Job Search Retro: Head of CX

Taylor landed a Head of Customer Experience (CX) role at a growth stage vertical SaaS company.

Hedgy Member Background

• Previously held Director level roles in Customer Success and Operations.
• Was focused on joining a vertical SaaS company that was customer-obsessed and had a pathway to executive leadership.
• Met the company she ultimately joined through Hedgy, and turned down another offer before accepting theirs.

Key Insights

AI will come up in every interview. Have a genuine answer.

• AI came up in every single interview Taylor had. And interviewers weren't just checking for tool familiarity. They wanted to sense genuine hunger for it. Common questions included: how do you stay current on AI, how do you carve out time for it, and where would you apply it in your role.
• For Taylor, the answer always came back to the customer. She thinks about AI as a way to eliminate the mundane so her team can spend more time on what actually matters, talking to customers. Call summarization, agent assist, faster help center content. The north star is always spending more time with the customer.

Ask questions that reveal the product culture without putting anyone on the spot.

• Everyone talks about being customer-obsessed. But how do you actually pressure test that in an interview? Taylor's go-to question for product leaders was: "How is CX feedback represented in the roadmap today?" It's a simple question, but if someone can't answer it concretely, that tells you something.
• It helped her understand whether customer insights actually made it into the product, and how much of a voice CX would have once she was in the seat.

Let the interview process tell you what you need to know.

• Sometimes it takes going through the interviews and process to help solidify conviction in what’s next for you.
• Taylor turned down an offer before receiving one from the company she ended up joining. It was a hard call. But the more she went through each process, the clearer it became that the first opportunity wasn't the right one. Having sharp criteria going in made it easier to trust that instinct.

This post is part of our job search retro series where Hedgy members who have recently started a new job share learnings from their search. If we can be helpful as you navigate your search, email us at founders@hedgy.works