3 Powerful Resume Secrets 99% of People Don't Use

The proven steps to land your dream job in Customer Success

Hakan Ozturk ⚡

Jan 29, 2023

Most people don’t know how to write a resume that stands out.

They write a list of experiences and skills expecting the recruiters to find out what’s in it for them.

It’s a waste of time and energy.

Forget about the traditional way everyone writes.

Instead, build a powerful advertisement for your personal brand with a strong call to action.

A resume that captures who you are as a professional.

And this is how you’ll break from the competition and get noticed.

Are you ready to make some magic happen?

Here’s how to write a CV that stands out in seconds that 99% of people don’t do:

1/ Focus on your personal brand

Don’t start your CV like everyone else with a generic line:

“Passionate Customer Success professional with 15 years of experience”.

Too vague and boring.

Flip the narrative.

Talk about yourself, your skills, and how you work in a way that makes you unique and sets you apart from others.

Example:

“Customer Success Manager with a track record of increasing customer retention by 25%. Implemented personalized success plans and reduced customer churn by 40%. Enjoy driving business conversations with customers to uncover new growth opportunities. Passionate about cutting-edge technology and being part of a high-performing team.”

2/ Set the scene, hook the attention

Right after this strong personal statement on top,

Summarize and provide a quick overview of your experiences in a few words.

It’s like anything you read yourself.

If you find it interesting, you’ll keep it reading, right? (like my newsletter :-)

So you must hook the recruiter’s attention in a few seconds or they’re gone.

This is where you write your copy to sell your skills and explain why YOU are the best match for the position.

Then, help the recruiter remove objections:
What did you do before that can help with their current challenges?
And bring in proof with a few customer references.

Example:

“10+ years of CS experience in unicorn software companies. I hit and delivered beyond my targets every quarter with record retention scores of 90% and an average of 80% NPS. Helped customers XYZ reduce operational costs by 53%.”

3/ Deep dive

Skills & Experiences

Now that you gave the recruiter a glimpse of your expertise, time to go deeper and provide more information that aligns with the job description.

Write down all your experiences and skills tailored to the job specs.

No need to talk about things that don’t bring any value to the specific role you are interviewing for.

Keep focus and be as much specific as possible.

Don’t provide tons of details or the reader is gone, once again.

Focus on the most important few topics. Cut off and remove all the other irrelevant ones.

Don’t use vague statements like “I added value”.

It’s confusing and also does not mean anything without context and facts.

Use this approach instead:

Onboarding Specialist, Great knowledge of Product XYZ, Expert in the industry, etc.
Increased customer references from 30% to 70%, expanded accounts by 10%, …

Education - Learning & Development

And finally, highlight your achievements.

Show your commitment to developing your skills on a constant basis.

In the end, you want to show them you are the best for the position, aren’t you?

Come on, you’ve got this!

✌️🎯

And that’s it

It’s not about “writing” a resume.

You must sell your skills and accomplishments instead!

p.s. need help landing your next job in CS? Reach out for a 1:1 with me.

The CS Café Interview

It’s my absolute pleasure to introduce you to my former colleague Karim Michael Hambach, Senior CSM at Adobe.

With over a decade of experience, Karim shares his insights on regional collaboration in Customer Success, the evolution of CS in the upcoming years, and his top priorities at the moment.

He also opens up about his passion for Customer Success stories as well as his dreams, ambitions, and his family.

Let’s explore the mind of this creative “Customer Success Spider on the Web” and learn from his wealth of experience! 😎

Where are you from?

I am Karim Michael Hambach, based out of Amsterdam, Netherlands. I am an ambitious polyglot and I speak four languages fluently.

Your career path

I transitioned into Customer Success a decade ago when the role and terminology started to take shape.

CS was also getting more mature along its defined scope, role, and responsibilities.

I was a global CRM & Knowledge Base Consultant and a Technical Project Manager until I heard of a Customer Success opportunity at my previous employer, Oracle.

I've always been interested in building strategic relationships with my customers.

I realized that I appreciated longer-term customer partnerships rather than shorter engagements. It's always hard to say goodbye to a customer after a successful project.

How do you see regional collaboration in CS?

I enjoyed working with you at Adobe.

We've been leading the way on so many successful creative and disruptive projects. We were lucky to have you onboard!

To me, collaboration is a prerequisite for any successful Customer Success professional. It must be regional, global, and cross-disciplinary.

Making a customer successful is to work with all the resources available to you.

It ranges from internal and external communication to leveraging the skill sets of the people you interact with.

This is when the magic happens in getting things done.

It helps everyone involved to think of solutions that are specific to customer problems.

By removing longer lines of approvals, organizations can also become more agile. This is vital to today's success of especially vast global organizations.

At the same time, we as CSMs advocate positive change within our own organization which is a blessing.

