executives to "boomerang" amid a hiring drive.

Salesforce said it is hiring over 3,000 people last week despite brutal job cuts earlier this year, and has already rehired several former executives to the company, CNBC reported Monday.

The company hosted an alumni event at its Dreamforce conference in San Francisco last week, inviting 50 former employees who were greeted by current executives, assigned seats, and given gifts including a stuffed animal in a yellow shirt with a boomerang illustration, per CNBC.

Earlier in the week, CEO Marc Benioff had said that the message from the event was one of: "It's OK, come back," per a report from Bloomberg.

Kendall Collins, chief business officer and chief of staff to Marc Benioff since April 2023, posted about attending the alumni event on LinkedIn with a picture of the stuffed animal and commented he's "grateful for the opportunity to boomerang."

Collins had spent 12 years at Salesforce as a marketing executive, leaving in 2016 to take on leadership positions at companies like WeWork and Okta.

Ariel Kelman, former vice president of platform product marketing at Salesforce, said he personally received a direct message on Twitter from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff in early April who wanted to know if he was ready to come back, according to CNBC.

Kelman, who left the company in 2011 for leadership stints at the likes of Amazon Web Services and Oracle, said it was "good timing," and rejoined as president and chief marketing officer.

"This is a company I had a great time at," he said at the conference.

Another executive Miguel Milano, who rejoined as president and chief revenue officer in August, after spending some time at data processing firm Celonis said he was persuaded by Salesforce's chief operating officer Brian Milham while on vacation in Madrid, per CNBC.

Collins' LinkedIn post referenced several other old-timers who had also boomeranged including Katie Kutzer, David Winslow, Craig Shull, Steve Fisher, and Dean Robison.

Salesforce said it is hiring 3,300 employees across sales, engineering, and its data cloud product teams to help grow its artificial intelligence business last week, per Bloomberg.

The news came after Benioff informed staff earlier this year that 8,000 people would be cut from its workforce in brutal layoffs to help reduce costs at the company.