Hiring a Customer Success Manager: challenges and tactics

Good listening skills, customer-facing experience, industry expertise... When you're hiring for Customer Success at a SaaS company, it's easy to go looking for a unicorn. Finding a profile that ticks every box is often hard, especially in a role where talent is in short supply. Here's our advice.

How do you stand out from the competition to attract the best candidates? Should you use an agency or handle everything in-house? What mistakes should you avoid? To help you, Laëtitia Amiault of Petit Guanxi shares the best tactics for hiring in Customer Success.

Why does Customer Success hiring matter so much for SaaS companies?

In SaaS, acquiring new customers is only one part of the growth equation. Sustainable growth also depends on a company’s ability to retain existing customers, help them realize value from its product, and develop long-term relationships.

As acquisition costs, competitive pressure, and customer expectations continue to shape the market, retaining customers and growing existing accounts have become strategic priorities. SaaS companies can no longer rely on new business alone to drive revenue growth. They also need to reduce churn, identify expansion opportunities, and ensure customers get the most out of their solutions.

This is where Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and post-sales teams play a critical role. By proactively supporting customers, demonstrating product value, and identifying opportunities for upselling and cross-selling, they contribute directly to retention, customer satisfaction, and recurring revenue growth.

As a result, hiring the right Customer Success talent is a strategic investment for SaaS companies. Yet finding professionals who combine product knowledge, commercial awareness, and strong relationship-building skills can be challenging. For recruiters, understanding what makes a great CSM is essential to attracting the right candidates in an increasingly important function.

In this context, how do you attract CSMs?

Start by getting to know the market well. Which companies are likely to be hiring the same profiles as me? What types of profile are they? What salaries are on offer in the ecosystem? It's important to have this in mind before you even start sketching out your ideal candidate.
Next, list the important requirements for the role, essential or otherwise. In other words, write down the type of profile you'd want in an ideal world, in terms of seniority, salary, background, skills and so on. This will help you define your scorecard. Spoiler alert: the ideal candidate doesn't exist, and neither does the ideal company!
On top of that, you're obviously not the only one who wants this perfect candidate. So you'll need to identify where you can be flexible.

Where can you be flexible?

Salary: for example, if you have a €50,000 base salary in your budget and a candidate is at €55,000, ask yourself how far you're prepared to go for a great candidate. Figures provides salary ranges by level of experience and type of company, which can give you some useful pointers.
Skills. In an ideal world, you'd like the candidate to have done the job before, to come from your industry and to be used to dealing with your personas. And if possible, to speak English and not cost too much! Perhaps this candidate exists, but since you obviously won't be the only one approaching them, think about where you could compromise. What matters most to you? Sometimes it's worth looking at people from the business side too, for example by targeting profiles who come from your potential customers. They generally know your personas and their challenges very well.
Experience. Couldn't someone who has done all this, but is a little more junior, be a good match? They'll be able to grow into the role.
Location. When a profile is hard to find, you can open the role to remote working. By doing so, you can sometimes find excellent multilingual candidates who cost much less and are motivated because, on top of everything, you're offering a more attractive salary.

In the end, you often have two options:

Hire customer relationship professionals who may not come from your world. Plenty of CSMs move from one sector to another, and what links their experiences is customer success.
Go after subject-matter experts: these people do the job your future customers do, so they speak the same language. On the other hand, they'll need to develop their customer relationship skills.

Where should you post your job ads?

Write the job description and publish it on your careers site. Then share it on the various job boards, such as LinkedIn or Welcome to the Jungle. There are plenty of others.

Next, tap into the power of your network, internal and external. Use your CS network to let people know you're hiring for a particular profile, ideally with specific skills. Tell the whole company! A referral bonus doesn't cost much and can be very effective. Alumni networks can also be worth approaching.

Don't forget LinkedIn posts! Not on the company page, but from you personally as a CSM. Post a nice photo of the Customer Success team, or simply share the job ad, saying the company is growing and you need someone to join the team. Remember to tag the members of your team to invite them to like and comment.

Is posting job ads enough to attract the right profiles?

I recommend taking two approaches. On the one hand, post an ad and collect inbound applications. It doesn't cost much and, with a bit of luck, someone who's a perfect fit might apply.

It can happen, but you may also wait a very long time. Plus, you risk receiving huge volumes of applications, not always qualified, that you can't handle.

To filter applications upfront, you can ask a few qualifying questions when candidates apply. Closed questions that may rule candidates out, such as "Have you worked in Customer Success for X years?" or "Do you have experience in SaaS?"

On the other hand, you need to headhunt. A LinkedIn study shows that 70% of candidates who are open to opportunities don't apply. In practice, that means when you post ads on any job board, you only reach the 30% who are actively looking. The others won't go looking for a job proactively. So you need to approach them yourself!

Is it better to handle headhunting in-house?

