Ambiverts needs to magnify their manners, voice and speed in online interviews

As I am searching for my next challenge in my professional life. 

I stumbled upon Customer Success discipline. Read a couple of books about it, btw thank you Nick Mehta and others at Gainsight for providing such an in-depth knowledge about Customer Success and being the evangelist for human-first approach in leadership. And for mehtaphysical.com of course.

As I have dived in Customer Success and as I understand it, you must be a great listener and develop deep relationship with your customers to actually understand the outcomes, your customers want from your product.

I was convinced it was the perfect fit for my personality (The Advocate/Counselor). I take pride in helping others succeed and live up to their true potential. I also believe in Companies with the right values to exist in the world, not the product per se. Don’t get me wrong, products that actually solve a problem is the key in having a company to begin with. But how and why you do things are more important in the long run.

My professional experience in non tech startups and the skills I have developed over the years in management consulting would fit in to the startup environment. The same fast paced environment where everybody is collaborating for the product-market fit and trying to find ways to scale things up. 

Next was the dreaded resume building and the hardest thing to do for me was talking about myself and my achievements. My personality type as being a highly empathetic creatures has hard time lifting selves before others.

But that’s not the case. It's about being strategic and giving a value proposition that is truthful and resonates with the recruiter and the company culture. ATS has made it even more difficult when you have to rewrite your resume for computer and recruiter. I have got lot of good interviews but then I get the dreaded rejection. The feedback has been consistent. All is very impressive but you seem to lack enthusiasm about the position and you seem to have low energy in the online interview.

I have thought about this a lot, read tips, exercised, drank lot of water, caffeine etc. Maybe the technical issues are making me look less enthusiastic, bad microphone making me sound shy and mousy. Bad lighting making me look tired. Bad connection making me look slow and drowsy. These are fixable. I like these challenges and they are preparing me for the work I WILL eventually get.

I feel that I need to magnify myself in online interviews to not seem like a slow sleepy person.

But there is one thing I don’t get.

In interviews I feel like recruiters are looking for an extroverted person. Opposed to introverts who tend to be better listeners because they like to digest and analyze information before choosing to respond.

The CS community has talked a lot about not wasting customers time by contacting them just to make small talk. You are there to build a deep professional relationship. You need to be trustworthy, caring about their business, be their advocate, empathetic and have the customers best in mind at all situations. You need to love collecting and analysing data. You need to do the tiresome groundwork to actually help your customers succeed.

And with introverts, I don’t mean shy quiet types. I mean introverts that are confident and outgoing professionals. They communicate to understand others and when they speak others will want to listen.

“In an increasingly distracted and fast-changing world, we need thoughtful, calm leaders whose capacity for focus and observation are absolutely necessary for teams.”

–Henna Inam in Forbes