PostHog Handbook Library / People

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# Sales and Customer Success Hiring

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## At a Glance

This long page covers these main areas. The list is generated from the article headings, so it updates with every handbook rebuild.

1. Sales and Customer Success hiring at PostHog
2. What we are looking for in Sales and CS hires
3. How we evaluate candidates
4. Sales and Onboarding hiring process
5. Culture interview
6. Technical interview and demo
7. Technical Account Executive (TAE)
8. Technical Account Manager (TAM)

### Sales and Customer Success hiring at PostHog

Our Sales and Customer Success teams look after customers paying $20k a year or more for PostHog, as well as new customers who _may_ end up in that bucket. The job of the teams is to land and expand usage of PostHog in these customers. We have the following roles on the Sales and CS team:

- Technical Account Executives focused on closing new business from inbound and outbound leads
- Technical Account Managers focused on expansion from existing customers and closing new business from product-led leads.
- Customer Success Managers focused on the retention of customers using all of our products already.
- Onboarding Specialists focused on ensuring newer and smaller customers are set up for success with PostHog.
- Forward Deployed Engineers focused on getting embedded with customers to fill the gap between what PostHog does and what the customer needs.

We've proven that the way we do sales works at a small scale, we are now growing the team in line with increased top-of-funnel growth for PostHog. Please check our careers page for our open roles.

#### What we are looking for in Sales and CS hires

Outside of the skills listed in the job description, we are generally looking for:

- Technical aptitude - our team members are the primary person responsible for the customer relationship, and that includes solving technical problems.
- Great interpersonal skills - we need people that our customers are excited to work with.
- A genuine passion for helping customers be successful.
- Prioritization skills - you'll be working with a book of business at different states and will have to prioritize your work accordingly.
- People who are motivated by revenue growth.

#### How we evaluate candidates

We need to be particularly sensitive to culture at this stage. We can handle someone underperforming much better than someone who is a poor culture fit due to the impact on the broader team. We don't want to end up taking cold leads from BDRs so we can run MEDPICC from our car phone while promising 50% discounts if they sign before the next full moon. We want someone who is comfortable carrying a sales conversation while also possessing the technical chops to talk to engineers and get their hands dirty.

We want someone who can own technical problems and even if they don't have the answer, understand enough of the context to provide that to engineers. We want someone who sees themselves as the first line of defense for our engineers, because engineering time is valuable; it's a win when they can solve a problem without additional engineering lean in.

A great litmus test for a candidate is if they are comfortable instrumenting PostHog and can speak to how they actually implement it on a site. That's typically a good indicator that they've got the right technical prowess.

We want someone who is in it to develop customers for the long run, we don't want someone who is here for quick churn and burn to pump up quota attainment. Building a relationship with a product engineer requires actually knowing PostHog, not just knowing about PostHog.

Ultimately, we want someone who we'd want to buy from.

#### Sales and Onboarding hiring process

##### Culture interview

This is our usual first-round interview with a member of the Talent team.

##### Technical interview and demo

The technical interview with the relevant team lead usually lasts ~45 minutes. How we run it depends on the role you're interviewing for.

###### Technical Account Executive (TAE)

For TAE candidates, this session is structured around a consistent set of questions that we ask every candidate, so we can make clear comparisons. The questions are designed to understand your skills, your experience, and how you think about the role — including how you approach prospecting and closing new business, how you handle technical conversations with engineers, and how you think about building long-term customer relationships. After we've worked through the questions, we'll leave time at the end for you to ask anything that's on your mind.

###### Technical Account Manager (TAM)

Part of this session will be a demo role-play so that we can assess how you talk about your current product to a prospective customer who knows nothing about it. You can assume that the customer is a prospective buyer but otherwise knows nothing about your product, and you should approach the demo as if they were a real prospective customer. What we care about here is not the content of the demo, but seeing how you'd interact with a prospective customer. After a short introduction, we will jump into questions for 25-30 minutes, and then move on to the role play where you should aim to present and demo your product for 15-20 minutes with 10 minutes. After this, we will allow you to ask anything that's on your mind.

##### Culture and motivation interview

In this 30-minute interview, you'll meet with Ben, who will be trying to answer "Are they a good cultural fit for the Sales team at PostHog?".

##### Sales and Onboarding SuperDay

The final stage of our interview process is what we call a PostHog SuperDay. This is a paid full day of work, which we can flexibly arrange around your schedule.

We will share the task with you at the start of the day. The task is representative of the work someone in this role at PostHog is doing, and it is always the same for each candidate, so we can make clear comparisons. It will typically involve doing actual PostHog work, e.g. prioritizing customers, doing a demo, etc.

A Sales and CS SuperDay usually looks like this (_there is a degree of flexibility due to time zone differences):_

- Kick-off session
- Meet with Tim, who will be trying to answer "Would I buy from this person?"
- Meet with Ben, who will be doing a culture and vibe check.
- Time to focus on the task, we can provide support via your personal Slack channel (use the channel, don't slide into people's DMs)
- PostHog demo role-play with the team lead
- Meet a few members of our team for a quick chat

Overall, you should spend at least 80% of your time and energy on the task and less than 20% on meeting people, as we will base our decision on your output of the day. However, we encourage everyone to use the Slack channel as much as needed for any questions or problems.

> In line with our values and culture, you might get short replies like "step on toes" or "bias for action".

#### CS and FDE hiring process

##### Culture interview

This is our usual first-round interview with a member of the People & Ops team.

##### Small Team interview

The small team interview with the relevant team lead usually lasts 45 minutes. For this round, we will use scenario-based questions to assess your technical and customer skills, as well as your knowledge of PostHog. As part of this, we will ask you to give a quick pitch of PostHog (not a full demo).

##### Culture and motivation interview

In this 30-minute interview, you'll meet with Simon, who will be trying to answer "Are they a good cultural fit for the Sales team at PostHog?".

##### CS and FDE SuperDay

The final stage of our interview process is what we call a PostHog SuperDay. This is a paid full day of work, which we can flexibly arrange around your schedule.

We will share the task with you at the start of the day. The task is representative of the work someone in this role at PostHog is doing, and it is always the same for each candidate, so we can make clear comparisons. It will typically involve doing actual PostHog work, e.g. prioritizing customers, doing a demo, etc.

A CS and FDE SuperDay usually looks like this (_there is a degree of flexibility due to time zone differences):_

- Kick-off session
- Meet with Tim, who will be trying to answer "Would I buy from this person?"
- Meet with Ben, who will be doing a culture and vibe check.
- Time to focus on the task, we can provide support via your personal Slack channel (use the channel, don't slide into people's DMs)
- Demo role-play with the team lead and Simon
- Meet a few members of our team for a quick chat

Overall, you should spend at least 80% of your time and energy on the task and less than 20% on meeting people, as we will base our decision on your output of the day. However, we encourage everyone to use the Slack channel as much as needed for any questions or problems.

> In line with our values and culture, you might get short replies like "step on toes" or "bias for action".

Canonical URL: https://posthog.com/handbook/people/hiring-process/sales-cs-hiring

GitHub source: contents/handbook/people/hiring-process/sales-cs-hiring.md

Content hash: `8f5cb6690f2afb5a`