The Customer Success Playbook
Welcome to “The Customer Success Playbook,” a fresh podcast initiative spearheaded by Kevin Metzger and Roman Trebon. Immerse yourself with us in the dynamic realm of customer success, where we unravel the latest insights, inspirations, and wisdom from recognized leaders in the Customer Success domain.
Our journey began with a simple yet profound belief: that meaningful conversations can significantly impact our professional trajectory. With this ethos, we’ve embarked on a mission to bring to you the voices of seasoned and revered professionals in the field. Our episodes have seen the likes of Sue Nabeth Moore, Greg Daines, Jeff Heclker, James Scott, David Ellin, and David Jackson, who have generously shared their expertise on a variety of pertinent topics.
We’ve delved into the intricacies of Profit and Loss Statements in Customer Success with Dave Jacksson, explored the potential of Customer Success Platforms with Dave Ellin, and unravelled the role of AI in Customer Success with all guests. With Sue, we navigated the waters of Organizational Alignment, while Greg brought to light strategies for Reducing Churn. Not to be missed is James insightful discourse on the Current Trends in Customer Success and Jeff’s thoughts on Service Delivery in CS.
Each episode is crafted with the intention to ignite curiosity and foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement among customer success professionals. Our discussions transcend the conventional, probing into the proactive approach, and the evolving landscape of customer success.
Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a newcomer to the industry, our goal is to propel your customer success prowess to greater heights. The rich tapestry of topics we cover ensures there’s something for everyone, from the fundamentals to the advanced strategies that shape the modern customer success playbook.
Our upcoming episodes promise a wealth of knowledge with topics like CS Math, Training, AI, Getting hired in CS, and CS Tool reviews, ensuring our listeners stay ahead of the curve in this fast-evolving field. The roadmap ahead is laden with engaging dialogues with yet more industry mavens, aimed at equipping you with the acumen to excel in your customer success journey.
At “The Customer Success Playbook,” our zeal for aiding others and disseminating our expertise to the community fuels our endeavor. Embark on this enlightening voyage with us, and escalate your customer success game to unparalleled levels.
Join us on this quest for knowledge, engage with a community of like-minded professionals, and elevate your customer success game to the next level. Your journey towards mastering customer success begins here, at “The Customer Success Playbook.” Keep On Playing!!
The Customer Success Playbook
Customer Success Playbook - Carly Agar - Insider Guide to Navigating the Competitive Customer Success Job Market
What if you had insider knowledge on how to navigate the competitive customer success job market? This episode is packed with such insights courtesy of our guest, Carly Agar, founder and CEO of Carly Agar Training. Carly shares her expertise on standing out in a crowd of applicants, giving us a glimpse into the hiring dynamics of today's customer success sector. You'll hear about the importance of self-reflection, and master the art of networking, selling yourself, and honing your interviewing skills. Trust Carly when she mentions being patient, as it's all part of the process in landing your ideal job in customer success.
But that's not all. Carly's advice goes beyond just job hunting, as she emphasizes the need for mental health management during the taxing job search process. She shares her personal experiences about how hobbies like golfing and reading helped her unwind. As we delve deeper, Carly unfolds her unique approach to resume optimization for ATS systems, and why a one-size-fits-all resume might be more beneficial than an overly customized one. So get ready to discover a wealth of knowledge and resources that Carly has to offer. Just by tuning in, you're already taking a proactive step towards making your mark in the competitive world of customer success.
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You can also find the CS Playbook Podcast:
YouTube - @CustomerSuccessPlaybookPodcast
Twitter - @CS_Playbook
You can find Kevin at:
Metzgerbusiness.com - Kevin's person web site
Kevin Metzger on Linked In.
You can find Roman at:
Roman Trebon on Linked In.
Hello and welcome to the Customer Success Playbook podcast, where we're passionate about elevating your customer success game. I'm Roman Trembon, joined by my co-host, kevin Metzger. Don't forget for a deep dive into our past episodes, videos, articles and more, head over to our new website at customersuccessplaybookai and remember to like, share and subscribe to our podcast and our YouTube channel. We're committed to bringing you the latest insights and expertise from the industry's best minds. Kevin, how are you doing? Doing great excited about today's show.
