How to Land Your Dream Job Without Applying Desperately

(4-min read)

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Today at a glance

• How to land your dream job in Customer Success
• CS Café Hiring zone
• About you!

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#16 The Customer Success Café – How to Land Your Dream Job Without Applying Desperately

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Many of you reached out to me recently expressing concerns about finding a job in Customer Success.

So I thought I’d cover this topic in today’s edition to help you crack the code and land your dream job using a simple technique that always worked for me.

Here’s what I’ve been hearing from you so far:

You are ready to make the transition and want to land your next opportunity in Customer Success.

Like everybody else, you’ve been looking for job listings on Linkedin or other platforms. You’ve built and customized your CV to match the job descriptions.

Then you’ve applied and waited for feedback.

But after months and tens of applications, you haven’t got a single offer yet and the situation is becoming difficult to sustain.

You are exhausted and started losing confidence in yourself and your abilities.

And now you’re saying to yourself:

“I’ve been excellent in my current and previous roles! So how come I’m not able to land this next opportunity I thought was a perfect fit for me?”

Does it sound familiar to you?

We’ve all been there.

But the truth is you cannot expect different outcomes by doing the same things and repeating a broken process.

Worse, it’s the fastest way to kill your energy and enthusiasm over time.

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The issue with this traditional route is that you are the one asking for a job like tons of other people applying for the same role. This alone sets you in a weaker position before even getting to the first interview.

And you start tweaking your CV with specific keywords trying to get across a system you don’t have any control on…

With this approach, it’s extremely difficult to stand out from the crowd and try to prove why you’d be the best candidate for the job.

Besides, you also have no idea about the other candidates who might potentially be more talented or qualified than you…

This is why in this scenario, your chances to be selected for an initial interview are close to …zero!

So how should you proceed instead?

It’s time for you to stop doing what everyone else is doing and start focusing on building relationships first, as you’d do with your customers.

But this is where most people fail because it’s the longest route to take in comparison to just applying on a job board with a few clicks.

I’ve personally never got a job by sending out my CV directly using the traditional way.

And today I want to give you a different perspective to help you level up your approach and stand out from the crowd.

So here are the 2 simple steps I’d recommend you to consider to land your next dream job in Customer Success!

Step 1) Target 10 companies you’d love to work for

First of all, the golden rule is: if you want to target all jobs, then you’ll end up with no job.

So start doing extensive research about the ten companies you’ve short-listed here.

Identify their mission, values, key objectives, the issues they are addressing, and the top challenges they need to overcome.

Once you collected a handful of information, it’s time to get practical.

Try out the company’s products as you can.

Download the free trials. Attend webinars, watch related videos, and read customer testimonials, in particular the success stories.

Besides, read also the negative comments or reviews on social media.

All of this will then prompt you with the following question you need to ask yourself:

What’s the one thing I can help the company with?

Once you identified the pain point and matched the solution with your own experience and abilities, jump into the next step.

Step 2) Identify 5 people to contact directly

Your top objective is to get referrals. And for that, you must laser target the right people at the company to start a conversation with.

However, it’s not about “spray and pray”.

Rather than trying to find the perfect profile, reach out to your future potential colleagues on that team instead. It can be the hiring manager or people who have a similar role to you at the company.

You know that in Customer Success, it’s key to nurture strong relationships with our sponsors.

And so it is with your job search where you need to:

Build champions for yourself at the target company. This will help them step in when necessary, get your back and make referrals for you.

But yet most people are too quick to ask for favors before building anything valuable first!

Rather, simply start a meaningful conversation by engaging on their posts, adding genuine comments, making suggestions, asking questions about their challenges, and also celebrating their milestones if any!

You can also send them a cold email to grab their attention with a call to action as I’ve described here in a previous edition.

Once you identified a specific challenge you can help with, it’s time for you to build a small portfolio of achievements to showcase the value you can bring to the team and hit the ground running.

The easiest way is to prepare a short presentation or a one-pager and send it to your contacts with a note like:

“Hello [name], thanks for our recent conversation, it’s been super useful! As I was reflecting on the [specific challenge], I wanted to share with you a few ideas which can help, see attached. Happy to get on a quick call to review.”

Once you know your contact went through your presentation, you can now ask for the referral you’ve been waiting for patiently.

Note that at this point, you’re already on top of mind for this person.

And if there was an open position already listed, I guarantee they’ll make the referral for you right on the spot.

But if there wasn’t any at the moment, you can kindly ask them to think of you in case an opportunity matching your skills would be available in the near future.

And that’s it! No need to complicate things, just keep it simple and direct with confidence and perseverance!

Follow these two steps and you’ll already be ahead of the competition!

All it takes is going a little bit further with a small touch of creativity to stand out! But this is already what you do as a highly talented Customer Success professional, don’t you?

Finally, all of this couldn’t work if your online brand was not a killer one, especially on Linkedin.

This is a topic I’ll cover in an upcoming edition to help you maximize your chances of getting hired even faster!

So stay tuned and meanwhile, check these awesome opportunities I’ve selected for you!

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CS Café Hiring Zone

I’m personally curating the most unique jobs I’ve come across or have been made aware of this week in Customer Success.

Today’s Featured Opportunities

US

• Customer Success Specialist, Medrio (US, Remote)
• Customer Success Manager, RightBound (US, Remote)
• Customer Success Manager, Parallax (US, Minneapolis)
• Customer Success Manager, Immuta (US, Remote)
• Customer Success Manager, ByteChek (US, Remote)
• Sr Manager, Customer Success Programs, Gong, (US, Remote)
• Sr Manager, Customer Success Ops, Typeform (US, Remote)

EMEA

• Customer Success Manager, Precursive (UK, Remote)
• Customer Success Manager, Immuta (UK, Remote)
• Customer Success Manager, Signifyd (UK, London)
• Sr Customer Success Manager, Signifyd (UK, London)

APAC

• Customer Success Manager, Delivery Solutions (IN, Mumbai)
• Customer Success Manager, Immuta (Sydney, Remote)

About You

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Have a great week ahead!

And as always until next Sunday, take care friends!

Hakan.

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