How to Land a Job in Customer Success - ft. 3 Customer Success Experts!

Hello, and welcome to how to Land a Job in Customer Success. I'm Madeline Mann. I'm so excited because we have three customer success experts with us today to talk about the career path, how to land your next role, how to move up in your career, how to even transition into customer success if that is not where you work now. Customer success is one of the top careers where people are actually transitioning into it. And there's a lot of great domain expertise that can lend itself to this career path, and it can be really great for people who are looking to make their next big career move. And so I'm very excited to introduce our three experts. And, Christy, why don't you give us an intro about who you are?

Wonderful. Thanks, Madeline. Thrilled to be here. My name is Christy Falterusso. I am currently the chief Customer officer at a company called Client Success. We are a customer success management solution, and I've spent the past 12 years in customer success building, scaling, and transforming teams.

Amazing. And Greg, what about you?

I am a former CEO, founder in the world of SaaS and became obsessed with and fascinated with the challenge and opportunities of customer success. And so now that's all I do. I'm the CEO of churnrx.com incredible.

And Daphne.

Hi, everyone. So thrilled to be here. I am global director for customer success and strategic accounts for HubSpot. And I also write a newsletter called this is Growth and host a podcast for people who are building and scaling customer success teams.

Incredible. So everyone who's here with us live, let us know in the chat, what is your stats, what is your current job title? Or possibly are you transitioning into customer success? Are you currently a director of customer success? Are you working in the field? Are you possibly. I know a lot of teachers who have transitioned in or looking transition. Let us know in the chat who you are, what is your focus, and essentially why did you attend? So let's talk, because you three have been in this field for a long time. You've seen it evolve, and you've also seen quite a few resumes come across your desk. So I'm sure we have a lot of people in the audience who are quite qualified for these roles, but yet they're not landing interviews. What are some of your thoughts on how to better set yourself up to land a customer success interview? Chrissy, I'll have you kick us off with this one.

Absolutely. Well, like I said earlier when we were chatting backstage, this is very timely for me as I'm currently hiring for senior CSM on my team. And so I'll tell you, one of the things that I think really stood out to me is that as I'm browsing through candidates and all the applications that are coming through and obviously there are a ton of folks looking right now is really the folks that did a great job job of selling themselves. And so for folks that are really interested in transitioning in or trying to land the next interview, being very intentional about selling your skills for the specific role it is that you're applying to. The resumes that I spent the most time looking through are the ones that clearly tailored themselves to this specific role that I was hiring for.

Right.

They talked about the work that I was asking them to do, the skills that were required of them, the expertise and experience. And so those are the ways that I kind of drilled down into figuring out who would I be inviting to the, the inter process. And so just seeing more clarity around that was really, really well done for some folks.

Absolutely. I think that's, that's the thing that there, there's so many different CS roles and they can kind of take different formats. And I'm curious, you know, especially maybe I'll kick this over to you, Daphne, about how there's, there's misconceptions about kind of this uniformity of that all CS roles, you know, that you might just, you be able to use the same resume for every single one. What have you seen in that? In.

Yeah, I, I had this conversation with Madeline just as we prepared for, for this conversation. And one misconception CSMs have is that they see the title Customer Success Manager and that means the same thing everywhere you go. But that couldn't be further from the truth. In some companies, a CSM is what I call a jack of all trades. Right. They are the owners of the post sales experience. They're onboarding, they're managing renewals, they're doing support, they're doing success. They're basically doing a little bit of everything. And then you can go to the other end of the scale where the role of the customer success manager is super specialized. You have a large company that has onboarding, consultants, professional services, they have renewal managers. And the role of the CSM can be very, very specific. And then you layer on top of that the organization goals, right? Like are they going towards gross retention, so are they fighting churn or are they going for growth? And that might change completely the focus of the CSM depending on where the company is going. So I think really looking at the job description, looking at what they're Asking for. And in fairness, job descriptions are not always great. So the next layer of research is looking at the company, what phase they are, the maturity level, are there other CSMs in that organization. So doing that legwork to find what this role might look like and then figure out is this the right role for me? Because if you're transitioning, for example, and is a growth CSM role and you're coming from sales or you're coming from the partner channel, you're coming from like those kind of like more commercial roles, that could be a really easy transition for you. But if it is a retention role, then you, you might have too big a gap to fill in that interview and that the transition might not be as easy. So my advice for folks is on top of doing what Krista said, which is tailor your CV to make sure that that is resonating with the people that are reading it. Also do the research on the company to find out like, are you a good fit for them?