Speaker 1:I am as well, and so today on the show, we are excited to be joined by Carly Eger, founder and CEO of Carly Eger Training. With over a decade of customer success experience, carly's mission today, kev, revolves around mentoring and guiding individuals in their own customer success journey. She's passionate about imparting a work life balance and providing accessible career opportunities in the world of customer success. She offers strategies and training for job seekers to help them stand out and to excel in their current CSM rules. Kev, you and I do a lot of local networking and there are so many people that are looking to get into the space, looking for a career change or have been impacted by the job market, so we're excited to have her on the show, kev once you talk about the topic we'll delve into with Carly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Carly's experience is excellent for today's topic. In this episode, we're talking about Carly's perspective on the current landscape of customer success job market. We'll delve into what makes the candidate truly stand out in this competitive arena and the nuances of today's hiring dynamics. Carly will also sharpen her top I'm sorry, share her top strategies for those aspiring to make a mark in customer success, plus get a peek into her own experiences and journey in this industry. Carly, welcome to the show, we're excited to have you and let's start by talking about the current market and the situation with the economy the way it is and what's happening for CSMs in today's job.
Speaker 3:Well, thanks for the intro. I'm excited to be here. We're just diving right in bad news.
Speaker 1:Bad news, Carly. That's the headline.
Speaker 3:No, no. So the current market I know a lot of people will describe it as competitive, which is definitely true. I like to call it demanding. I think, if I had to give one word to the market that we're in right now, it's demanding, and what I mean by that is it's really demanding of those who want to participate in it and also those who find themselves needing to participate in it due to layoffs or restructurings or whatever is happening.
Speaker 3:It requires a lot of patience that most customer success professionals have been lucky enough to not have to really be patient in a job search. You think as early as three years ago, you could switch on your setting on LinkedIn and say I'm open to work and you would get recruiters just flooding to you if you had even a year in customer success, and it's just not the reality of today, and so it's demanding a lot of patience from job seekers. It's also demanding a lot of new skills. We used to be able to just quickly update our resume, throw a quick job description in there, like I said, turn your open to work settings on LinkedIn and, boom, you got interviews rolling in. And the skills that it requires now is job seekers need to know how to network. They need to become better at interviewing than they've ever been before, so it's really demanding in a lot of different areas.
Speaker 2:So when you say new skills, you really mean new skills for job seeking, not necessarily new skills in the central percent.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, yeah. So networking, interviewing skills, even if you think about the ability to sell yourself right, a lot of times how we talk about the job seeking process is oh, I got to sell myself, I got to sell myself on my resume, I got to sell myself in interviews Three years ago. We didn't really have to sell ourselves right, it was just like hey, I'm open to work, I've got some experience under my belt and people would flock to you. But now you really have to get good at selling yourself, which is very difficult for a lot of people, because most people I'll underline the word most are not in a natural state of bragging about themselves. There are some exceptions we know those people, I'm sure but for most people that's not a natural state. It doesn't always feel good to be in a state of bragging about yourself In this job market. That's what it demands. If you're not selling yourself, then someone else is, and they're going to be the one that gets the interview or gets the job offer.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, carly, real quick, kev and we hear this a lot, kevin and I, as we talked to others in the field and I'm sure you do is I saw this customer success job posting and there's already 1,000 people applied and it's overwhelming. So, for someone that finds themselves new to the job market, where would you recommend, where should they start? It seems like overwhelming because it's so competitive and there's a lot of people looking for a customer success job. What's the first thing I need to be doing if I find myself in a position to get back into the market?
Speaker 3:Yeah, a lot of people aren't going to like this answer because it's not very sexy, but, truthfully, the first thing you need to do is self-reflection, and self-reflection is very simple.
Speaker 3:It's literally just thinking about what am I good at, what do I want, what have I done, what accomplishments do I have, what skills do I have. So it's simple in theory, because it's really just reflecting. It's not always easy, though, and a lot of people try to rush through it and try to just say you know, let me just throw some things on my resume quick, throw some stories together for my interviews, but you have to be super intentional about the stories you're sharing, the skills you're sharing, the roles you're looking for. So I would say that the first step is take some time to really self-reflect on all those areas, and then, more tactically, of course, it's getting your resume up to par, and I think where a lot of people go wrong is they spend way too much time on their resume no-transcript traditionally, when you think about a job search, you think resume right, that's my ticket in, that's how I get my foot in the door.
