#TDSU Episode 198:

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:46 - The key to winning interviews

00:02:16 - Engage, engage, engage!

00:03:57 - Acing the interview process from start to finish

00:05:46 - Adding your unique personality

00:08:22 - Hiring managers spill their secrets

00:10:45 - Practical takeaways for job seekers

00:11:33 - Avoiding desperation in the job hunt

📺 Lifetime Value: Your Destination for GTM content

Website: https://www.lifetimevaluemedia.com

🤝 Connect with the hosts:

Dillon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dillonryoung

JP's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanpierrefrost/

Rob's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-zambito/

👋 Connect with Rohan Tailor:

Rohan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohan-tailor/

[Rohan] (0:00 - 0:12)

Getting interviews is tough and it's because it's so competitive. These minor 1%s can make a difference. It's very much a coin turn in sales.

The 1% incremental gain at a professional sports level, they all make a difference. So if you do these little things.

[Dillon] (0:17 - 0:43)

You guys ready? What's up lifers and welcome to The Daily Standup with lifetime value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success perspectives every single day. I got my man Rob with us.

Rob, you want to say hi? You're on mute. You lose.

JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:46 - 0:47)

Hey, always.

[Dillon] (0:47 - 0:51)

And we have Rohan with us.

Rohan, can you say hi, please?

[Rohan] (0:52 - 0:53)

Okay. Hey guys.

[Dillon] (0:54 - 0:56)

See, he knows how to use the microphone.

[Rob] (0:58 - 0:59)

Rob, I'll get there someday.

[Dillon] (1:01 - 1:07)

Someday, someday. And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young.

Rohan, thank you so much for being here. Can you please introduce yourself?

[Rohan] (1:08 - 1:24)

Yeah. So I am the consultant to a company called ABR talent. We are a customer success focused recruitment agency.

Be with the guys for four over years now with a background in effectively kind of customer success, customer client management, which has led me to what I'm doing today.

[Dillon] (1:24 - 1:45)

Very cool. Very cool. So you are uniquely positioned to answer our one and only question that we ask of every single guest.

And that is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success. And we can't get enough of hearing about the employment market. So I hope it's got something to do with that or tangentially related.

So why don't you tell us what it is for you?

[Rohan] (1:46 - 2:05)

So I think for me, it's about what can candidates, customer success managers do to, to impress during the interview process. We have a lot of data points and I think we can share some things that we're hearing from candidates and clients alike that will hopefully change people's fortunes during the interview process and just help them find that next exciting role.

[Dillon] (2:05 - 2:14)

All right. You run into somebody at a networking event. They say, Rohan, I need one tip and one tip only.

What do you tell them?

[Rohan] (2:16 - 2:19)

Engage, engage your audience. That's what the job is.

[Dillon] (2:19 - 2:27)

You're a CSM. JP wins. What is that?

Was that what you were thinking, JP? Or you just think you're so charming?

[JP] (2:28 - 2:46)

I don't want to jump, Rohan, but I think that is usually my strategy, but it's also, I think a part of naturally who I am, and I think that that's something that you also need to be as a CSM so you demonstrate it through the interview process. But go ahead. I want your perspective.

[Dillon] (2:46 - 2:53)

Go a little deeper, Rohan. Tell us what else beyond that, or is it all sort of like thematic within that? Tell us a little bit more.

[Rohan] (2:53 - 3:49)

Certainly, Bill, I'm going to preface by saying that the market is hugely competitive. And so a lot of people are just fighting for very few volume of role. And I will also preface by saying companies could do better to make this easier, but we're not here to focus on them.

There's not enough time. So I'm going to focus on the candidates, but customer success, even sales, these are outwardly facing roles. Your primary job is to engage your market.

So if throughout an interview process, you are not engaging, that's all your potential employer got to base your ability to deliver the role on. So if you can't engage during conversation, a face-to-face, an interview, a video call, how can those people who will be bringing you into the business and putting you in front of valuable clients be confident you're going to impress these guys? And that is a big portion of the role.

