In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Carly Agar, Founder and CEO at CarlyAgar about landing a customer success job in 2023.
As the tech industry experiences a wave of layoffs, the job market is flooded with talented professionals seeking their next customer success opportunity. So, what should you do if you have been laid off? And how do you prep for interviews and find the right next company?
Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com
In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Carly Agar, Founder and CEO at CarlyAgar about landing a customer success job in 2023.
As the tech industry experiences a wave of layoffs, the job market is flooded with talented professionals seeking their next customer success opportunity. So, what should you do if you have been laid off? And how do you prep for interviews and find the right next company?
Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com
Hello everyone, I'm your host, Anika Zub, and welcome back to the next episode of the Customer Success Channel podcast, brought to you by Plan Hat, the modern Customer platform. This podcast is created for anyone working in or interested in the customer success field. On this podcast, we will speak to leaders in the industry about their experiences and their definitions of customer success and get their advice and best practices on how to run ACS organization. Today I am speaking with Carly Agar, who is a customer success consultant who helps people land jobs in cs. Whether you're looking to transition into customer success or you're currently on the job market, Carly is always sharing her top tips and tricks with job seekers. After spending 10 years in customer success, Carly founded her own business where she leads a team of coaches dedicated to helping people land jobs in the field. She had our team work one-to-one with career changers and experienced CS professionals on everything from resumes to networking, all the way to interviewing and negotiating offers. At the time of recording this podcast, there have been mass layoffs in the tech industry, and now more than ever, there are more job seekers on the market looking for their next customer success opportunity. Carly shares with us tips and tricks on what we should be doing if you have been laid off and what to do next. Welcome, Carly to the podcast. I'm so very excited to have you here with us and really excited to talk about today's topic. But before we jump into the nitty gritty of the topic, can you please tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself, how you started in customer success and what you are doing now?
Speaker 2:Yes, I am so excited to be here. I can't wait. We have a lot of cool things that we're gonna be chatting about As a quick introduction to myself, so my name is Carly Agar and I've been in customer success for just over a decade now. And I really started out in customer success kind of as a mistake. Uh, it just kind of happened. I found myself in this role and really loved it. So I consider myself to be very, very lucky. I started my career in sales in a very formal sales development program at a very large corporation. And what I found very quickly was I loved working with customers. I did not love the quote unquote hunting aspect of sales, so I really liked what happened post-contract signature, and when I kind of started out in this customer success and account management kind of had a shared identity, we were still figuring out how customer success was different from account management. So I really started as an account manager and then throughout my career grew into more of that specialized customer success function.
Speaker 1:Awesome. I love hearing that story. I also love hearing every guest unique journey into customer success. I think the profession is this mishmash of every type of previous profession you can ever imagine. Yes. All those skills transferred directly into customer success. My story's actually similar to yours being I was in inside sales, and then it was coined account management before it was coined into customer success, but mm-hmm.<affirmative>, I love hearing your journey. I know you're also now in a consultant or a career, uh, advisor. I'm not sure exactly the title you give yourself these days, but you really transition from that customer success individual contributor or leader into that advisory role, and now you advise people on transitioning into customer success or mm-hmm.<affirmative> looking out for, you know, their first leadership role. Can you give us a little bit more background onto what inspired you to kind of build your own business and transition from working within an organization to building your own?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I love, I love sharing how I got here. So there were really two big motivating factors that led me to actually leave customer success and start my own business. One of those was in customer success. I felt like the next natural step for me was to become a people leader. So a a manager of a customer success team. And I'm really, really big on any time you're taking a step in your career, even if it's just moving from mid-market to enterprise, even if that feels like the natural next step, it's really important that you take the time to self-reflect and really think about, well, how is my day gonna change when I step into this new role? Like, it's not just a title change, right? It's you're spending most of your waking time at work. So you really need to think about like, is this thing that I'm stepping into aligned with me? Is this how I wanna spend my time? Am I going to get joy out of this? And the more that I thought about becoming a manager of a CS team, the more that I realized this isn't really in line with what I want to be doing. I love talking about careers, I love coaching, I love enabling people, empowering them. And while there is room for that, as a manager, oftentimes you can find yourself pretty bogged down and like the day-to-day. And that was just not how I wanted to spend my time. And so that was one of my motivating factors was this next natural step was not exactly what I wanted to do. So then I was like, all right, gotta find something else.<laugh>
Speaker 1:<laugh>.