Absolutely, yes.

Can I add one thing there? Because I think you raised an interesting point. I think it even expands further than this, right. We even know that you can have CSMs in the same company who have very different scoped roles, right. Just because you're both a CSM at the same company, you could be managing SMB, you could be managing enterprise mid market and the motion of customer success will look very different for each of those individuals. So to Daphne's point about research, you've got to go further than that even because you have to understand even like what is the role that I'm being hired for that I'm applying to.

Right, exactly. And I, and you know, and it is true that you can read a job description, it might not be as clear, but even the questions you ask in the interview of really understanding what is the day to day of this role, what are the goals, how's, how is how success measured those types of things of oh, okay, this is school's way more, this role's way more focused on growth than, than onboarding or you know, what not right. So I think that that's, that can be really, that can be really interesting. And Daphne, you brought up transitioning into the career path. We actually have a few people here who, who are looking to make a transition. Some who actually just recently did. We also have someone who is customer support now. But is customer success curious. Which is interesting actually. I do want to maybe clear that up for anyone listening. Greg, I wonder if I could throw this over to you about the difference between customer Service, customer success, customer experience. What would you say there?

Well, like Daphne said, everyone uses the terms a little differently, so you do have to scratch beneath the surface. But generally speaking, support and service are sort of thought of as more tactical role. Right. You're answering questions, you're closing tickets, etc. So one thing that, and this relates to what both Daphne and Christy were saying, which is not only do you have to understand the role, but you, you probably should see as you look into these roles that there's a path in any company. So for a lot of people, I mean, most everyone in CS at some point was doing something else. So the idea that you could transition to CS isn't just a possibility, it's the dominant mode of how everyone made it there. So. But there is a pathway, right? So typically your best opportunity, or at least in many cases is going to be to take one of the more entry level type roles. Maybe it's supporter services where you can cut your teeth. For the person who's asking about, you know, I'm in support now and what about CS later? That's a really like, well beaten path. I'm sure Christy and Daphne would agree. I mean, lots and lots of CSMs came from customer support and service roles because that's where a lot of people cut their teeth and there's nothing wrong with that. One of the nice things about the CS field is that it tends to move fairly quickly, I would say, compared to a lot of other roles. You can make progress over a period of a few short years. That's really significant toward moving up that chain if you play your cards right. And so I think one of the suggestions I would make, if you're transitioning from something completely different, at least in one area, you might look at what is a cert, because a customer service or support role. Now when you say customer success or customer experience, and then there's even account management, these tend to be more of those strategic roles versus just purely tactical or more narrowly defined or specialized. But.

That'S one differentiator I think to consider. Right?

Yeah. And I want to actually dive into, you said something very interesting.

Because one of my values in my career, at least, at least, you know, several years ago, was the ability to grow in the career, move up, achieve. And you, you mentioned that this is actually a path where if you play your cards right, you can possibly move up a bit faster than some other career paths. Could you expand on that a bit?

