When joining a new team, is it better to have the right soft skills and have to learn the hard skills of the job? Or vice versa?

Generally, when hiring CS team members, for me, it's all about soft skills; Deep customer empathy Great communication skills Strategic thinking Time and project management Active listening Problem-solving The hard skills are more related to domain knowledge, which can primarily be trained on the job. However, there is a significant dependency on your company's stage and goals. For example, if the company is an early-stage B2B tech software company, you may want a profile that has been there and ...Read More

In my mind, I believe that it’s generally more beneficial to have the right soft skills when joining a new team, as I’ve seen it is often harder to teach than hard skills. Soft skills like communication, empathy, active listening, problem-solving, and adaptability are key to building relationships with customers and typically things that I try to get a good understanding of during interviews. Then once you have a solid foundation of soft skills, you can more easily learn the necessary hard skill ...Read More

Even fresh graduates come with some set of soft skills. A good communicator who worked in small groups on projects or even played on a team comes with valuable soft skills. Hard skills can be learned on the job and over time. Great question. However, it gives little room for new graduates. You either come in as a seasoned CSM or a fresh graduate/newbie CSA (Associate). Some are born with soft skills or are often on a debate team, drama, business classes, etc. But you typically pick these skills ...Read More

Looking at this from the perspective of a Customer Success Manager versus say a software developer. I focus on the core of attitude, aptitude and values alignment. For attitude;  do they have a positive mindset, are they empathic, do they have good communication skills, can they easily build rapport and relationships, are they flexible and do they have an inherent desire to help people, solve problems and make things better. For aptitude; do they have a desire and inherent ability to learn new t ...Read More