Speaker 2:Um, one of the things that I was doing in a customer success enablement was helping people create their career paths. Whether that meant, Hey, I wanna move into strategic customer success. Like what are the things that I need to start doing to prove that I can move up into that role? Or, Hey, I've been in customer success for five years, I love it, but I think I wanna try marketing. And so I would help them develop, all right, what are the skills we need to work on? What are the things that you need to gain experience in in order for you to move into this new role that is going to give you more satisfaction? And the more that I did that, the more that I fell in love with it. And I was also doing a bit of designing interview processes for companies. And at one point it just kind of hit me like, I'm sitting on the wrong side of the table. I wanna be helping job seekers not necessarily helping companies develop their interview processes. And so it felt like a really natural next step for me. I am able to leverage all of my experience in customer success. So it's not as if that time has gone to waste and now I get to work on the things that I really love, which is empowering people, helping them grow their careers and it's, it's more meaningful and feels more impactful than what I was doing in my CS role.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that makes complete sense and I love how you were so mindful and so well thought out in what you wanted to be doing next and really taking the step back, reflecting on what it is, is it you're good at which, like you said, you really enjoy the empowering side of people, but you needed to look at what is it that you wanted to spend the majority of your time doing, which is so critical when we look at a new role. And I think that that's something we're gonna talk about in more depth when we get into our topic today. But before we do that, you're such a online presence. I know that on LinkedIn and across the board of CS communities, you're so active and you're sharing and you're always trying to help job seekers. What is it that motivates you to do what you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is such a good question. And honestly the answer is it what has motivated me has really evolved over time. So when I started sharing my observations and my thoughts and maybe a little bit of advice, it was really just motivated by, I don't really see anyone else sharing these specific observations. And so, you know, let me put my thoughts out there and just see if it resonates. Maybe it will help people, maybe it won't, but I, I'll never know unless I try and I put it out there. So that's where it really started. And then it started to morph into more of education, more specific advice giving that was motivated by, I remember the day that I got my strategic C S M title and I went to LinkedIn and I was like, surely someone out there is teaching people how to be a quote unquote strategic C S m. And to be honest, I was really frustrated because there's a lot of advice on the internet, but it all felt very fluffy to me.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of theory rather than practical takeaway tips, things that you can apply to your day-to-day, like you're saying
Speaker 2:Yes. And I found myself often asking like, okay, so you're telling me that I should be this way, but what are the behaviors? Like, what are my next steps? And so I felt like there was, there was something missing in the community in that very specific like action packed education. So it's really morphed over time. And then I'll say what motivates me to keep going now is just the messages that I get from people. You know, if someone says, your post really resonated with me, or I used something you said in your post in a customer call today, and I felt so much more confident, or something you said about prepping for interviews really resonated with me. And I think that's how I landed my job. It's messages like that that have made me really think about quote unquote content creation in a new way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. And you do share so many tactical tips, takeaways for the job seeker, and that's really what we wanna focus on in today's topic, on today's podcast. I think there's a lot of people who are listening to this podcast today that have been impacted by what's happening in the tech world right now. And you do such a great job of empowering your clients, but obviously we wanna share that wealth of knowledge with the podcast as well. And the world economics makes it really difficult right now and tricky. Um, there have been a lot of highs in customer success hiring, but I'd say that at the moment when we're recording this in April, it's uh, it's, there's been some lows when it comes to the job market and layoffs and what people are thinking of doing next in their career. What are your thoughts on what's happening right now in the tech CS world with mass layoffs, with uncertainty and banking and investments? What are your initial thoughts around everything happening right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, my knee jerk reaction to it, whenever someone asks me how I feel about it is point blank. It sucks.<laugh>, you know, I, I can't sugarcoat that. It's, it's kind of a weird time that we're living in right now and there is a lot of uncertainty and uncertainty can cause a lot of stress. So it sucks, it's unavoidable. But what I would say for anyone who has been affected, and I know that we're gonna get into some really tactical things that you can be doing, but one thing that I will share that I think a lot of people need to hear or haven't yet heard is, is it's really important that if you are affected by a layoff, that you don't let that mean anything about you. So try to look at it through the lens of, okay, business is business, right? At the end of the day, business comes down to numbers. Sometimes really hard decisions need to be made, but it doesn't reflect personally on me as a C S M or as a professional. The other thing that I'll say is it can be really helpful to shift your mindset from, oh my gosh, I've been laid off. I can't believe this is happening to me. And instead try to think of it from the lens of, okay, this happened. Maybe this is happening for me. Maybe there's some bigger greater reason why this has happened.
