The UK SaaS jobs market continued its strong growth during 2019.
European SaaS has grown significantly in recent years, with venture investments growing from $2billion in 2015 to $5billion in 2019. It’s a buoyant and high demand market as far as hiring is concerned.
Customer Success has seen the biggest transition and expansion of all commercial roles in SaaS during 2019. I’ve pulled together some key stats from LinkedIn to help understand what’s happening with the 7,275 UK Customer Success professionals.
Overall Market
Hiring demand and hiring difficulty for CS professionals is very high compared to other talent pools according to LinkedIn data and official criteria.
I’ve broken down the market further below based on experience level and seniority. All numbers are based exclusively on the UK market in 2019 -
Director/ VP of Customer Success
Head of Customer Success/ Manager of Customer Success/Lead
Customer Success Managers/ Customer Success Specialist
Customer Success Executives
In addition to the above core titles, there are 116 professionals listed as Customer Success Consultants.
Observations and views
30% is a lot of growth in a relatively short period of time!
I’ve been recruiting in Customer Success for a number of years and have seen first-hand the number of vacancies increase; however, I’m surprised at a 30% increase within 12 months.
CSM’s make up the largest part of the market and I know how hard it is for companies to find the right profiles that match their strategy. Equally, I don’t think a lot of hiring companies approach a competitive market very well. Granted, it’s tough to stand out; however, with over 900+ open job posts it seems that many companies feel that just placing a job ad online will do the trick. Chances are, it won’t!
The widely quoted stat used to be that 70-80% of available roles weren’t advertised. I don’t believe it’s quite so high in the CS industry; however, there will be a high number of roles being managed directly by clients and recruiters in addition to the 900+ jobs posts. A clear recruitment strategy is vital in an area of the market where almost 50% of available candidates moved roles and companies in 2019. This might include looking at location and home working arrangements as clearly London dominates demand and the competition is extreme.
Staff retention appears to be a BIG issue!
Customer Success is the division tasked with making customers happy and yet it doesn’t seem that too many employees want to stick around in their current surroundings.
Some moves will be progression lead, and some will be down to the usual start-up challenges that crop up, such as funding issues. However, 50% of CSM’s moving companies in 2019 is incredibly high!
Clearly, there is an issue and motivators are not being understood or achieved.
Surveyed Customer Success professionals on LinkedIn listed the following values as the top 10 most important employer values (including % who agree)
Customer Success Execs are in demand!
It’s also noticeable that there has been a big uplift in companies looking to hire at the junior end of the market. Whilst there are only a relatively small number of Customer Success Executives in the market at 344, it’s the area of the market with the biggest growth in the last 12 months at 58%.
It also has a very high ratio of live job posts vs. potential candidates. It will be interesting to see how this develops in 2020.
Gender Diversity at a senior level doesn’t reflect the overall market! There is a fairly even split between males and females at CSE and CSM level. This changes the further up the seniority ladder we go where it’s 66%/34% in favour of males at VP/Director level. This is not a surprising stat as it reflects the wider market. It’s also far more balanced than other areas of SaaS at this level, particularly sales where 92% at VP level are male!
That said, I think most would agree a more equally balanced leadership talent pool would be beneficial to the overall market.
Overall, 2019 was an exciting year for the UK SaaS market as a whole, and the increase in demand for Customer Success expertise stood out.
The volume of roles made it a tough market to recruit in. With so much noise for potential candidates to block out and some clients still getting to grips with their Customer Success strategy, there were many moving parts and it was difficult to navigate at times.
So, what does 2020 have in store for us? Personally, I’m expecting more of the same.
Customer Success is at the top of the priority list for many SaaS Founders and leadership teams we talk with and I’d expect the volume of roles to increase, particularly at the junior end of the market.
If you have any views on these numbers or the market in 2020, I’d love to hear from you.
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