That's such a broad and helpful answer, @Jeremy Mulder. Thank you a lot for putting the time to write it. It made me re-consider a few of my own steps in tis process.I also think that if you don't have experience with SaaS directly, you can try to leverage your experience working with SaaS products/solutions/tools in your previous role for a non-SaaS company. This was my case while working on a craft brewery as B2B account manager and having a close relationship with customer success managers from our Inventory Management System, our Project Management system and so on... SaaS is still a relatively new business model and it keeps growing on a lightfast rate. So I believe that at some point CS executives and recruiters will have to consider professionals without the direct SaaS experience and value indirect and cross-functional related experience.
The extra challenge at the moment is, of course, the devastating and global effect of the pandemic in the job market.... so many folks lost their jobs that it disproportionally increased the offer of professionals from all sorts of industry backgrounds and experiences. Interested to hear what others have been experiencing about it.
Great question, @Kevin Mitchell Leonor. I'm a domain generalist and have SaaS and non-SaaS experience in many Customer Success roles (IC-->CCO). When experience is the barrier, I think substitution skills are the path forward. Here is an initial framework I use when hiring CSM candidates with no prior experience (in SaaS, in the domain, in Customer Success, in a mission driven company, in startups, etc).
Does adding this candidate to the team make it more likely we will:
Want to join a community? Bring overlapping experience. Expert communities require greater overlap for admission; the less overlap, the more likely the community sees you as an outsider and excludes you from the candidate pool. Hiring mangers use overlap in experience as a proxy for hiring as it allows them to answer yes to the framework questions re: mission, plan, and execution.
A way to overcome this general rule: use your substitution skills.
The legal tech company seeks candidates who are lawyers with experience in both customer success and B2B SaaS. If you lack that combination of experience, then be prepared to challenge the hiring manager's notion that you are an outsider. Here are are few ways to do so:
CS Outsider
Business Outsider
Subject Matter Domain Outsider
If you can make a convincing case that you are not an outsider, great, do it. If not, (perhaps because you are an outsider and/or perhaps because the experts of that community really only accept other experts), then consider moving onto another job opportunity or consider ways to get that experience elsewhere (school, internships, different jobs within the company, etc). On a personal note, try as I might, despite my interest and experiences, the local genetics company sees me as domain outsider and won't hire me. So I'll keep moving on.
Thanks for the great question. Interested to see what others have to say on the subject...