Speaker 1:I love that Carly, both things just resonate with me so much and I really hope that everyone listening also hears out what you have to say. But it's really hard when you're in the moment. Always life is really hard when you're going through something in the moment. But when you reflect back on it, when whenever you find your next role for those who are impacted that are listening, you'll look back at this time and realize I learned something about myself during this time. Or I was able to take the next step in my career because of what's happened. And as someone who has been affected by layoffs in my career, it's something that happens like it, it is a moment and it sucks. Like you said, it fully sucks, but know that it has nothing to do with you and you will come out better in some way, shape or form. It might not seem like it in this exact moment of when it's happening, but one thing will happen that'll lead to a better next step in your career and your life. So thank you for for sharing that. Um, that being said, there are lots of people that are starting to maybe get laid off or notice any red flags within their organization, things that might be leading to future layoffs. Many people are worried that they might be next, especially cuz there's just so many happening. It's like every week there's someone else announcing that you know, hundreds if not thousands of jobs are being cut. Um, is there anything that you can share to ease our listener's mind if they think that they're possibly next or maybe get them more prepared or look out for these red flags?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'll answer what red flags to look out for first. I think people know the obvious red flags to look out for. Like if your company has frozen hiring, that can often be a red flag that there could be layoffs coming. Hmm, A red flag that I think I don't hear as often but I think is really important to keep in mind is if leadership at your company is not addressing the layoffs. So if they're not proactively coming out and saying, Hey, we know that this is happening in the market, here's where we're at or here's how we're thinking about things, that to me would be a huge red flag in, in times like this. If leadership is not being transparent, then I would be worried.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And as, as a leader that always loves to be transparent with my team, if your leader is unable to answer questions or avoids answering questions or delays giving you an answer to what's happening with our current customer base, our market, our sales cycle, you know our business metrics in general, if no one can be transparent, then I would say that's like you said, a big red flag of you know, if they're not sharing something, they're hiding something and that's never a good thing. So thank you for sharing that and I hope that no one is going through it right now, but something to look out for. If you have been impacted though, if you are, you know, currently on the job market today and your role was previously eliminate eliminated, what's kind of the first thing that you would recommend someone does when they're first been told they've been laid off and their role is eliminated?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if you're afforded the luxury of time, meaning your access to all of your tools is not cut off immediately, I would say the very first thing you should do, and this is also a really good step to take if you're even slightly worried about an impending layoff, is collect as much data as you possibly can. You should definitely be careful about what data you are collecting cause you don't wanna get in a situation where you're potentially taking data that you shouldn't have. But the data that you should be trying to gather is any data that will allow you to calculate your performance against KPIs. So you don't necessarily need to do all those calculations right away, but definitely make sure you have your book of business, the a r R of your accounts renewal dates, um, any expansion that you've achieved, N P s customer satisfaction scores and product adoption data. And if you can grab that data over a longer period of time, I would say that's always better. If we have two years of data to look at, then we can look at your performance over time and potentially calculate improvements in KPIs, which is always great for resume or in your interviews. One step would be gathering the data that you need to calculate KPIs. There are two other types of data that I think people often forget. One is going to be your performance reviews. So any past performance reviews that you can download, I would do that immediately. Every time you have a performance review you're putting in all that hard work to really self-reflect on the past quarter or past six months. You're writing lots of stories, lots of anecdotes of things that you've done, you're probably gonna forget those things. So if it's written down somewhere, go grab it so that you don't have to rethink about all of the stuff that you've done. And then another thing I would say is spend a little bit of time in Slack and in your email and what you wanna look for is just like tough situations that you were in with clients and how you remediated those situations. Any like internal projects that you've worked on, big client projects that you've worked on just by browsing your old emails and your old Slack messages, you're gonna spark some memories and that's gonna be very helpful when you sit down to prep for an interview or sit down to update your resume.