Speaker 3:But when you're in a market like today's, it doesn't really matter how incredible and amazing and perfect your resume is, statistically it's still going to be less effective because there are so many resumes in the pile, right? So I would say don't spend all your time on your resume. Get it to a really really good place, and then you should be investing most of your time on networking.
Speaker 2:And so, from that perspective, the strategy is get somebody to help introduce your resume, as opposed to just blindly submitting your resume. Is that what you're recommending?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there's different times that you can network the way that you're describing it is what we usually think about with networking. It's let me try to get a connection, have that connection, bring my resume in for me. So I call that proactive networking, because you're actually networking before you apply. You can also network reactively, so after you apply to a job you can then try to go influence a decision maker, right, try to get them excited about you as a candidate so that they can then go say to their recruiter hey, we got to bring Kevin in for an interview.
Speaker 1:And Carly on that networking and I like that. I've never heard that the proactive versus the reactive kind of networking in, I guess on either front. So what is the bet? Is it obviously utilizing, like, maybe your LinkedIn first connections to try to get into an organization to make it? What about, like I've heard people that are like signing up for LinkedIn Navigator and sending recruiters a bunch of messages Like what's the best way to get? Is that effective of my rubbing people the wrong way? If people do that, Like, what is the strategy, either on proactive or on the reactive front?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a really good question. So the way that I look at networking in terms of who you're networking with is on a maturity scale. So if you are brand new to networking, it's always great to start with first degree connections, whether that be past colleagues, friends, family, family, friends, whatever it may be. That's a great way to kind of dip your toe into networking, because for a lot of people it's new, right. It's like this new, scary, uncomfortable thing. So I would say that's kind of like the first phase of networking. If that works for you, you're very lucky, because in today's market it usually requires that you mature your networking a bit and start dipping your toe into other ponds. You mentioned recruiters, so I'm glad you brought this up. It's another thing where that used to work three years ago.
Speaker 3:In today's market, what everyone is thinking is I got a message recruiters right. So you think about put yourself in a recruiter shoes. The sheer amount of messages that they're getting. There's no way and that's not their job right to respond to messages on LinkedIn. So there's no way that they're getting through all those messages. Even if they do get to your message and respond, the likelihood of them being able to then do something about that is so slim that I actually don't think recruiters are the best to spend your time. So now we're kind of moving up in the maturity scale, right.
Speaker 3:I would say reaching out to current CS professionals, whether that be existing CSMs on the team or decision makers. A lot of people are scared to reach out to decision makers, but a CSM has to be able to engage decision makers, right. So you're actually showing that you have the skill of a CSM by engaging someone of a higher title. So I say go out, go interact with decision makers, and also to think about the cross functional teams that interact with CS on a daily basis. Sales, for instance. You know salespeople are on LinkedIn, right. They're not afraid to talk to strangers. So that's how you can kind of go from a low maturity of networking, where you're just kind of relying on friends and family, to a much higher level of maturity where now you've differentiated and you're reaching out to different personas.
Speaker 2:I like that. It's kind of like your customer segmentation, except it's personal segmentation.
Speaker 3:Exactly, yeah. And that brings up another point too, which a lot of people again networking is so new, so a lot of people just haven't learned how to network. When you're networking, it's actually a really good opportunity for you to show like hey, I have the skills that you want in a CSM. Right, I mentioned like engaging an executive decision maker. That's one skill you could easily showcase. But by reaching out to someone in a creative way, you're showing creative problem solving, which is something that CSMs need to be able to do. So you can also use networking as a way to make yourself stand out, just by showcasing your skills.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, and Carly, let's say that I get, I mature my networking and I get to the right level of people From what you're seeing or hearing. Are there certain skills and now I'm talking about customer success skills, like I know you talked about, you know, the ability to engage with higher level decision makers, right, is a skill that's essential. What other skill are there? Certain skills within the CSM space that you're seeing hiring managers you know, gravitating more towards like hey, we really want these bucket of skills for our CSMs or CSM leaders, as opposed to, maybe, stuff that's not resonating as much.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know it varies from company to company. It usually depends on the stage that that company is in. One thing that I have noticed recently and is super interesting just given, like the conversation around what what do we look for in a CS candidate? Historically, there was always kind of the argument of are we looking for someone with domain expertise or are we looking for someone with hands on CSM experience, and it was kind of looked at as I can have one or the other, right. What's interesting now is employers have the luxury of having both. So that is something that is really challenging for candidates because it's it's so out of your control, right. You might have the most amazing CS experience, but if you don't also have that domain experience, you could get passed on just because of that, which is not something we're used to seeing.
