First of all, I want acknowledge that it's definitely rough out there. My most recent job search took 3 months (I was fortunate enough to be employed at the time) and it was definitely trickier than it has been in the past;

That being said...I've been doing this for nearly 7 years now, during which I had a few successful job searches, transitioned successfully from SMB to enterprise/strategic accounts and participated in many hiring processes as an interviewer myself. After those experiences I've come to the conclusion that most CSM candidates aren't that great. From 2020 to early 2022, tech hiring was so crazy that even those mediocre candidates could get interviews easily, but in this market they're understandably struggling. Here are a few reasons why, in my opinion:

• They don't know how to do discovery. Many CSMs will be asked by their customers "How can I use your product to x?" but they don't take the time to ask WHY that's important. What's the impact on your business if you can't achieve that? Okay, you want cost savings of $10k but what will you do with that savings? Is that money you could use on another project? Lots of people complain about CS becoming more sales oriented but so many CSMs are leaving money the table by being bad at this.
• They can't articulate the "so what?" So many CSMs just go through the motions of QBRs without thinking about this. Okay, so product adoption is down quarter or quarter? Or maybe it's up? Okay, so what? What impact is that having? WHY is it up?
• They are lacking business acumen and can't articulate value. Okay so you're tracking adoption, great. But what about the customer's desired outcomes? Are you tracking those? Yes, I know this becomes tricky if you have a big book of business but even many enterprise CSMs aren't great at this. This ties into communication as well. WHY should any busy stakeholder respond to yout request for a "check in"? What value are they getting out of this?

There are other things I've noticed too, but these are just my very stream of consciousness thoughts. I'm curious if others have noticed this as well, especially hiring managers/CS leaders. Also, the haters can bring on the downvotes as well, I welcome them. :)