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree on all the metrics and data. All that's critical. If you think about it on a resume or cv, you're trying to highlight your best numbers, whether you're the top performer, whether you had the most upsells, renewal numbers, highest book of business, highest csat, whatever all that is all that's gonna translate later. But like you said, it's so important in that moment to grab the data you need that reflects the best on your performance that you did have at that company. So that's super important. One other thing I would add, which I know can be hard in the moment because when you're getting the news you're probably either emotional or it's really hard to like really process everything that's happening but also be okay with asking your manager or anyone at that business for future referrals. I think that that's something we don't really think about because we're so emotional in the moment of hey, I'm being laid off, what the heck's gonna happen next in my life and my next paycheck, et cetera. But you have to also think that the people that are speaking to you know you're working with today can potentially be your reference checks for future jobs. And it's always good to leave in that high note of I appreciate all the opportunity that it's given to me at the same time, would you be able to write me a reference for future employment is super critical, I think is something to think about when you're finding out your role is being eliminated. Um, but thank you for sharing those. I think that's so important to have those, those metrics. The job market isn't easy as we already discussed. It's a very tough market out there. There's hundreds if not thousands of people applying for jobs today. What are some of your top tips for people who are actively on the job market today? Especially because there's just so much more talent looking for jobs right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'll start really broad and what I'll say is today's job market is tough. There's no getting around that. We can't sugarcoat that. However, it's not impossible to get a job, it just requires a different strategy. So what I mean by that, I'll get a little bit more specific in the customer success job market two years ago. So just post covid when every company was hiring like crazy, you could just submit your resume and probably hit easy apply on LinkedIn and you probably also had recruiters reaching out to you all day every day.
Speaker 1:Those are the great days when literally finding another job was as easy as like just thinking about it<laugh>
Speaker 2:All days. So that's not the reality that we're in right now. Job seeking right now requires something different of you. So it's not as easy as just submitting your resume. It's not as easy as updating your LinkedIn profile and waiting for recruiters to reach out to you. If you are relying on those tactics that work in a really positive market, you're not gonna get very far in today's market. So one thing that I'll say specifically is relying on your resume, even if you are a very experienced C S M and you have the best resume ever is not a good tactic because there are so many people applying to jobs, it's, you're essentially relying on hope and luck if you're just relying on a piece of paper to get your foot in the door. And so what today's market really requires a view if you want to get consistent interviews is you've got to be networking and that means relying on people that you personally know in your personal network. But also you gotta rip the bandaid, you gotta start reaching out to strangers. It's gonna be uncomfortable but the more you do it, the easier it's gonna
Speaker 1:Become. I love that you just said that second part, especially about the networking and networking with strangers. I think a lot of people get intimidated by, you know, oh my gosh this person has 5,000 connections. How do I even send a message to them that's meaningful and impactful that they're actually going to reply? You'll never know unless you ask. That's my big thing. What's the worst that's gonna happen? You get no reply, we'll you'll get no reply without doing anything as well. So you might as well shoot your shot and go and ask the question, whether it's a hiring manager, a recruiter, someone random that's working in the same field that you have a question about, just ask the question you'll never know. So I totally appreciate that you're saying to reach out to networks that aren't there yet. How would you say people build on their current network? I think that's a, another big thing that people have to focus on is just networking in general. How do you build up your network?
