What are the best places to look for SaaS support jobs?
Navigating Your Career in Customer Support is Support Driven’s advice column about crafting a career for yourself. Whether you've just landed your first customer support job or you're a seasoned pro, navigating your career can feel challenging. In this column, you'll hear from hiring managers, recruiters, and people who've made big career leaps. They'll share strategies, tools, and their experiences, all to help you craft your dream career. From your first job to that big promotion, Navigating your Career in Customer Support will give you all the support you need to build a career you'll love.
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I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions for the best places to look for SaaS customer support jobs. I currently check LinkedIn and jobs.google but unsure if I am missing out on some opportunities by not looking on the best sites!
— Bradley Easton, Technical Support Analyst at WMDC
Samantha Semuhin, Customer Care Manager at Upflow: The Support Driven channel has a #job-board where you can signup for the newsletter as well to check all the open offers.
I’d also recommend a platform called Welcome to the Jungle (this is a really great one and where I got my current job), Indeed.com, and Glassdoor.com.
Nicole Swift, Customer Support at Litmus Software: I’m not sure your timeline for needing a new job, and this is a little more work, but here’s what I like to do:
Search articles for the top/best SaaS companies to work for (I also add in “remote”). Then, go to each of those companies’ career pages. The larger ones always seem to have support jobs open. Many have options to sign up to be alerted of new postings. If you have any favorites, keep checking back even if they don’t have anything now.
BethAnne Freund, Knowledge Manager at Harvest: We Work Remotely has a lot of quality postings and has a section for customer support.
Mafalda Melo, Support Leader at HotJar: Big fan of People-First Jobs for a curated list on some companies with great values.
Stacy Justino, Director of Customer Happiness at Wistia: AngelList is another site to check regularly. I'd also recommend Otta.
What are some creative or non-traditional ways to find your next role?
What are some of the creative or non-traditional ways you found your current role or a job in support? I remember a time when my past co-workers were promoting and supporting one another on Twitter (likes, retweets, quotes), and some found opportunities through that. Would love to hear your stories!
— Out-of-the-box Job Hunter
Community Member A: I found the listing for my current job by exploring the career pages for software I used at my last job where I'd either been in touch with their support team in the past and was impressed, or whose tool was really useful and upon looking them up found they had a company culture I jived with.
Nicole: That is actually how I ended up finding my current job also! I used the tool before working here. I think that’s a great way to have a leg up - if you can show passion and knowledge of the tool/processes before even working there.
Stacy: I think another avenue that folks sometimes forget about is letting your professional and personal network know you’re looking for a new opportunity if you are able. I personally am always on the lookout for relevant job postings for people I know!
Valentina Thörner, Head of Remote & Quality of at Klaus: The (free) print version of SaaSMag always includes a list of SaaS companies that got funding, which usually means that they are hiring (or will be hiring soon). That way you have a list to start researching on.
I’m currently an educator. How do I find a remote role in tech?
I'm an experienced educator looking to transition to remote work. I gave it a go last year with no success on the job hunt. This summer I plan to aim lower in terms of wage and hopefully find a good transition job. Advice and suggestions are most welcome!
— Community Member B
Lilly Armelin, Community Member: I definitely recommend keeping an eye out on the #job-board Slack channel and asking people questions like "Is your time open to hiring someone who has transferable skills from another industry" (The answer to that question along with some very targeted inquiries about the role within the company is how I ended up getting into the interview process at a SaaS company when I previously had retail customer service and leasing experience).
Also, as some other questions to clarify, have you already been collecting the job listings for places you've applied and done a keyword/skills comparison to your prior history? That helps highlight your transferable skills and how you can frame experience in resumes/cover letters rather than just lowering wage expectations!
Stacy: What is your salary minimum? Have you looked at Instructional Designer roles? Or are you focused on entry level support roles? You might want to consider Sales or Customer Success/Account Manager roles at LMS (Learning Management System) or EdTech companies.
Sarah Ley-Hamilton, Product Education at Figma: I would second Stacy’s point around Instructional Design or Technical Writing! Someone with an education background would be hugely valuable in that area.
Alex Armstead, Customer Support Operations Manager at Clever: We hire a lot of former educators as support agents and then see them move into other roles after a couple of years. We pay well for the Ed Tech market!
Remember, you may accept lower pay at first, but you also increase salary much faster than you would on a district salary schedule. I was a teacher myself and have had the pleasure of seeing other former teachers excel in ed tech as well.
Camille E. Acey, Global Head of CX at Humio, a CrowdStrike Company: We share a lot of advice in our 6-part podcast here https://supportnightschool.com/ We created it specifically for career-switchers.
Two people I hired on my old support team were former educators who went on to become implementation folks. I think things like implementation and onboarding require that educator's patience.
What kinds of courses or certifications are most useful for a customer support leader?
Does anyone have any recommendations for Courses within the Support industry? The company I work for offers a budget for education yearly, but I struggle every year to find good courses or specific certifications for Customer Support leaders.
— Community Member C
Collin Cunninghame, CX Platform Admin: What's your industry and role? I've spent most of my career in SaaS and e-commerce, so I found web development courses from places like Codecademy to be handy in troubleshooting problems with pages and apps -- it's remarkable how much mileage I've gotten out of just knowing how to use Chrome's dev tools and Git.
How to create reports and analyze data is a transferable skill that can apply to support folks — maybe there's a certification or class for whatever tool your company uses.
I've also worked mostly with Zendesk and picked up an admin certification specific to that tool. I'm currently working on combining those things and getting a Zendesk developer certification.
Jen Weaver, Support Specialist at YNAB: Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) has been great for some of our folks, and attending the Support Driven events was fantastic for me and several of my team members. There’s a new one coming in June!
About the Editors
Stacy Justino is a career coach as well as the Director of Customer Happiness at Wistia, a leading video hosting platform that enables marketers to get bigger results from their videos and podcasts. You can find her on LinkedIn or at Double Jump Career Coaching.
Stephanie Gonzaga works as a Customer Support Specialist at Doist with experience in technical documentation, blogging, and SEO content creation. She’s worked remotely for almost a decade. You can find her on LinkedIn and her website.