So if you can't engage an individual during one conversation with an interview process, can you do it in front of a valuable client?

[Dillon] (3:50 - 3:57)

What if somebody's more junior or struggles with this? What's your number one tip for how they can get better at it?

[Rohan] (3:57 - 5:22)

The interview process is not three, one hour conversations. The interview process happens from the minute you are on a business's radar to the minute you are offered or rejected. So you don't have to be exceptional at every stage and just be this absolute charismatic, gravitational person, but you can engage that process.

So yeah, the interview process starts the minute someone reaches out to you. So you can do things such as check them out on LinkedIn. Doesn't it feel good when your potential candidate has checked you out on LinkedIn?

You can do a little bit of stalking and see what they posted, what they're interested in, and that can form part of your engagement, you've now got a bit of intel to actually talk to people on a person to person level, as opposed to a candidate to employee level. So there's little bits when you're in the interview process, send an email to say, looking forward to meeting you guys, just teeing up these little touch points that just make you a bit more human, but actually show how if you were in a customer success role, you would engage, what's your engagement strategy, all these little bits are up. They've checked in with the client before meeting.

Awesome. They said, look forward to meeting you tomorrow. Awesome.

They checked me out on LinkedIn. I can see they've done a bit of research. Awesome.

All those little bits that happen before you even walk into a video call or a face-to-face just show that you've got a decent EQ, you're a bit intelligent, you're going above and beyond, but you're engaging with an audience in a slightly more tactical way.

[Dillon] (5:23 - 5:46)

JP, having gone through this recently, you were nodding along vigorously as Rohan was, so I imagine you agree with a lot of this, but do you want to build upon it and talk, maybe add a little bit of color in terms of how you did this and added personality, because I think that's key too, everything Rohan, you just said is awesome, but you've also got to add a little bit of your personal flavor to it, right?

[JP] (5:46 - 8:02)

Yeah. Yeah. So I'll say this, the barrier, I think to a lot of people, you know, failing this process is that they have too many things going in the kitchen.

I've talked to people like, oh my gosh, I'm like talking to like 10 roles. I'm interviewing. And my first thought is like, oh my God, how did you get that many?

Good for you. But then it's also like, do you know what you want? And I think that this is important to what a customer success manager does.

When we get on a call, we're focused, we're prepared. We know what we want. We're prepared to sort of create a warm interaction, something that's going to really facilitate having some deeper conversations, things that are going to maybe allow people to let their barriers down, because we do want to get to what can be very sensitive information, depending on the type of product and the type of customer that we have, and if you want to get in front of budget holders, these decision makers, if you want to go from not just having the tactical conversations, but also the strategic conversations, that takes a mastery of really knowing your audience and knowing how to deliver in that time space that you have. Sometimes I see people approach this as more of like, I, I'm just going to try to like survive this interview.

And they're already exhausted before they begin because they're just trying to find a job. You can't be like that with your customers. If you give the impression that you're just trying to get through this class so you can get to the end of the day, so you can move on with everything.

People want to feel like you really put that effort in. And so for me, you know, I'm, I'm not going to give away all my tricks. So I'm, I'm, I'm sorry, but there's definitely little things that I like to do, because if you live in say a digital age, there's lots of things that you can do to sort of present yourself, showing that you're in tune with the company, you can use your language to mirror the values that are on say a company's website.

It makes you sound like you already work there, that you're the perfect fit, right? You're natural. So there's all these things you can do, but I think the barrier to this entry is if you got 10 interviews this week, good luck, buddy.

It's going to be real tough to deliver that on each one. So you got to really know your audience in a deep way, not a shallow way.

[Dillon] (8:03 - 8:22)

JP, I can't believe you're going to gatekeep your personal tips as though you're competing with these people for. I don't know, Rob, follow me on LinkedIn. Rob, your experience as a hiring manager, how does this resonate?

Any additional tips you want to add to the mix?