Speaker 2:Yeah, for me it's all about having conversations with people. I think one of the things that people struggle with most about networking as a job seeker is they have this mindset that, oh my gosh, if I start reaching out to strangers, they're gonna know why I'm reaching out. They're gonna know that I, I'm just looking for a job. And to that I say, so what? That's true at the end of the day. Right. Another really helpful way to think about it is if the roles were reversed. So if you had not been laid off and another C S M who you had never interacted with in your life reached out to you on LinkedIn looking for help, would you think poorly of them? Would you think it was sleazy or weird? Or awkward that they were reaching out to you? Probably not, right? You'd probably say, oh I've got some free time, I'm happy to help. So just that shift in mindset in in reversing the roles can be really helpful When it comes to building your network, a couple mistakes that I see people make is only going after like the quote unquote influencers in the CS community. That's a bad strategy because those are gonna be the people that everyone else is flocking to first just because they have a presence. And just statistically speaking, if those people have more people reaching out to them, the likelihood of them being able to respond to you or really give you their time is much lower. So don't think that you can only network with someone who has this loud ever present presence on LinkedIn. You can network with someone who has 300 connections and hasn't posted on LinkedIn ever. Mm
Speaker 1:Definitely a hundred percent. And those are the type of people that have maybe more time but also are more relatable. They're probably in a similar role to yourself and they probably have been in a similar situation to yourself and they're willing to, again like you said, reach out with the helping hand to help because they can be relatable to you rather than just a blanket email statement to like you said, the everyone that's present on LinkedIn that might not get your response for days, weeks or months depending on how busy everyone is. Um, the other thing I did like that you said was around the fear part of LinkedIn and networking and I think everyone forgets that LinkedIn is a professional network. I think the two reasons why LinkedIn even exists is to sell a product, a professional business product or to reach out and network with other people that you do not know. So I really hope if you're listening to this, take the fear out of networking on LinkedIn because the whole point of it, of the entire social experience of LinkedIn is to network is to reach out to people you do not know. So I hope that, I hope that alleviates some spheres and stress from people when they are sending those messages. Cuz I know that that can be in the back of your mind, especially when you're like, oh I have no connection with this person or I have no idea who this person is
Speaker 2:For sure. I always tell people if someone has a LinkedIn profile, you should assume that they are at least open to the idea of networking with a stranger. Because like you said, that's what LinkedIn quite literally was built for. And if by chance they're not open to networking with a stranger, then that's on them. That's not a reflection of you.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Awesome. Let's talk a little bit about interviewing right now in this market. You already said let's not rely on our, you know, resume or cv. That's not the best way to get a job but like how do you get noticed There are 400 plus applicants for each role Nowadays when I'm seeing on LinkedIn I'm like wow that's just a massive number that a hiring manager or recruiter is looking through. If I was applying to a C S M role today, how would I get noticed with 400 other applicants that have applied as well? Yes,
Speaker 2:I love this question. So one of my favorite tactics for standing out in a crowded market is a video introduction. I do have a free training where I talk really specifically about what you should say in that video introduction. But essentially what it is, is it's a reactive form of networking. So by reactive I mean it often happens after you apply to a job. So the steps are you apply to a job, then on LinkedIn you go and find someone who is likely the hiring manager or at least a decision maker in the hiring process. And you're gonna send them a very carefully scripted video introduction where it's definitely under two minutes you are giving a quick introduction to yourself, maybe talk a little bit about your background, why you're excited about their company, the role that you're applying for. And then you wanna make sure that you highlight something about your experience that translates to the job description. So if all over the job description they talk about expansion, driving expansion in your book of business, that clearly is something that they care a lot about. And so in your video introduction you wanna give them a quick like hey here's how I've driven expansion before. Maybe you give some very specific numbers your achievement and expansion and then you just let them know like I already applied to the role but I just wanted to send this video to highlight why I'm a great fit for the role.