Yeah, I mean, customer success as a field grew really rapidly at least several years ago. It's not at the same pace now, but it's still, it's still a pretty, you know, and there's a relatively high level of turnover like there is in some other fields. So the idea that you could find a future career pathway in CS should absolutely be taken seriously. I think that's one of the main things to recommend it. So don't be afraid, I guess, talking to those who are kind of transitioning from something completely different. And we've all, Christy and Daphne, we've all hired people who've come from somewhere, you know, miles from cs, but who had the right, you know, material to do well. And we're looking for that. Don't be afraid to take a role that, that has upward potential, which is a nice way of saying don't, you know, don't. I would say don't write off a role that might seem low and because there aren't really low roles. But also there's just this sense that people with energy and talent will be noticed and there's a. There's a decent. I don't know. Do you agree, Christy and Daphne? There's a decent sort of.

My career trajectory speaks for itself.

Right.

I spent a decade of my career in marketing before I transitioned into customer success from marketing. I went from leading large global teams in marketing to taking an IC role in customer success and then in 10 years went from a CSM to a chief Customer officer. So I mean, like I literally am the exact definition of what you've just described.

Yeah. I also think that when we think about transitions there, there are ways to make those transitions easier.

Right.

And it is all about of transferable skills and transferable experience. So for example, if you are in education and you're a teacher, Perhaps looking at EdTech is a great transition for you. Right. Because you bring domain expertise. If you are a dentist and you want to move into customer success, like look for med tech, you have information about how the customer is actually going to receive that product, how they're going to use it, how they're going to extract value and what a lot of CSMs that are career CSMs and they've been in CS for many, many years lack is actually that domain expertise. They have to work really hard to build that, to understand the nuances of how a customer might use the strategies that are going to work for that industry. So I think finding those places where there's intersection between your knowledge and the new field that you're trying to go into, that's how you stand out in that Transition and that's your unique selling point and you can position yourself using that.

Yeah. And I've had a lot of clients who have helped land CSM roles and what amazed them was they thought and they were coming from completely different career paths. One thing that they thought is they had, they had to start from the bottom, that they had to go for the lowest level role. And I ended up helping them to land manager positions where they were leading teams and all that. Because of some of these strategies that you're talking about of there's actually having domain knowledge or having knowledge in other parts of the business or whatnot. I mean, one of them was even a teacher who was able to transition. Another one was a relationship coach who was able to trans and not have to go to the bottom of the rung though still, as was said, you can still work your way up quickly. So it's still a great option. But that's my advice to the folks out there is you don't necessarily have to say, oh, I'm transitioning careers, I need to start from the bottom. Because yes, there are skills you will have to build. If you have skill gaps, you have to fill those. But there's also so many transferable skills, there's domain knowledge, there's so many other things that you might be devaluing right now. So, you know, I would. One thing I want to pose to the panel is I think we can all agree that experiments is that that's the top thing to have. Right. Having experience is going to catch commies attention the most. But we also like to fill out our skill gaps with some education, some certifications, that kind of thing. If, if someone was going to look to fill out their skill set, I mean is it simply just focus on building that experience or are there any sort of classes you think people should take or anything like that for the profession? What do you guys think?

I mean, I'll talk on this a little bit. So I mean, here's the way that I view the education. I think pathways that are available for customer success, I think they're helpful in educating you. I don't think that there is anything that's going to replace actual hands on experience. But I think if you're somebody who's looking to transition in understanding the language that's using customer success, the different frameworks that are applied, understanding organizations and how they navigate customer success, I think all of that is going to help you have a better bearing of how you're going to interview well and the types of roles that you're going to be looking for. So I think there's some value to it. But I am not going to say that somebody who has these certifications is as strong as somebody who has the experience. So I think it's just important to understand the weighting of both.

I have never heard a hiring manager walk out of an interview and say, man, you know, we gotta go with this person. They have more certifications. You know, like that is just. That's never the deciding factor.

What I'm actually throwing this out to the panel. What do you think is often the deciding factor when you make a hire for customer success?

What would you say.