There are 3 scenarios, depending on your budget:

If your company has a fair amount of budget, you can keep part of it in-house and outsource another part to headhunting firms.
If you have some budget, but not a huge amount, keep part of it in-house and outsource sourcing, i.e. finding candidates. In this case, internal recruiters keep ownership of the whole process.
Finally, if you have zero budget, your internal recruiters do the headhunting.

What are the tips for hiring on a budget?

If you don't have the budget for an agency and your recruiters don't have time to headhunt, I recommend making the most of what you already have. LinkedIn is your best friend here.

Every company has Sales Navigator, and sharing licences for browsing is painless. Nobody gets logged out, and everyone can work at the same time. In other words, it costs a salesperson nothing to share their access for a set period! You can then run a search. It needs to be structured and well thought out to target the right profiles.

In your search, entering a job title alone isn't enough, because titles vary from one company to the next. Depending on the organisation, for example, you may find Account Managers who don't carry a revenue target but are really doing a CSM's job.

Parsinator, from Pharow, takes a job title and finds just about every variation of it on LinkedIn. That makes building your searches much easier.

In Sales Navigator, you can also filter by, among other things:

Location: widen it to the city, its outskirts and nearby towns, on the basis that the person could commute if you offer part-time remote working.
Years of experience
Industry: this matters, especially if you want someone from a software company.

Any tips for increasing candidates' response rate?

Target as precisely as possible. Play with all these filters until you have a set of interesting profiles. Pick a few candidates and contact them. If you have a paid licence, send them a direct message; if not, there's a softer approach where you add them on LinkedIn and send a short message to introduce yourself.
You can also use sales prospecting tools such as Apollo and Waalaxy. The idea isn't to spam every CSM out there, but to identify a short list of candidates who are a perfect fit: quality over quantity, though you still need some volume for it to work.
Personalise your message. Write something you'd like to receive as a CSM if you were being headhunted. We've done some fun things for clients, such as the manager filming themselves explaining how the Customer Success team is organised and what skills they were looking for. It adds a more human touch.
Above all, don't forget the call to action! You can use Calendly so the person can book a first interview with you. If you'd rather it went through your conversion funnel in the recruitment ATS, send them the job description to encourage them to apply. But if you do, keep the number of mandatory questions to a minimum. Remember, the person you contacted didn't ask you for anything, so make life easy for them!

What arguments should you use to win candidates over?

The question is: "How do we stand out?" Everyone has strengths; you just need to identify them and showcase them. These might be:

Remote working policy: this is an attractive selling point, especially for candidates willing to accept a lower salary or slightly less generous terms in exchange for more freedom.
A positive-impact sector: this is a strong argument right now. Put simply, it's the feeling of going to work and contributing to a good cause at the same time.
Financial stability: this reassures candidates, especially in times of crisis. The fundraising start-up image was very appealing a while ago; today it's a bit off-putting.
International scope: for example, you may find candidates who speak excellent English but are currently 100% focused on the French market. They're bilingual or multilingual and will be interested in a role that gives them the chance to broaden their international experience.
A move into the tech ecosystem for subject-matter experts: it's hard for candidates who'd like to move into another industry to make the switch. Giving them the chance to work in a tech ecosystem is a huge draw.
Career progression opportunities.
Hiring CSMs who've handled smaller accounts: someone used to mid-market accounts would be highly motivated to develop their skills on a project that helps them grow, with international accounts, more stakeholders and so on.

Always put yourself in the candidate's shoes and ask what would motivate them to join your company. The salary gap shouldn't be the only motivation.

And if you're hiring younger people, bear in mind the expectations of the new generations: work-life balance, meaning and impact, training opportunities, an inclusive culture and varied work.

What's best practice for hiring in Customer Success?

Brief the recruiter properly, whether they're from an agency or in-house. The first person who speaks to a potential candidate who isn't actively looking needs to be able to answer every question. Ask yourself: "If I were a CSM being approached about this role, what would I want to know?" If HR gives the impression of knowing nothing because you're only relying on them to "filter", that's a problem. Take the time: that's what will ultimately turn the people you contact into hires!
The salary needs to be in line with the market, or it can all fall apart at the end.
Responsiveness matters, because you're not the only one in the race. Don't leave candidates hanging for weeks.
Reassure candidates about the ramp-up period and the resources available to help them succeed. If you have internal tools for CSMs, now's the time to showcase them!
An informal coffee with the team as the final step is always worthwhile. It's a chance to take the temperature and see whether this is a team that could work together. The candidate will also see whether they'd fit with their potential colleagues and manager. It's not about judging the candidate, quite the opposite. It should be friendly.

After the contract is signed, don't neglect retention. Build on your teams: they're your best ambassadors. New hires can potentially help you recruit your future CSMs. To make that happen, you can:

Share employee testimonials
Join or create peer communities: CSM communities, for example.
Organise events around professional expertise: meet-ups, for instance. Later on, when you're hiring your next CSMs, you'll be able to activate this network even further and create a snowball effect to attract talent.