How do you see CS evolving in the upcoming years?

Leadership in various organizations started to "expand" the CS role. But in reality, they are "compacting" it.

Indeed.

With the current economic situation, non-billable roles such as CS have to deliver even more.

I am not quite certain yet how successful this trend will be.

CSMs have already a lot on their plate. Onboarding new customers, building success plans or managing complex escalations, and many more. Not to mention all the internal administrative and reporting tasks.

Expanding the CSM scope to accommodate for the lack of resources in other departments is not always a successful formula.

It may sooner or later result in higher churn.

Luckily this is a topic in discussions across many organizations. And I see interesting threads addressing this topic in CS forums and also on Linkedin.

What CS organizations need is a healthier balance between workload and adding value. They need to empower true customer partnerships.

As such, leadership teams must recognize the value of their CS organization.

How do you see yourself in 1 year? 3 or 5 years?

I don't have that crystal ball with me today but I know I love my current job.

I love being the spider on the web to solve customer challenges.

With my strong creative skills, I also love producing customer success story videos.

I also enjoy championing new product features and trends which are neither invented nor progressing yet.

So, I see myself moving into a role where I can use my skills in product development or marketing to influence a solution's roadmap.

If I can wrap it all up with creative videos, I am a lucky camper!

What’s your top challenge at the moment?

We are moving back from Covid-remote working mode to hybrid/on-site work.

As a full-time parent, it's challenging to find the right balance between professional and private schedules. But luckily it isn't an impossible task, especially at Adobe.

I have to confess that I love seeing my colleagues and customers again, face to face! We need those human interactions more than ever.

If there was one thing you could remove immediately, what would it be?

I am allergic to spending my time on duplicate or inefficient activities that don't add any value.

Luckily at Adobe, we have platforms to discuss and improve our internal processes which I contribute to and appreciate much.

What are you most passionate about?

At work, I love seeing the results of my hard work.

In essence, many don't realize we invest a major part of our daily lives in being successful at work and for our customers.

I love seeing my customers or colleagues radiate that glimpse of satisfaction when we reach an important milestone or GoLive.

Best of all, I love documenting those successes in my video productions. It helps me highlight the great work we deliver. And helps customers document their transformation journey.

At home, I love seeing the smile on my daughters' faces when we build something together.

It can be a finished social game, a completed family video production or drawing, or sending a surprise box to people close to us.

What are your top 3 priorities at the moment?

Maintain my strong position as a successful colleague and CSM.
Continue to learn from others and contribute to my team's success.
Continue believing in my dreams and ambitions. And when needed, continue wearing the "Be Pirate" hat which I derive from a book I'd recommend you and your readers explore. There is also the series of books "The Corporate Rebel" which I am starting to read right now. It's written by two Dutch authors and offers great insights into how employees can bring change whilst still having fun at work.

Change comes through disruption. And it sometimes means you need to break to rebuild a better version.

On a personal note, my top priority is to keep that happy glance in my family's eyes and smile. Embrace all changes coming in as a parent with two growing beautiful daughters.

Finally, I'm looking forward to a more self-sustaining future. And becoming less dependent on external factors. In particular on the energy side.

Why did you join my newsletter?

I've been following your work since the very start.

I am grateful for the amount of relevant information you are sharing with the CS community.

I especially like the way you communicate knowledge in a simple and short way.

It makes it all very easy to digest, with a cup of Turkish coffee and sometimes with a delicious lokum, of course! 🤩

I always learn something new at least once a week.

So kudos to your leadership, willingness to always help others, and your resilience!

I'd recommend everyone to subscribe to the CS Café newsletter and support the amazing work you're doing.

Any hobbies outside work?

I love the creative side of things. My brain is very visual.

So I love producing movies and learn at least once a week how to improve my editing/producing skills.

I am now also learning more about how to combine it all with music and sound.

There is so much to learn and my thirst for knowledge is only growing!

Especially on the weekends.

I made it a habit to get up early, exercise, and learn new things about writing, movie production, and business processes.

This is my most precious "Me Time" of the day.

I am using it to prime my brain for absorbing new knowledge and being creative.

Besides, I speak four languages: French, Dutch, English, and German.

And I aim to learn another two in the coming decades.

I am also an avid certified drone pilot in the US. I am now working on getting certified in the EU.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Make big bold steps.

I immigrated in my early twenties from Germany to The Netherlands. I set up my own company, taking risks but it's worth the journey.

I would tell my younger self that if I had the choice, I would have done it all again, but with more courage and less doubt. Because those decisions come with an awful lot of insecurity and fear of the unknown.

Doubt and fear of change inhibit the decision-making process. We fear insecurity, judgment, or the opinion of others.

But go for it and do it anyway.

After all, it's well worth it!