Speaker 2:Interesting. I actually don't know as a leader in the field, I don't know that that's a good thing. Bring in experience from external folks, you know, if recruiters are doing that in the first screen and screening for people who have experience in my field, that's one thing, but then I'm not growing the diversity of my team from a from an experienced standpoint, which is which is interesting and I'm sure I'm sure I recognize that's likely happening. Maybe something for leaders to consider talking to their HR about, to decide whether it's something they really want to do and filter out.
Speaker 3:Mm, hmm, yeah, I would say the most common objection that I'm seeing in after a final round interview is you know, it was really close. We decided to go with the one person who also had domain experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I agree that it definitely creates a diversity problem.
Speaker 1:So so maybe we should have. I know we jumped right into the market. We're so anxious to hear what the market could be touching on, but you kind of are now like customer success for customer success people trying to land their next job right, but you come from a customer success background. Can you talk a little bit about your background in customer success and how it's led you to kind of helping people find their their next opportunities today?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we did kind of like dive right in there.
Speaker 1:We were anxious. I'm sorry, carl, we were anxious. We were like we got to get into the market.
Speaker 3:It's all good, yeah. So I actually started my career in sales like a lot of customer success folks, and this was back when customer success didn't quite have its own identity yet, so we were still really being called account management. And then we started to spin off and have our own identity right as I transitioned from sales into customer success. Like a lot of sales folks who find themselves wanting to transition into customer success, you know, I had all of the same, I think, qualms with sales and also the same interests.
Speaker 3:So a lot of folks who moved from sales to CS feel that the relationship they have with clients is is transactional right. Like you spend so much time uncovering their needs and presenting solutions and then you get them all excited and they're like, oh my gosh, we have the perfect solution and then it's like bye, and you don't actually see any of it through, yeah. So I found myself wanting to see that through right. It's like I've done all this hard work. Now I want to make sure you get the outcome that we promised you, and I really enjoyed working with clients. I did not enjoy hunting. That was a great skill, I think, to have. I think everyone, at some point in their life should learn how to do that, but I just it wasn't my strongest suit and I didn't love doing it, and so it naturally made sense for me to continue working with customers, just in a different part of their life cycle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think the hunting thing is. I love that. I think people should always spend a little time hunting working in the restaurant industry. That's like a masterclass in business from my perspective as well. Right Things, you should check off your like employee career right and understand how hard it is, because you you do strengthen your skills doing it that way. So so thanks for sharing that. So I want to, kevin, it's okay.
Speaker 1:I want to kind of go back to the resume thing real quick. I know we, I know we're jumping around a little bit, but I hear a lot of people say and there's a lot of confusion I think in the space on okay, I need a resume for the to get through this ATS system, the automatic application tracker I'm probably butchering the acronym, right. I need a, I need a, a version to get through that, and then version that's like sexy I can give to recruiters and hiring managers. But then I need a version I need to tailor every single time. So I need multiple. What is the like? What is the walking around from? Carly? What is your perspective? How many resumes do I need and how many shall I be managing updating etc.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm sure I'll get some flack for this, because I tend to not agree with the vast majority of people on this topic. I think you should have one resume, and that all goes back to what I said earlier, which is you could have the sexiest, most ATS friendly whatever that means resume. It could be the most amazing piece of paper, right, but it's still you have to think about all of the other factors and all the other variables that impact the effectiveness of your resume. And if we're just looking at today's market, like you said, you go to apply to a job and there's a thousand applicants already. I don't care how sexy your resume is or how many ATS systems it passes, it's still going to be less effective than it was three years ago.
