I applied through an employee referral. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Common Wealth (Toronto, ON) in June 2023
Interview
It's difficult to be seen as objective after not receiving the role, but here are the facts of my end-to-end interview process.
I had 6 official interviews, with added touch points.
1 – Screener call with Director of People Ops (30 min)
2 – Interview with Director of Sales and Partnerships (hiring manager) + Dir of People Ops (75 min)
3 – Assignment presentation with Dir of S&P + CSM + AE (60 min)
3.5 – Check-in call with Dir of S&P to prep me for next step of interview process (15 min)
4 – Interview with CCO (30 min)
5 – Interview with Co-CEO (30 min)
6 – Interview with CCO + CSM (60 min)
At the end of interview #6, I was told there may be interview #7 which was an aptitude test because the Co-CEO likes to test candidate skills.
I was told by Dir. of People Ops that interview #4 was going to the final interview, with the Co-CEO, but a scheduling conflict led them to swap out who I'd be meeting with next, turning one interview into two.
The Co-CEO was 15 min late to my interview and ended the call 5 min early; I had requested to reschedule the call because of the limited time but I didn't receive a reply.
After interview #5 with Co-CEO, the Dir of People Ops told me I'd be receiving a decision (yes or no) by end of that same week – instead I received a call from Dir of S&P to schedule interview #6.
The Common Wealth careers page outlines a 4-stage interview process.
The Customer Success Manager job posting as of 8/14/23 is not as advertised. It listed "End-to-end onboarding" and "Add value to customers post-onboarding" as responsibilities, however the CSM role was verbally described to me by the CCO and current CSM as administrative – following up with customers for documentation to get onboarded – while the operations team handles everything after that.
This would be the second CSM hire ever for the company.
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My take is that Common Wealth doesn't fully know how to define the customer success organization currently. They need someone to chase customers for documentation, but training and education lives with Operations, while renewal, expansion and demoing of the product lives with Sales.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe each role you held before the first one on your resume. We want to understand what led you to Customer Success to begin with (paraphrased).
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Common Wealth in Aug 2022
Interview
Without question the worst interview experience in my career. I started with a standard phone screen which went well. I was then invited later to a Zoom call, which is also fairly standard. This Zoom included the original lady from the phone screen, and a new guy. It went well. I was then invited to do a mock demo. The mock demo included the original lady from the phone screen, the new guy, and another new guy. It went well. I was then invited to a face to face meeting with the guy from the second touchpoint. If you’ve lost track, this is a request for a 4th interview at this point. I agreed. Naturally, he was late. He asked me questions that would have provided him with zero value. Very vapid, pointless questions. At the end, I was advised there would be one more step (lmao). A fifth interview.
After a week, I had heard nothing so I emailed them. The lady from the phone screen replied to me that they had went with another candidate. I called out the unprofessional nature of this and they told me they had literally *just* came to that decision minutes prior to my email…sure.
A small Canadian startup requiring 5 interviews to make a hire is such a red flag so I’m happy I dodged that bullet, but what a comical circus that was.