On top of experience, which is obviously the most valuable thing? I think that there are some key traits and behaviors that I look on for in people. That innate curiosity. So somebody that is interested in how businesses make money, how they grow, how people use a product. I think curiosity is a really, really important one. Then the other thing I will say is learnability. A lot of CSMs are working with fast moving products that are being updated and developed all the time. There is new content that is put out. Customers have their own environments and there's so much to learn. And I want to work with somebody that is a quick learner, somebody that can get up and running with things fast, that is resourceful. So I think that there are some traits like that that I will definitely look for on a csm. On top of that experience and having the job that tells me that they will continue to grow, that they will continue to be relevant in my team, that they going to adopt change and be optimistic about it. So for me, like on top of experience is those behaviors.

Yeah. And I would just jump in that. I couldn't agree more with actually what you both said. But that idea that they are going to take on what we're doing quickly. What's my evidence that they learn quickly? If you can demonstrate you learn quickly even from a different context, that's huge. One more I'll add. I wouldn't say it's more important than the others, but it certainly matters is that the hiring manager is going to try to visualize you in front of the customer. What kind of profile, what kind of behavior, what kind of.

Sort of body language and confidence do you project in front of the customer? And the only thing they're going to have to go on is how you're presenting to them. So maybe that's too general and so typical of a lot of things, but because it's. Yeah, I'm putting this person in Front of customers in nearly every situation. And customer success, how does. How can I visualize how they'll do? And if, in addition to the way you handle the interview, there's one other thing that I think you can always throw in there. And this really. So a question in the chat about, well, what if I don't have domain experience? Well, there's one other thing, and we keep saying the word experience, but I would just put a finer point on it. Particularly if you're transitioning from another area, you just. You might think, well, I don't have experience. That's the whole point of transitioning. Right. But. But I think it does matter if you can articulate experience working with customers in some way, if you can make the case for that on your resume and in your interview. I worked with customers. Yes, it was a different context, but here are the challenges I faced. Here are the things I had to deal with, and here's how I dealt with them. If you can show that, and there are lots of contexts where that's very likely to be in your background, I would really play that up.

Absolutely. And that really goes to kind of what Christy was saying about, okay, sure, yes, Educate yourself. But then when you educate yourself again, it's not about, now I have all these things, all these certifications list my resume. So now I'm impressive, right? No, it's so you can speak the language. So you say, oh, this is the way it works in these organizations. I actually see how that connects to when I was a relationship coach and I was dealing with all these clients, and I had to do upsells or I had to help to retain them or whatnot, and you go, oh, okay. And so then you change the way you talk about it. Maybe, you know, instead of using certain terms that you. You would have used in your domain, you start to shift your language to essentially translate that experience. And then the person on the other side says, I completely understand how you are highly qualified for this and possibly even bring a fresh perspective into this role that could, you know, add diversity of thought to the team. So I think that's absolutely fabulous.

So if I can just say something like, it is. If you are transitioning and you are in that room selling yourself, it is your job to tell the story about your transferable skills. It's not the hiring manager's job to read your CV and extract from your answers where the intersection lies, why you would be good, why that example is relevant in your scenario. No, you have to do that. It's your job to Sell that, that transferable skill and why it's relevant. So remember that when you prepare for interviews, don't just give the example and think to yourself, oh, they are going to see how it's relevant. Spell it out for them.

Yes.

I have to add to that because I have a point for Daphne that is awesome. And I'm just going to give an example of that. So we've seen a lot of educators transition into customer success, and honestly, I love that career journey for them. I think there are so many transferable skills. One of the coolest things I've actually seen, though, are teachers who talk about their students as customers, and they talk about the plans that they prepare for their students as customer success plans. And so taking the entire framework of what they did as teachers, as professors, and then layering that into the customer success framework and the model of the work that we do, that's to Daphne's point, about helping us visualize it and spelling it out. That, to me, was like one of the best examples of that. Right. Taking your career path today and making it very clear for us how we can see you in the role, doing the work that we need you to do.