Speaker 3:So I and in working with my clients, this is what we do as well. We have one amazing resume. We actually don't think about the ATS as much as a lot of people do and we, instead of investing more time editing our resume for every job, plugging in keywords, we use that time networking instead. I'm all about what's going to get me ROI in life and in business and for my clients. And if you're investing a ton of time in editing your resume for keywords, that's hours a week, right, it's not going to have a high return, unfortunately, and so I look to well, what are the activities I can spend time on that have a much higher likelihood of giving me a return, and to me in this market, that is networking.
Speaker 2:I think that makes a lot of sense Now. So you actually don't recommend to do keyword optimization in your resume at all on a per job basis.
Speaker 3:We were optimizing for all customer success jobs that our clients are interested in, and a lot of those roles have the same keywords. So if we can have one resume that is optimized for the vast majority of roles, I'm good with that, and I would rather then spend more time on other things.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:There are some exceptions, right. If you have really unique work experience, where you spent 10 years in healthcare and then you spent 10 years in I don't know I'm going to make something up the automotive industry and you might then maybe you should have two, where one is more optimized towards one industry and the other but, as a general rule, one resume. We're not editing it for every job. The other thing I'll say too and, kevin, maybe you have experience with this is I find that when candidates are so focused on the ATS, what I see a lot of is these resumes with tons of keywords and I'm like, wow, these are amazing keywords. But then their experience doesn't back up the keywords that they have plugged in. And to me, if I'm a hiring manager, you've lost all your credibility, right. It's like you tried to game the system to get me to read your experience, but something's not matching up.
Speaker 1:Right yeah. So how LinkedIn? Like how important is LinkedIn? Or like to make sure that's in a place where it's attractive to, I guess, recruiters? Or even hiring managers or anyone that's checking out your profile. And again, I'm, like, one of seven people not on Facebook, so is there any other social media? I'm a LinkedIn person but, like, should the focus be on LinkedIn? Is there anything else that, from like a social perspective, that people should be focused on?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question, and I think LinkedIn is another area where folks are investing too much time. I've heard folks who have paid people hundreds of dollars to update their LinkedIn profile. I just don't see the return on that investment in this market. Right, if we're again talking three years ago, sure, a lot of recruiters were out on LinkedIn looking for the perfect candidates, trying to poach people. That's not happening as much today, when they can post an open role and get a thousand qualified applicants in an hour.
Speaker 3:So if you're looking to update your LinkedIn, I would say the bare minimum you should have an up to date profile picture and just make sure your activity on LinkedIn is going to sound so crazy and basic like duh, but make sure your activity on LinkedIn is professional Right, you don't want to be out there bashing recruiters or hiring managers Previous jobs, but I see it all the time. Yeah, previous jobs and then just make sure that the experience that you have on your LinkedIn aligns with your resume. So if someone is kind of cross checking that, everything is good to go, but I don't think you should be spending more than an hour getting your LinkedIn in a good spot. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. Yeah, we can put a breaking news banner at the bottom of the video says Carly. Says don't bash former employees on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3:I mean, I get it. You know folks who are in this job market like they have a lot to deal with, Right. I have the utmost respect for them, and when folks are kind of venting on LinkedIn, it's just because they're seeking community Right. And there's a lot of comfort in community, so I understand where it comes from, but you don't want something silly like that to be the reason why you don't get an interview.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, it's just not worth it. So I'll stay on the LinkedIn camera real quick. Sorry, got one more follow up to this and so because I was asked this and I had no idea how to respond to this.