Speaker 1:I've had a few videos come in when I have been actively hiring and there's lots of people who will just message on the actual post or send me an InMail, which is great, I will sift through all of that. But I've had people who have done a video and then followed up with another video when I like I've had people who have interacted in that way and it's just so much more personable and it just shows that you, you wanna be in front of me, you're taking that, it's almost like the idea or the concept of walking your resume in somewhere. Like you know you have face-to-face time and I think today's world where we all work remotely or digitally, a video introduction can be just that. And you know what I've also noticed is a lot of companies have made that part of where you can upload your resume but there's like upload cover letter or video that's actually becoming something in the hiring process as well. It's not mandatory but I think it, it really makes someone stick out, which I love seeing that that's, that's the new way of I guess introducing yourself. I wanna ask another question about resumes translating into interview tips as well cuz in customer success a lot of us come from different places and and different backgrounds. But how do you highlight in the interview what's important? Like how do you make sure you're coming in to highlight the right skills because you get 30 minutes, maybe 45 in your first call. How do you ensure that you are the that perfect candidate of the 400 others that that also might be getting that first interview?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my favorite way to think about getting ready for an interview is really relying on the job description. So there are really only two types of questions that you can get in an interview. There are gonna be questions about your past. Those are gonna be the questions like how have you done this before? Or can you give me an example of a time when you did X, Y, Z? So that's questions about your past. You may also get questions about your future. Those are gonna be questions that sound like how, how do you think about driving adoption or what's your process for prioritizing your book of business? So it's asking you for your perspective or your approach to things. So now understanding that there's only questions I can get about my past and PE questions I can get about my future. You then dissect the job description, what are, pull out the key responsibilities, the key tasks that they are putting out there. And then before the interview prepare for each responsibility or each task in the job description. What's an example of a time where I've done this before and how do I explain my general approach to this thing? And if you've got your example and your perspective for everything listed in the job description, to me that is the most effective way to get ready for an interview.
Speaker 1:Amazing, I love that. And then what about the industry as well? Cause I think a lot of people are looking at different industries of breaking into, let's say someone was in ed tech before and maybe they're looking at FinTech now or they're shifting industry, but that's also a hard shift as well, especially with the number of applicants that are out there and the number of people that have exact relevant industry experience. What are your tips to someone who's shifting industry? Because let's say they worked, worked in one industry but that industry isn't doing so well right now and they wanna, let's say shift to FinTech. How do they take those skills and prepare for that type of interview in order to ace that kind of interview?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'll say three things. One, you wanna come prepared to the interview with some perspective on what's happening in that industry. What is everyone talking about? What are the key trends? The big challenges, just like you would if you got a new customer assigned to you and they are in an industry that you're unfamiliar with, you go through the same motion, try to understand what's happening in that industry, what are, what's everyone talking about. The second thing I would say is really try to build an understanding of the key personas that you would be working with. So if you're moving from EdTech to FinTech, you're no longer working with educators and admins, now you're gonna be working with CFOs likely. So try to understand how do these people speak, what do they care about? What do I need to know about these people in order to relate to them? And that could be a really good way for you to network or good excuse for you to network. Go reach out to a couple people who work in FinTech or who work in finance for different companies and just try to get to know like what's your day-to-day like, what are you working on? How has this market impacted you? And then the third thing I would say is never shy away from sharing personal stories that indicate your interest or your knowledge of an industry. So I can give a really specific example of this. I was working with someone who never worked in finance but during Covid he created a whole YouTube series on personal finance. It was just like a passion of his and he was like I really wanna do this, but he wasn't talking about it in interviews and I was like, you have to highlight like the fact that you took the time to learn enough about it to where you could then go educate someone else on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely that
Speaker 2:That's gonna mean a lot, especially
Speaker 1:There's so much initiative right there.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Especially if you're competing against someone else who does not have industry expertise. Just the fact that you created that little YouTube series that gives you a legs a leg up that is gonna make you stand out. Definitely.
Speaker 1:I completely agree. Any little bit that you've done outside of the nine to five as well helps. I know that a lot of people listen to this podcast and when I do interviews as well, everyone's like, oh yeah, I've listened to the podcast and that's something that I do outside of my day-to-day, but it's something that I can highlight in my experience. So if there's anything out there that you are doing that's outside of but still relevant in your search, whether like you said in the finance sector or if it's you're doing video series on on CS or being a C S M, any of that can always translate into a great topic to talk about in an interview. And I, I don't think anyone should shy away from it as well.