[Rob] (8:22 - 10:37)

To be honest with you, it's less the hiring manager side of the house than the side of me that remembers submitting hundreds of job applications and barely getting an interview. And this was a different time too. This wasn't even recent.

It was the biggest blow I probably ever had to my self-esteem to get turned down from so many jobs. This is like when I was coming out of college. I wish I had spoken to you guys back then.

Cause it would have made me feel a little bit better. Like, I like what you said, JP, know what you want. That's really good advice.

I'll come back to that. And what you said, Rohan as well about engaging. Although me, I swung and missed so many times.

You guys know the scene from the office where Dwight has the Rolodex and he's trying to engage a client on a personal level. If you don't know, just go check it out. But like, I was just so bad at taking advice.

I remember getting some advice, like, you should mirror someone's body language. And I remember the interviewer like put his hand behind his head. And so I'm like, okay, I put my hand behind my head and then my interviewer put his feet up on the table.

I'm like, I gotta do this too. It was so bad to realize I couldn't separate the signal from the noise. I didn't know what to focus on.

I was focused on all the wrong things. And what I learned is that, especially as I grew my career in customer success and eventually switched sides to the hiring manager side of the table and interviewed just tons and tons of people, I eventually put together a sort of a rubric that I was hiring against, which I openly share with people too. Like if you're coming into the interview process, you're going to be graded not on whether you mirror my body language, but you're going to be graded on your communication skills, your persuasive skills, your technical and problem solving skills, your data analysis skills, your time management skills, your organizational skills.

And it angers me that there's not more job descriptions out there in the world that just lists these criteria more cleanly, or even have those criteria developed because it would make such a better candidate experience if we knew the rubric we were graded against. So for any recruiters that are listening to this, please be very empathetic to the candidate experience. When you write a job description, please also run it by people who have done the work if you haven't, please.

And if there's any candidates out there that need a shoulder to cry on, Hey, I'm here for it. Be forgiving to yourselves.

[Dillon] (10:38 - 10:39)

You ain't got enough shoulders.

[Rob] (10:39 - 10:40)

Hey man, I've been working out.

[Dillon] (10:42 - 10:45)

I want you to wrap us up with your learnings.

[Rohan] (10:45 - 11:32)

It is super competitive. Getting interviews is tough and it's because it's so competitive. These minor 1% can make a difference.

You know, it's a, it's very much a coin term in sales. The 1% incremental gains at professional sports level, they all make a difference. So, so if you do these little things before, during, you know, how do you, this, for example, if I just focused on you, am I engaging the wider team?

So my ability to engage everyone on a one-to-one level, ask individual questions, do I follow up post interview? Great to meet you guys. Do I send the presentation around, but just find, share this with you guys just in case you need it.

Do I set a next step? Look, what I'll do is I'll set myself a nudge for a week's time to see if there's been another issue before. So there's the personal stuff.

Of course you've got to be a human, but there's little bits you can do that just show how you would operate once you're within the business.

[Dillon] (11:33 - 12:31)

I hear a lot of themes in here around knowing what you want and going slow to go fast or going slow to go far. And I think the theme I'm pulling out is not acting from desperation, which is definitely, I'm saying that from a point of privilege, not everybody has that opportunity, but the more you can extend your runway so that you can have the meaningful conversations and you're not just chasing your next payday and you don't have an opportunity to really think about what you want or to really dig in on the conversations or to do the research you would otherwise want to do. The more you can extend that runway, the better off everybody's going to be. The better you're going to perform because your mind's not racing.

I love this, Rohan. This is good stuff. Thank you for the actionable tips.

We do have to say goodbye, but you can come back anytime and throw more tips our way. I know people love them. So until then, we've got to say goodbye.

[VO] (12:38 - 13:09)

You've been listening to The Daily Standup by Lifetime Value. Please note that the views expressed in these conversations are attributed only to those individuals on this recording and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of their respective employers. For all inquiries, please reach out via email to Dillon at LifetimeValueMedia.com.

Find us on YouTube at Lifetime Value and find us on the socials at Lifetime Value Media. Until next time.

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