Speaker 1:Okay, so someone in the job market said hey Roman, what's your thoughts on? I see in my LinkedIn feed these people that have been in the market for a while that write these like hallmark, ask posts about the struggle, the challenge, basically asking. And he and the person said it comes off sort of I don't know, desperate may not be maybe the right word. I'm not sure the right word is that. Should I be doing this? It seems to be working because it's getting likes and repos, but then I don't. You know, I don't want to. That's not kind of my personal brand. I had no idea. I said well, luckily I'm talking to someone who's an expert, like this week.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's a great question, so I'm all for it If it's done tactfully right. Of course, that's another area where you want to be careful. I wouldn't necessarily recommend saying I've applied to 10,000 jobs and no one has given me an interview, because that could actually reflect poorly on you as a candidate. So I think as long as you're being intentional about what you're sharing, then it's fine and it could actually have some benefit. Right, If a lot of people are liking it or commenting on it, maybe someone that you are connected to through you know previous employer sees it. So I think it is a good idea, as long as you're careful about what you're saying. You don't want to position yourself as an unattractive candidate in doing something like that. So it should be more about what you're looking for and what you bring to the table and less about the struggles you've been having in your job search.
Speaker 2:Just like the resume, interviewing, networking. It should be about selling yourself. All of it's about You're selling your value. If you are positioning that you have a loss of value because you are not currently employed, you're reflecting on yourself basically.
Speaker 3:Exactly yeah, and Roman, you brought up a good point which I wanted to touch on. You said Would that seem like would some people perceive that as being a negative thing? What I always like to remind folks in their job search is You're not gonna please everybody, right? And you can only control what you can control. So the reality is a post like that might make you unattractive to some hiring managers, but you have to think, right, are the potential benefits going to outweigh that? You know. Another example of that is networking, like I get asked all the time. Is that gonna bother people? Are they gonna think I'm like sleazy or annoying if I'm trying to message them on LinkedIn? And the reality is, yes, you are going to run into some people. You're annoying and sleazy for trying to network with them, but that's out of your control, right? They were gonna think that you're regardless. So just focus on what you can control. Go find those people who are gonna be Welcoming to your LinkedIn messages or your LinkedIn post, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that right. There's a lot of people out there right and, and so they could land in in different ways, so I know the rage right now is AI and chat GPT.
Speaker 3:I hear.
Speaker 1:I hear everyone say and there's a lot right, so I'm gonna put my resume and have chat GPT revise it, or I'm gonna. I'm gonna use it to do research on a company, or I'm gonna use it to prep for an interview. I, from your perspective, like what? Where is their value in using AI? Maybe? Where is there a fine line between maybe too much and not enough? Or how should be people be embracing that technology as they're looking for their next?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, you might not love this question. I I mean, you might not love this answer. I Don't talk about AI Much because I only like to share what I have data to back up, so things that I've been testing for years over hundreds of people and I know that it works. But I think the biggest mistake that I see with AI, and job seeking specifically, is when folks try to leverage AI to inform what they're going to say about themselves. I Think that you can use AI if you're trying to refine how you're going to say it. So, in other words, let's, let's say, with a resume, right, if you are trying to make your resume more concise or you're trying to lower the readability level, I Would use AI to help you refine what you've already decided you're going to say about your experience. So it's helping you with the how, but it's not determining for you what you're going to say about your experience. Is that? Am I explaining that well?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I understand it's. It's a. It's a refinement as opposed to like a Creation. Right, I'm not using it to write what I need. It's help you maybe just tweak it or get it to the place I want.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Manifest what you've done right.
Speaker 3:Hey, and the last thing you want to do? Right the job seeking process. I always break it up into two phases. The first phase is visibility. First you got to get noticed. The second phase is credibility. Now it's on you to sell yourself. If you're relying on AI to dictate what you're going to say about yourself, that's going to come through in an interview so quickly. If someone starts peppering you about questions on, about things on your resume that you didn't write, that AI wrote for you and you can't talk about it, naturally Someone's going to see through that right away and you've lost all credibility. Yeah, but to me it's just it's not worth the risk.
Speaker 1:And so, carly, we've we've touched on a lot of topics and we've probably kept you from helping people find jobs. So is there any any topics or anything we didn't touch on that you would kind of lift up, as people are either again Entering the job market or have been in the job market, or maybe that you said earlier, transitioning into the CS space.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I think that I would Shine a light on something that not a lot of people talk about when it comes to the job search and we haven't talked about it yet today and that is the number one reason people are not successful in a job search is because at some point, they become burnt out.