Absolutely, yes. I call it autobiography syndrome, where we tend to tell our whole career story and then allow the person on the other end to put the pieces together. And that is very confusing. Yeah, exactly. There's probably maybe 15% of what you did as a teacher is exactly in line with some of these things that are important in the customer success field. Well, that. Guess what? Your entire resume is only going to address that 15%. And what happens when you do that? Your resume suddenly shrinks and the person reading it gets a very clear picture of you in that role. And I think that's something that so many of us miss. And if you're struggling with that, you're struggling to, like, get in the mind of the employer. I will link. You can just go to standoutresume.com I have a free masterclass there where you can take it. But that will help you to shrink your resume. Focus on exactly what this panel is talking about, because that is. I could not agree more.

So anything else as far as really standing out in the interview process or anything like that? Christy, I know you are talking to so many. You're doing so many interviews right now and reviewing any resumes. Is there any other nuggets that you've. You've seen in your process, of your hiring process?

Yeah, I'll give two. So first is on the resume framework. So Madeline You. You kind of hit the nail on the head here when you said, like, focusing on what's important consolidates and, like, shrinks the resume. Let me just tell you, the resumes that I actually make it through, they're one pagers. They do not give me every single detail of every single thing that that person did at every role that they've ever had. In fact, quite the opposite. The ones that I said that I thought really stood out to me, that made it for me to visualize them in the role are the ones that actually had a summary that gave me, like, the impact they made in the. In the roles that they had and then just gave me a. Like, a list of the employers, basically, and the roles and the titles they had. But it allowed me to synthesize everything they did to drive impact through the roles that they had and understand where it was transferable and more importantly, how it was applicable to the role that I was hiring for. So that I really loved. The second thing I would do is just make sure that when and if you do get the privilege of interviewing your job is to help the employer visualize you in this role. And so I love it. I only ask behavioral style questions. Tell me a time when. Give me an example of. I don't need people to read off their resume. Right. I can read. I don't need someone to do that for me. But help sell yourself through the lens of the hiring manager and help them visualize the work that you would do in that role in that company. And so, like, that's what I really connect to, is when I'm hearing people tell me stories about the work that they've done, and it helps me understand how they would do the work I need them to do through this role.

Absolutely. I have seen a lot more interviewers shift to behavioral interview questions. And just for anyone who is maybe unfamiliar with that term, it's exactly as Kristi said, it's. Tell me about a time when. Give me an example of. And the reason why interviewers ask this is because it really helps them to start picturing what it would be like to work with you to understand your character, to understand how you think through situations and problem solve. And it seems like a lot because you might think, oh, my gosh, how do I prepare for all these different scenarios and come up with an example on the, you know, the drop of a hat? Well, there's actually a very simple way of doing it. It's called using the story toolbox. You can just type it into my YouTube channel right story, toolbox, behavioral interviewing, anything like that, and you can build it because did you notice Christie is the word stories, right? That is how you win is really showing, showing your ability to storytelling that can really take your interviews to, to the stratosphere. One thing I do want to ask about is you all's opinions and thoughts on AI and how you envision it impacting this career path. Greg, I want to throw it over to you. What is, what is your perspective?

Wow, that's a big one. I will just say, and I want to hear what the others have to say. I'll just say that you don't want ever to come across like.

You'Ve used AI to get anything you're doing, like any of the stuff written or any of the thing. I just want to be cautious about that. But in terms of anticipating how it affects how you should expect to use it, I don't think there's anything wrong. And I want to hear the others too how you're seeing this. But with talking about the tool set you use. And this actually goes back to one thing I was going to say about what you said before because it relates to this, which is.

