Felicity Meu is the Senior Director of Partner Success at GiveCampus, and a member of Vitally’s Success Network.

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Hiring Customer Success Managers (CSMs) for a start-up is challenging. Let’s not kid ourselves, everything about startup life is challenging. You start small and scrappy, with your eyes on a distant-but-promising prize and work/life boundaries that are often blurry at best.

At this nascent stage, new hires are often few and far between — and everyone who joins the company is expected to roll up their sleeves. So it’s critical that the people you hire are able and EAGER to wear many hats, ill-fitting as they may be. 

Who you recruit at the scrappy stage is not necessarily who you recruit at the hyper-growth stage — and knowing when it’s time to pivot your hiring strategy may be the most challenging part of the process. In short, what makes you successful early on will not be what makes you successful down the road and being nimble enough to ride the wave of continuous change is essential.  

Over the last eight years I’ve learned a lot about hiring and scaling a CSM team at GiveCampus, the world’s leading digital fundraising platform for educational institutions. I’m sharing my experience in an effort to help you navigate the process of recruiting the right talent to support every stage of growth. 

Early Stage Hiring Strategies

In the early days, GiveCampus was bootstrapped. So, as I looked to hire my first Partner Success Managers (at GiveCampus, we refer to our customers as Partners), cost management was key. Back then, our team not only drove partner success but also directly collaborated with engineering on product roadmap development. And until we hired dedicated marketing and finance teams, Partner Success also handled marketing and invoicing. Thus, I needed versatile individuals who thrived in such an environment.

Because we provide software exclusively for fundraisers at educational institutions, we also solve very specific problems. For lack of a better word, we’re "hyper-verticalized." As a result, I tend to look for PSM candidates that have a proven track record for solving these niche problems. For instance, one of my first hires was a recent college graduate who had interned in her college advancement office. She had experience as our end user and was a perfect fit — humble, hungry, empathetic, and curious — with strong foundational knowledge.

I also looked for people who had the internal motivation to persist through challenges because (as I’ve said) startups are hard. Fortunately, our mission to advance the quality, the affordability, and the accessibility of education went a long way toward helping us attract the right individuals — those willing to dig deep and give more than they get. I’ve found that our PSMs have this attitude because they genuinely care about our end users and their goals.

Role Evolution and Specialization

As we grew, we specialized our success team. First, we created regionalized teams to align with the educational fundraising landscape, allowing one PSM to attend local conferences and meet with nearby schools.

Next, we added territories by school type as we began servicing K-12 schools in addition to higher ed institutions. We also introduced specialization based on school size, such as enterprise and mid-market.

Finally, with new product launches, we focused team members on specific product types based on product complexity and the PSM’s are of expertise. Initially, we set up separate business units to support partners with new products until they reached critical mass. Then, once a product was ready to be sold across our entire customer base, we integrated it into our standard Partner Success program. The more mature a product becomes, the easier it is to integrate it into our standard system.

This year, we anticipate even more specialization.

Knowing When to Pivot

I allow the team and myself to experience some discomfort before committing to a long-term roadmap and specialization, because reversing changes is difficult. I want to be certain about the problem we're solving before developing a specific solution. Our rule of thumb at GiveCampus is to address a problem when we anticipate it will become critical within the next six months.

For example, when we first considered a Customer Success Platform (CSP), we were advised that the efficiency gains wouldn't justify the value for a smaller team. However, after an acquisition that added three team members more quickly than expected in 2023, we reevaluated. Following our rule of thumb, we quickly implemented Vitally to support the growing needs of our rapidly expanded team.

Related: When Should Your Company Start Using a Customer Success Platform?

Adopting Mature Hiring Practices

The people we hire today are very different from those we hired early on, but some core values and key success factors remain the same. Today, we are able to hire much more seasoned PSMs.

Early on, we had four criteria for new hires:

1. Did they have experience at a startup or were they a good fit for a startup environment?
2. Did they have the aptitude and desire for deep product knowledge in tech solutions?
3. Did they have a CSM background?
4. Did they have a strategic fundraising background?

Initially, we often looked for candidates with two of these four criteria, or even just one. Today, we can hire people who possess three or four of these characteristics.

For example, we recently hired someone for an enterprise PSM role. The person we selected had five years of experience as a fundraiser, four years as a CSM at a startup competitor, and extensive knowledge of our product. This candidate checked all four boxes — a level of qualification that wasn’t possible until the last 18 months.

Hiring for Core Values 

Throughout our journey from an early-stage startup to a mature company, our core values for hiring PSMs have remained consistent. We continue to seek individuals who are humble, hungry, empathetic, and curious.

In other words, we want PSMs who are humble enough to recognize that the fundraisers they advise often have 10, 15, or 20 years of experience and possess valuable knowledge. They should be hungry to combine that knowledge with deep technical expertise of our product. They must be empathetic towards what our partners are experiencing and curious, rather than defensive, when faced with challenges.

Leveraging a Metrics-Based Growth Model

We use a trigger-based growth model for hiring. When the team's overall managed SaaS ARR approaches a certain level, we anticipate the need to bring in additional personnel or tech solutions to prevent potential issues. For instance, I start hiring when I see our sales team is about to assist us or when cross-sell and upsell efforts are about to elevate SaaS ARR to the next level.

The CEO and I have a capacity and hiring agreement that allows us to act as needed. For example, we implemented Vitally to increase the Partner Success team’s efficiency by 8% in managed ARR capacity. As we grow, we will reevaluate our philosophy here.

Related: What Is the Golden Ratio of Customer Success Managers to Customers?

Final Thoughts: Selecting the Right Hire for the Right Time

One thing I wish I’d done differently in the first couple of years was hiring the right people for the moment. I hired amazing individuals who would have been a great fit in the company’s fifth, sixth, or seventh year, but they weren't right for years two and three. In a few cases, I tried to make it work longer than I should have, but they simply weren’t the right people for that stage. They were the right people for three stages later.

These hires excelled in helping our partners, doing proactive outreach, and building strategic relationships. However, in the early stages, there were so many other things to do that their strategic skills weren't fully harnessed. This meant their strengths weren’t leveraged as often as needed for both their and our satisfaction.

Avoid CSM churn by hiring the right person for your current stage. It’s less painful for everyone involved, and as your company matures, you’ll get closer to hiring candidates that tick every box.