Speaker 3:Right, and, of course, there are also financial reasons, like you may get to a point where you're just like I have to do something else in the meantime, but burnout is the most common reason that people stop pursuing, whether it's a new job because they want to move up in their career, or it's a new job because they want to get out of a bad situation.
Speaker 3:And so we can talk all day about the tactics, like your resume is gotta look great, you got to be networking, but if you're not Taking care of yourself in the process, if you're not being mindful of okay, today I spent eight hours on my job search like what, what does that mean for my mental health Then you're gonna burn out and you're not gonna be able to sustain it. So you have to also be very careful about giving yourself time off right, you know it feels so urgent, urgent, if you burn yourself out. Even you know that has other impacts too. If you're in an interview and you're just completely Burn out and operating from this place of like desperation, you're not gonna show up as confidently as you normally would. So I think it's yeah, it's important to have all the pieces in place and to have all those skills developed, but you also have to be careful about how your, how much time you're spending on it, and that you can actually Sustain it and still have a life throughout the process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's. I'm glad you raised that because it's it's a challenge to keep that balance right and to stay Motivated and stay positive. Because you talked about hunting, it's like hunting in a way right, you keep your high in it. There's a lot of embers and flows and it's like a roller coaster and if you know, you got to be able to manage the, the, the down times, as well as when things are. There's a lot of, you know, sticks in the fire, right, kev? We want to. We don't get into rapid fire here with Carly. Let's do it All right.
Speaker 3:Curly buckle up. I can guarantee you this is gonna be the most difficult part for me. So, One hobby you have outside of?
Speaker 2:work for to help you decompress and unwind oh.
Speaker 3:Gosh, I was gonna say golfing, but then you said to help me decompress Reading. I'll say that's, that's something that does help me decompress About three years, so I'm pretty new to the scene, yeah, and it's awesome, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know about unwinding and enjoying your time, it's so fun the day right.
Speaker 3:Some days it's the best, the most relaxing thing, and then other days just makes you question a lot of your.
Speaker 1:It's like me, I'll have a 94 bad shots and then, like, I'll have two good shots in a row and I'll be like, oh man, this is great, I should do this.
Speaker 3:I always give you enough to keep you coming back, but never more. So you mentioned reading what's uh, it's one of your favorite books, oh, Gosh, you know I'm really into thrillers and like crime and murder mystery, um, but one of my favorite books that I would actually recommend to potential listeners here that is relevant to the conversation is the outcome generation.
Speaker 2:Great book.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's all about the shift in Servicing customers as CSMs towards being very outcome driven, which I think as an industry we've all accepted. But a lot of CSMs who are in the day-to-day role have not yet had that shift. So I just think it's incredibly well done.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Early bird yes.
Speaker 2:One place you'd like to go that you haven't been yet.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, I want to go on a safari, so badly.
Speaker 2:Yes, any particular place. Probably South Africa, yeah and last question where can the audience find out more about you?
Speaker 3:Uh, great question. So I would say LinkedIn is where I am most often, always posting tips and trends and things that I'm seeing with regards to the job search, in customer success. I also have a ton of free resources and trainings on my website, which is just carly agarcom forward slash freebies, you know, and carly will put this in audience, will put this in our, in our links, our descriptions, our posts.
Speaker 1:So definitely check out, carly. You have a great website and I know a couple of the free trains you reference is like how to nail that customer success interview which and so definitely check out these trains. They are free. So, kev Carly, first of all, thanks for joining us. This has been an awesome conversation, yeah, and your insights are amazing. I know there's a lot of people that are in a transition in navigating this market, so we appreciate you sharing your insights. All right, well, that's a wrap for this episode of the customer success playbook. We hope you found our conversation insightful and have a better sense of how to navigate the customer success job market and how to best position yourself.
Speaker 1:You enjoyed this episode. Please like, subscribe, comment, share it with your friends and colleagues. You can find us on LinkedIn, at Roman Trebon and at Kevin Metzger. You can also find us at customer success playbook on LinkedIn. Again, check out our website customer success playbook dot AI. We'll also link the Carly's website on there as well. Sign up for our newsletter Connect, share your feedback on the show and give us ideas and suggestions for future topics and guests and, as always, thanks for listening. Keep on playing.
