Where does talent acquisition really happen for Customer Success?
Because it does not feel like it is happening on LinkedIn.
I have spent months applying to Senior CSM and CX leadership roles, and the pattern is hard to ignore. Postings that sit open for weeks with hundreds of applicants and no movement. Listings that look freshly posted but were actually recycled months ago. Roles that get relisted the day after you apply, as if the algorithm just needed a pulse check. Somewhere along the way, LinkedIn stopped feeling like a hiring platform and started feeling like a content platform that happens to have a jobs tab.
None of this means the roles are not real. It means the visible layer of hiring, the searchable, applyable, Easy Apply layer, is not where the actual decisions get made. The real movement seems to happen elsewhere. A referral from someone already on the team. A direct message to a hiring manager before the posting even goes live. A conversation that started as networking and turned into a role.
For those of us in Customer Success, this should not be a surprising conclusion. We already know that trust and relationships outperform a transactional funnel every time. That is the entire premise of the job. It is strange that so many of us keep treating our own job search like a funnel instead.
Curious whether other CS and CX leaders are seeing the same thing, or whether I am just applying to the wrong roles.