What Daphne said about the maturity of different organizations is really true for a lot of customer success teams in less mature companies. They're a lot more open to what you bring to the table and how you might do your work. So one thing that you should never shy away from doing, in my opinion, is to be very clear about your way of doing things. Like I have a playbook, I like to respond to challenges this way. I like to do things this way. I always start, feel free to describe that. Don't worry as much in my opinion that that will come across as well. That's not our way. Having a way is impressive even if it's not the way they want to do things. It means you've thought this through and you have an opinion about how to handle things and how to deal with situations. And so you do want to find stories where you can demonstrate that in terms of AI. I don't think there's anything wrong with weaving that in, but I also wouldn't rely too heavily on it. Like I just put in everything in AI and see what comes out. I'd be careful about that.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think as leaders we are getting a bunch of messages, especially on LinkedIn or sales emails that are written with AI and, and you know, some of them are really not good. So I would say it's really important for a csm. If you are going to say that you are leveraging AI in your work to be intentional about how you are positioning that. Because I think of AI, there's obviously AI is a very, very broad concept. There is AI kind of as an underlay in a lot of customer success and CRM systems. Right. Understanding customer patterns and behaviors, etc. So if you're going to mention that you're leveraging those signals to work with your customer in a more strategic way to prioritize your work, like, I think that's a really good answer for a question about, let's say, explanation for how you organize yourself, how, how you prioritize your book of business. But then like when it comes to like AI as a companion maybe and doing your writing, your emails, I think it's like if you're going to say you're using it, the question is how are you checking and ensuring that's accurate, ensuring that you are putting something in front of your customer that is trustworthy, that the business can be proud of. But yeah, I think creativity on using AI things like call summaries, etc. I think those things are actually really cool and put you in the forefront of a lot of CSMs that are struggling to maybe adopt new things. And what I said, like looking for CSMs that are open to change and that have that high learnability, I think those are examples that show that you're one of those people.

Absolutely.

I mean, listen, the future is going to include AI whether you like it or not. And if you really want to stand out now and you've got some cool use cases, I think you need to anchor on them. I wrote an article several months back and I talked about like the five Ps that I view AI supporting customer success. I said it's gonna be proactive, predictive, productive, prescriptive and personalized. There are ways to use AI, even agnostic of how it's built into a tech stack. So if you're not somebody who's in a customer success role today and you have access to ChatGPT, understanding the work that you would do as a customer success manager and then taking one of the five P's I just rattled off, you can come up with some creative use cases and workflows to use something as simple as ChatGPT. Now mind you, there are so many AI solutions out there that are free, readily available. They're, they're open source, get creative. I would love to hear more people come to conversations in the interview process talking to me about innovative ways that they're using tools that are available to them today to disrupt their workflows, to drive more efficiency, to be more productive. And so I think, listen, the future is very clear and I'd love to see more of that in conversations in the interview process.

Yes, that seems like quite the edge to say. Yep, I was able to decrease this amount of time by X number of hours per week because I implemented this.

Give me something cool that nobody else is talking about. You want to stand out? There you go.

Exactly, exactly. And it's not about replacing the human element. It's about eliminating maybe even the less human parts of the customer success journey so that you can focus more on that, that really great experience. I love that. Okay, so I do want to move into our game. It's called Promote Demote. I'm going to say a statement. I'm actually curious. You know, we've got a lot of people tuning in, so you all can play at home as well. Promote or demote. And so I'm going to say a statement and our panelists are going to either do you know, demote thumbs down or promote thumbs up. Okay. And we'll hear a little bit about maybe why, why they feel that way. So the first, the first promote Demote is editing your resume for every application. Promote or demote.

Okay. Okay. We have two thumbs up. And then, Daphne, what was keeping you on the edge there?

I think, like, for every single application is probably like going a step too far, but I think that you should have maybe a few cvs, right? Like if you have two or three types, types of roles that you're targeting, that you have those templates and they will work for, for those roles. I think if you're applying for, you know, 30, 40 roles, that that would be a lot of work. Now I'm all for personalization and tailoring. I think it's a better, more effective way of getting a job is to do that. But I don't know if you need, if you're looking for CSM roles, if you need to tailor for every single role.

Okay, I'm switching my vote. She convinced me.

Okay, I'm not going to switch my vote. I'm going to say it was a hard. Yes, Greg, what convinced you, what put you over the edge there, Greg?

