Berner: Startups Should Hire IC Customer Success Managers Before Managers
Stephanie Berner · A customer success masterclass | How to build and scale a CS org | Stephanie Berner (LinkedIn) · Feb 1, 2024 · at 5:08
Stephanie Berner, Head of CS at LinkedIn Sales Solutions, discusses whether early-stage startups should recruit individual contributor CSMs or a team lead first.
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“I am biased toward hiring ICs first. Ideally, you can find somebody who either has been a manager before, or has aspirations to be a manager, or, you know, if you can assess for leadership qualities in your early interview processes, somebody who has the potential to be a manager. The reason is because you need people who are doers. You need people who are going to go super deep on your product. They may turn into the future manager of that team, but what you're optimizing for in those first hires are people who are going to Run fast and run straight for the customer and be really clear on those internal feedback loops. When you have only a handful of hires to make, hiring those ICs first to get them moving is, is super important.”
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