Speaker 2:You could also look at it in the reverse. So if you're not sure what industry you should be looking into, start to look outside of your work life and look into your personal life. So if you own a bunch of properties and you rent them out on Airbnb, perhaps real estate tech is an industry that you could get into. So there, there's so many options and you just have to, you have to really like think about, all right, what am I involved in? What do I have some knowledge in? And that could be the, the next best fit for you.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I've noticed, which is sad to see is people have been laid off not once but twice in the last year. I've seen this come up and it's a very sad story to see that some people you know started a new job, got laid off mid last year and then they're now back in the same boat six months later. That means that there's two shorter timeframes that they've been at a company. How would you best tell your clients to explain, let's say shorter time spent at an organization? What's the best story or the best way to explain that when someone asks, Hey why were you only at this company for six months or a year or whatever the shorter amount was?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what I'll say first is because of the impact of covid and then this second big round of layoffs, recruiters and hiring managers are definitely more open to candidates who have had shorter stints at companies. It's not like it was 10 years ago where if you didn't stay at a company for five years, it was like put under a microscope and they wanted to know every reason why you didn't stay there. It's, it's totally not the same. So it's not as uncommon for people to have shorter stints at companies. But when it comes to talking about it, I would say two things. Be honest, being laid off again does not mean anything about you personally. It's a business decision and I would also always try to talk about it in an optimistic way. So try to highlight the things that you learned or the opportunities that you took advantage of or some good things that happened as a result of the layoff. Because what that's gonna tell a potential hiring manager or recruiter is you can adapt your flexible, you can learn, you can make the most of a bad situation and those are all really good qualities for a CSM to have
Speaker 1:For sure. And like you just said, if someone is under the microscope examining shorter time spent at a company and they're really giving you guff or a hard time, remember that you're interviewing that company as well. It's a two-way conversation and if they are so caught up on why you were laid off twice because of what's happening in the world, that might not be the exact place you wanna be spending your time as well. So just a reminder that I know it's a tough market out there and it's mostly companies that are getting their pick and choose of the candidates, but do remember that it is also your right and your option to understand that this is a two-way interview and you need to be looking if they're giving you grief about a shorter time at an organization that might not be where where you wanna be spending your next one to five years. That being said, one other question I have is around finding the right next company or the right next customer success organization. What are your tips for job seekers or the clients that you work with on figuring out the potential good fit and a good customer success org? Cause I know that that's a really top thing people are looking at today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when it comes to finding your next company, it is so personal, what's gonna be the best fit for you is not gonna be the best fit for someone else. So there is no blanketed answer to what you should be looking for. But what can be a really powerful exercise is set aside 30 minutes or an hour and sit down and just write everything that you loved about your prior role and everything that you did not love about your prior role. And that could be everything from your, your past manager's leadership style. Maybe you really didn't love the way that you were managed. Uh, maybe your company had a really, really awesome onboarding for CSMs and that was something that you really valued. Write down all of those things love did not love. Then what you're gonna do when you start interviewing with new companies is turn that list into very, very specific questions that you are going to ask throughout your interviews. So for example, if one of the things that you wrote down was, I did not love my manager's leadership style. I felt like I was constantly under a microscope. Maybe I felt a little bit micromanaged. A question that I'm gonna ask in my next interview is gonna be very specific to how do you think about being a leader in a remote setting? How do you balance micromanaging while also giving your team freedom? Ask really pointed and direct questions to try to uncover, okay, is this person likely going to micromanage me or is this someone who's gonna give me a little bit more freedom?
Speaker 1:Definitely. I love that. And again, remember it's a two-way conversation. You definitely have to have your list of things you want in a company as much as a company wants a list of things that they want for the candidate, we could keep going. Carly, I know there's so many more questions I can keep asking you, but I do know that you speak to lots of people in the industry, but also you have a lot of clients that have been getting laid off and it's happening and what are kind of the biggest learnings that you're taking away from, from these layoffs? Or what would you do if it happened again? What are some of the tips that you can give our listeners?
