Should I apply to Customer Success Manager Roles? 

I’ve written about School Success roles before and have shared data around how educators move from teaching into Customer Success Managers (deep dive into that data is here).

In today’s post, I want to dive into how to evaluate whether to apply to a CSM role —  some CSM roles are good DFT (direct-from-teaching) edskips while others are better fits for admin and still others require industry experience. How can you tell which one? 

Read on for tips to analyze a job description and evaluate whether it’s a good fit for your background as well as how to highlight the right skills depending on what task the role requires. Not all CSM roles are the same!

While I share CSM roles in edtech, it is also a great role for educators outside of edtech firms. Your current experience with post-Covid education is especially valuable in Customer Success edtech departments, but your ability to build strong relationships and handle difficult conversations makes you particularly adept in this role at any company. (I once had a hiring manager tell me he liked to hire educators for CSM roles because sometimes clients were difficult and educators were masters at diffusing conflict and finding solutions in the midst of a client’s meltdown.)

But there can be a larger stigma in the industry against hiring educators. I’ve told this story before but I once had a conversation with someone who runs a CS bootcamp. They said that they often selected career transitioners into the bootcamp. But they quickly stated that teachers had the lowest acceptance rate of any other category of career pivoter.  Teachers, in their opinion, simply didn’t have the advanced skillset to do the job.

The Remainder of this article is for Paid Subscribers. You can subscribe here and access the newsletter archive as well as find jobs at 350+ remote edtech/ed adjacent companies.