That a lot of people who are listening to this have is they have to make a lot of applications. And the reality is there aren't an infinite number of differences between all these jobs. They are very different. So hopefully you have narrowed your search enough or you're not doing it well, that you have a few clearly defined things, and then hopefully there's only minimal editing per job because it seems impractical. But also, I think it's also an indication that you haven't narrowed your search enough.

Also, Greg, I think that's when I say, like, tailoring it for every single one. I think it's more of that, like, not rebuilding it. I don't think you need to rewrite it. But I think about, like, that the one, like I said, the resumes that I loved had the big summary, called out the impact they made. If the role that you're applying for includes revenue responsibilities and you have that great, like, make sure that's highlighted at the top. If other roles don't and it's more anchored, you're applying to, like, an onboarding manager role. Call out how you help drive change in an organization. So I think it's just not about rebuilding it, but really understanding what the role is asking for and making the modifications for that. Obviously, the meat and potatoes should probably be enough to withstand several applications, but. But tweak it a little bit.

Exactly right. If you're realizing that every. Every opportunity you're having to tweak it a bunch, yes, that's a signal. Sure. Maybe you're not targeted enough, but, yes, I completely agree. All right, here's the next one. Promote or demote. Position yourself as being in a profession on your resume and LinkedIn before officially holding that title. So in this case, you know, customer success title. What would you say? Promote or demote.

Okay. Who. Who, Christy.

What?

Put your. We'll put your thumb down.

I don't like people misrepresenting themselves. You didn't do the work. You don't have the experience. You're wasting my time. I'd rather you talk about how you have transferable skills and the work that you did in your current role. That's relevant to the role I'm hiring for. But I see this in a lot of resumes right now. People have, like, customer success director at the top of their thing. And then I look it down in their experience. They've never held a customer success experience, like, role before. I don't like. To me, it's just. Misrepresenting yourself.

Yeah. I think there are people that do this very well on social media around positioning their transition by sharing openly what they're learning every day and connecting and networking with people and asking for help and sharing stories about how their professional work, their profession previously was similar to what's happening. Right now, like, I think you can do this well in terms of positioning or transition and entering the dialogue, but without misrepresenting yourself. Because I think the moment you misrepresent yourself, then I think the trust is broken. Yeah, it's hard to build and it's obvious.

So don't, don't.

And a lot of times it looks like keyword stuffing for the applicant tracking systems. If I'm being very honest and because.

It'S not rare transitioning into cs, then you don't need. This is a play you don't need to make. We know you're transitioning. This is a normal pathway. So don't waste your credibility on it.

I think that's an interesting point, Greg, is because truly and the stats reflect this. LinkedIn found customer success as one of the top professions that the majority of people who are landing customer success jobs actually are not, did not previously hold that title. And so that's actually a really interesting point of, of because this is actually a profession where a lot of the high managers are quite a bit more open to other backgrounds, which is really not the case in a lot of other professions.

So you still need to absolutely translate the experience and still use the same language. So I think that's the thing that I don't want people to move away from. You know, I think Christy had the example of, of positioning students as kind of more of a customer role. I think that those kind of, those edits could be really great to really help position yourself. But. But yeah, it's been really great to see how, how flexible a lot of hiring managers are and seeing the potential in people. All right, here's the next one. Promote or demote. Sending a thank you note after a job interview.

Okay, three thumbs up.

There's a very specific reason why this is so easy to answer for us and I'll just jump in. It's because you're treating them the way I want you to treat my customers. It's that simple. It doesn't get any more complicated. You're demonstrating something that is directly applicable. This isn't a general courtesy only. This is like, here's how I operate.

It's follow up. Right? And like, that's a big part of the work that we do. It's not even the gratitude. It's the ability to again, demonstrate if your entire interview is also you showing, not saying, but doing show up that way.

Right.

And that's a big part of the work that we have to do is, you know, again, following up with our customers. It's an easy one.