Speaker 2:Again, I said this earlier, but the biggest learning is what used to work two years ago, three years ago in order to get a job is not what's going to work today. So you really need to think about am have I adapted my strategy to today's market? Am I doing things differently? Am I going out of my way to try to stand out or am I still just kind of falling on old tactics that used to work? Like just sending my resume through easy apply Because the longer you try to rely on those old tactics that used to work, the longer you're just gonna be like banging your head against a wall. Like why is nothing happening?<laugh>
Speaker 1:So true. So, so true. And I absolutely love that you shared so many tactical tips for us today and I think that that's gonna be so important to anyone that's looking for a job. As we wrap up this podcast, I always like to end with our quick fire questions where I'm gonna challenge you to try to answer these next questions in a sentence or less. Are you ready?
Speaker 2:I am so ready.
Speaker 1:Okay, amazing. The first question I have is, what do you think is next for the customer success industry?
Speaker 2:I think what's next for the customer success industry is a larger conversation about customer success managers owning commercial responsibility.
Speaker 1:Yep. Completely agree. I think that if you're not driving revenue for the business, it's hard to justify where the value of A C S M lies in the end of the day, which is super important these days especially. The next question I have is, what is your favorite app that you cannot live without on your phone or your laptop?
Speaker 2:Ooh. Okay. So an app that I use every single day and I make my whole team use it is called Fathom and it's a meeting recorder with ai. It's so easy to use and amazing and I
Speaker 1:Love them. Amazing. I haven't heard of it so I'll have to look it up after we record. The next question is, which SaaS product can you not live without as a customer success professional?
Speaker 2:Ooh, okay. I'm gonna give you a category of products.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say product analytics or just any data analytics. I think I've been in roles where I had access to a lot of product usage data from my customers and roles where I did not, I felt so much more empowered when I knew exactly how my customers were using our product and what they were using it for.
Speaker 1:Totally valid and very important to know how your customer is actually using your product. So great answer. Next question is, what sort of compensation should a customer success manager get? Should it be a base salary only or a base salary with a commission variable
Speaker 2:Part? Oh, I totally think it should be base and commission.
Speaker 1:Agreed. And I think most people are, but sometimes I love hearing the controversial answer<laugh>. Um, and then the final question I have for you today is, what is your favorite part of customer success or being a C S M?
Speaker 2:Ooh, this is really, really easy for me. So my favorite part of customer success is the opportunity to be involved in every single aspect of a SaaS business. So as a CSM you have so much freedom to get involved with marketing, with sales, with product, with professional services. So if you're not sure what your next five years plan looks like, customer success is a great place to be cuz you can kind of like dip your toe into all those pools.
Speaker 1:I love it and I totally agree. I think as a C S M, if you're not speaking to all those departments at least once a week, I don't know what's what's happening cuz I feel like you have to be cross-functional in customer success. Yeah. But Carly, thank you so much. All your insights tactic tips were amazing. We can find you on LinkedIn. I already know that I've already shared that, but where else can we find you or find more of your information and and everything that you're sharing? Yeah,
Speaker 2:So LinkedIn is definitely the place to go. That's where I'm always sharing tips and announcements of things like that. But I also do have a website. It's just carly agar.com and I have a bunch of free trainings on there.
Speaker 1:Amazing. And you have something coming up, right? A new training?
Speaker 2:Yes. At the time that this is published, the free training should be coming up in just a couple weeks. So I'm doing a three part free training for folks who are looking to land a customer success job in 2023, and that'll be taking place in the first two weeks of May.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Thank you so much Carly. We'll be sure to list all your information in the show notes, but thank you again for sharing your time and your wisdom with us.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun. Amazing.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Customer Success Channel podcast today. We hope you learned something new to take back to your team and your company. If you found value in our podcast, please make sure to give us a positive review and make sure, sure you subscribe to our channel as we release new podcasts every month. Also, if you have any topics that you would like me to discuss in the future or you would like to be a guest on the podcast, please feel free to reach out. All my contact details are in this show notes. Thanks again for listening and tune in next time for more on customer success.