#57: The Ultimate CSM Interview Process

Some of the best decisions I've made were the people I hired. And some of the worst decisions I've made were the people I hired."

This is often my answer when people ask me about building high-performing teams.

When you hire the right person, they are a force multiplier.

They change your team dynamic and raise the bar for everyone around them.

Betting on the wrong person does the opposite, it's...

• energy-sucking
• stress-inducing
• expensive 

So how do you make sure you're hiring the right CSMs?

I've hired over 100 CSMs in my career and learned a ton about what makes a great CSM.

This newsletter is here to help you nail your CSM hiring process and incorporate the best interview questions to help you separate the top talent. 

Interview Process

Many companies have lost the run of themselves with their 10-stage interview processes (Forbes even wrote an article on the madness of this).

It's a poor candidate experience, a poor hiring manager experience and frankly a waste of time.

What I found works best is to: 

1. Ask people to submit a video with their CV. It's a more engaging format and allows interviewers to get to know the candidate async. You can give them a prompt with key questions that would otherwise require a recruiter chat. 
2. The recruiting team selects top submissions and shares them with the hiring panel.
3. Recruitment chat with the candidate about the role, salary expectations and how to prepare for the next phases of the interview. 
4. The candidate meets with 2-3 people for 30-minute. These are face-to-face conversations with cross-functional people at different levels, where you ask competency-based questions.
5. You might add a final assignment (ie. delivering a mock EBR, prioritising your BOB etc) to the process depending on the seniority of the CSM you are looking for.

This process can happen over a 2-4 week period, making it ideal for those who need someone to join the team ASAP.

Interview Questions

Everyone can use ChatGTP to spit out customer success best practices. 

Your interviews should help separate those who have experience doing it from those who don't. And to help you understand the depth of expertise of the candidates. 

How do you do that?

Example-based competency-anchored interview questions.

I've written this article on the 8 top skills every CSM needs and the questions you'll see below are connected to 5 of these top skills.

Your interview questions should bring up real-life examples of when people have had to use the skills you're looking for. They make the interview feel like ACTUAL conversations. 

See below 11 questions to add to your interview process:

Driving Results For Customers

• Tell me about a time you had to work cross-functionally to solve for the customer.
• Tell me about a time when you had to go above and beyond to deliver results for the customer.
• Tell me about a time when you had to work with a customer with misaligned expectations. What did you do? How did you turn it around?

Effective Communication:

• Tell me about a time you had to deliver difficult news to a customer. What was it? How did you ensure a positive outcome?
• Tell me about a time you had to present to customer executives. What was the presentation? Walk me step by step through the process you used. How did it go?
• Tell me about a time when you had to rally internal stakeholders to solve for the customer, how did you do it?
• Tell me about a time you had to work with a difficult co-worker. How did you ensure a good outcome?

Business Acumen/Adaptability:

• Tell me about a time the business made a decision that was good for the business but negatively impacted you. How did you react to it?
• If you were given a book of business of X many customers on your first day, how would you prioritise it? Who would you get in touch with first?
• Tell me about a time when you identified a problem that went beyond your own team, what was the problem? how did you raise it to your team? What happened once you realise it was a larger problem?

Leaning Ability.

• What's your process for learning something difficult? Give me an example of a recent time you've had to do it.

The main thing to remember is that these questions are conversation starters.

You should dig into the answers and ask follow-up questions to get to the core of these examples.

At the end of the conversation, you should have a strong perspective of the candidate's experience level and approach to managing a book of business.

A common issue you'll run into is someone who gives you an example, and when you dig into what THEY did in the process, it's clear that other people drove/owned the process.

This should be a good indicator of the CSM's ability to deliver autonomously!

If you want to test for specific skills, an interview assignment might be added for your top 2 candidates. There's an entire thread discussion on the merits of this stage at Gain Grow Retain.

If you decide to add a presentation, why do it at the end?

These mock presentations take a lot of time.

You don't want to ask 10 people to do them. It's disrespectful of their time, and it's a waste of yours to sit through all these presentations for people you are not yet excited about.

Making a Decision

With a panel of 2-3 people who are cross-functional and at different levels in the org, you should already have a diverse enough panel to mitigate some simple biases (learn more on how to mitigate bias)

The best way to ensure your panel debrief is objective is to leverage an interview scorecard.

Most recruitment apps will offer this. However, if you don't have one, you can make an Excel version of the scorecard. It works as well! 

The panel can come together once all the interviews are done to decide who the finalists are.

My top tip for making a strong decision is: If it's not a hell yes, then it's a no.   

Finally, make sure you are circling back to your decisions.

• Have the bets you made paid off?
• What do all high performers have in common?
• Do you have to dig deeper in some areas to validate better the experience?

That reflection will help you build a strong gut feeling for what great looks like for your team.

TL'DR

Great CSM interview processes follow this model:

• As few stages as you can
• Intentionally asking skill-based questions that map to the 8 top CSM skills
• Adding a mock presentation if necessary
• Debriefing using a scorecard
• Only hiring if it's a hell yes!