Yeah, that's the thing. I think that's a really good point. Any job where communication is highly relevant, such as I'm from the human resources profession, so every single email. This is me as a job seeker. Every single email I sent to the hiring team or anyone who's communicating with me, that is a work sample. That is them judging me of how I'm going to communicate with employees. So. And a lot of us don't think about it that way. And we. I've seen people lose job opportunities and I could. I could give full stories about why and how because of their communication between interviews was not good. And so that. I love that. That insight. Okay, so next one, Promote or demote showing up to a company in person to drop off your resume.

Where would you even go? Yeah, I'm like, with so many people, remote or hybrid? Like, I don't know. Do you. Do company offices even still exist? Yeah.

In customer success, obviously, if you're looking for a job where you are there in person, you know, it's a shop or it's like a doctor's office, whatever. Like, I think that is relevant. But in customer success, I, like Christy said, where would you even drop a cv? You know, it's. Yeah, online applications.

All right, sounds like we're pretty united. Any other thoughts on that one? No, I. I'm totally with you. I tell folks, stop applying online. Stop applying online. So they go, well, Madeline, so then do I drop it off in person? And that's absolutely not what I mean. And so I always have to set the record straight of no, it's not. It's. I'm just saying don't send your resume into this massive applicant tracking system to possibly never be seen. But no, the alternate is not in person. All right, so this is. Here's our next one. Promote or demote applying to multiple open roles at the same company.

Okay.

Oh, interesting. Let's hear, let's hear. We had three thumbs sideways.

I'll just say quickly. There are situations where there are potentially more than one role that could work for you. Remember that you don't have an exact match. In most cases. We're talking about people transitioning, so. But don't do it. It stupidly don't do it for roles that are completely not appropriate. But in an appropriate situation. I can see. I don't know. What do you think? Daphne and Christy?

Yeah, the same. Like, I think that there are, like, for example, there might be multiple customer success manager roles for a company at a different Point, like in the same point in time. And it could be different hiring managers.

And things like that.

So I don't think it's a problem to do that. But they have to be connected. You have to have a good story on why you've done that. It has to be pretty obvious, obvious why you would as well, because otherwise it just feels like you are taking a machine gun approach to job searching, which is just never perceived in a good light.

And I would always say, tell them when you do, always be transparent. Don't think it won't come out. Just be transparent. Say, I've also applied for this other one, thinking maybe it's a fit for me. What do you think? Bring them in on the conversation.

I. And this is a little insight for anyone who's never been in an applicant tracking system or never done recruiting. We can see all the roles you apply to. So that's all there. So if it's, if it's like, oh, I'm going for a, you know, product manager role and a customer success manager role and also this project manager role, it's like, okay, this person obviously doesn't know what they want. They obviously are not focused and, and developing their career in this area. And so that can, then you might not get, you might get zero interviews, which it's much more likely. Exactly. If the roles are very similar, that's not going to hurt you. But if, if they are, if they are kind of stretching you out into these different realms and different experience levels, it's going to create a very confusing candidate profile and confidence. Confused minds say no. All right, so we have come to the conclusion of our session. I want to thank the panelists so much for, you know, espousing all of their amazing insights. And thank you so much for everyone who showed up and participated. And I would like to know, Christie.

Where can we find you outside of LinkedIn? You can head over to my website, which is just christyfelterusso.com and links to everything that you'd probably want to related to me and the work that I'm doing could be found there.

Yep, we've linked that in the description. What about you, Greg?

Oops.

Greg, hold on. You're muted.

Sorry. Double LinkedIn's great. But also Greg Danes.com I have a newsletter and a bunch of stuff I published that's like easy training materials, things you can learn about customer success. So check me out there.

Perfect. And Daphne.

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. So Daphne Costa Lopez, easy to find. And I am also on thisisgrowth Media where you can find my podcast and my weekly newsletter on how to be a great csm.

Perfect. And as I said before, those links are in the description so that you can connect with all them, check all their websites and all that. Well, thank you so much. I'm going to send you all away.