Our October CSOps meeting was all about how to open the door to global hires. If your company is looking to expand into global markets, you may be best served by hiring someone from that new region.
From a US Perspective
Some of the challenges faced with looking internationally is that Customer Success is still predominately a role found in the United States, where it is still a newer area. This can make it difficult to find staff who have direct experience with that title, creating a situation where you may miss out on a phenomenal hire due to that lack.
So how can you vet someone who has never touched the platform they will own? You need to look for traits rather than direct experience. A strong candidate will:
- have supported an internal team
- This is highly relevant since the Operations role supports the internal CS team
- have deployed systems and/or tools
- since every company sets up their tools differently, sometimes no experience on a specific tool can avoid the need to do any habit changing
- have created processes
- demonstrate an eagerness to learn
From a Global Candidate Perspective
Having a comfortable environment for the interview process was highly valuable, especially since they were not coming into it with direct experience. However, previous experience in operations, licensing, and software were great indicators that the skillset needed for a CSOps position was there.
After the intro, attendees broke into small groups and continued the conversation focused on the following questions:
- Do you have a global team? What are the biggest learning curves you have found?
- Are you looking to grow your team globally? What are your concerns? How can you use the information shared to help you look beyond direct experience to find qualified team members?
Here are the key insights and takeaways from the groups:
Things to Be Aware Of
- Ensuring a common understanding of Customer Success. It can differ from country to country
- Some different interactions in other countries can impact the way things are handled in different countries and documentation and content for that area should be adjusted for those regions.
- Proactive versus reactive
- Thought leadership is different
- VOC in the US is different from other countries
- Data entry details can be handled in various fashions
- There is a need to create a baseline, so everyone is on the same page.
- Increased need to build culture across all members
- It is very important that personal relationships within the teams occurs
- There is a need to break down the silos that exist due to locations and teams
- Zoom meetings cannot replace personal relationships
- Easy to hide by turning off the camera
- Time zones play a part in schedules and conversations
- Leaders in each area can help get buy in, communicate needs, and build agreement
- Important to realize that while the outcome is the same for everyone, the process can be very different
- Imposter syndromes affect everyone at times, but can be especially common in global hires
- Language barriers can create a desire to stay behind the scenes
- Can promote insecurities (I cannot speak to the group because I do not speak English well, etc.)
- Work to build confidence amongst all members, especially those from other cultures
- Have the Finance team meet with all new hires to explain SaaS revenue and finance
- Focus on why this information matters to your team
- Math can be different when applied in SaaS and new hires would benefit from a specific class focused on these calculations
