149 - It's Not You, It's Them: The Art of Being Tenacious and Not Giving Up

SPEAKER_00: I think it also probably helps to have a creative mindset as well as a technical mindset because I think then you bring different approaches, different ways of thinking to using technology and maybe humanize it in a in a different way. Art itself actually had technical revolutions. So if you're studying the Renaissance, actually the introduction of perspective was seen as the huge technical kind of innovation of its time. So Giotto and some of those very early painters who started to paint, you know, in 3D, when we look at it now with AI and with virtual reality, we just think that's nothing.

But it was absolutely groundbreaking at the time to stand in front of a flat painting and feel like it was, you know, it had dimensions. So it's very, very interesting to see those parallels in technological advancements. SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome back to the new episode of the Women in Customer Success podcast. Today it's a pleasure to introduce you to Caroline Lambe, manager of customer success at ContentFool.

Caroline, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Maria. I'm looking forward to it. Let's help the listeners to kind of pin you on the map.

SPEAKER_00: Firstly, where are you calling from? So I'm based in Southeast London. I'm working from home today. So I've lived in London since I was a student.

So calling from my my workspace. SPEAKER_01: Calling from London. Very good. Caroline, would you consider yourself to be introvert or extrovert?

SPEAKER_00: That's a good question. I think I'm a mixture of both. So I'm very extrovert when I want to be, but then I absolutely need to kind of recharge and make up that time. And so if I've had a really busy day talking to people in the evening, I am drained and I just need to sort of lie on the couch for the rest of the day.

Oh well, that sounds fantastic, actually. SPEAKER_01: If you had to completely change your career tomorrow, what would you do? SPEAKER_00: So that's an easy one for me. So I love fiction writing.

That is my hobby. And you know, I it's hard to get the time and the headspace to do it, but I would 100% be finishing many of the books that I've already started to write. Ooh, so how many have you started writing? Probably about three.

So I've got like a uh teen fantasy one at the moment, which I've been working on for a long time. And then I've got another one, which is about all the different boyfriends I've had. That's a bit more uh kind of adult fiction, and then I've got a lot of short stories, so like little collections of of stories as well. So yeah, there's a there's a whole pile of things I need to go back and finish and edit.

SPEAKER_01: That sounds fascinating. I would love to read some of those. Oh well, let us know please when any of those are published, or if you get new at the end, publish immediately because you will be so inspired. That that's just a fascinating career that you would do.

Now let's go a few steps back to the time when you were 16. Would a 16-year-old Caroline be surprised to find you in this current job? SPEAKER_00: Totally. So I was never into science, maths, or you know, and I actually was at school, we barely had many computers then anyway.

I studied history of art at the Quartholde Institute, so I was very much living in the Renaissance, living in paintings, and sort of just loving art. But when I graduated from there, I had a boyfriend who was really into tech. And this is when the first internet cafes were opening in London, and it was just really, really exciting. And through him, I started to get interested in technology.

I took a Photoshop course, I learned HTML, and I started building websites. So I went from the 15th century into the absolute the most uh latest kind of tech, and I just thought actually, this is where I need to be. But a 16-year-old me would would probably never have predicted that that there was the path I would end up taking. SPEAKER_01: How interesting is that I can completely relate as you were speaking.

I was I was thinking how I was a musician, and then when I met my husband, and we got married, and I started hearing all the conversations about the product management and project management, and I just ended up in a business because I felt that I can speak that language constantly. I guess that was one of the very good influences that you know the our better halves had on us. SPEAKER_00: I think it also probably helps to have a creative mindset as well as a technical mindset because I think then you bring different approaches, different ways of thinking to using technology and maybe humanize it in a in a different way.

And I think you know, art itself actually had technical revolutions. So if you're studying the Renaissance, actually the introduction of perspective was seen as the huge technical kind of innovation of its time. So, you know, Giotto and some of those very early painters who started to paint it, you know, in 3D, when we look at it now, you know, with AI and with virtual reality, we just think that's nothing. But it was absolutely groundbreaking at the time to stand in front of a flat painting and feel like it was, you know, it had dimensions.

So I think it's very, very interesting to see those parallels in technological advancements. SPEAKER_01: And remind me, I remember the word chiaroscuro. Is that considered one of the techniques of light, right? SPEAKER_00: Or that no, you're right.

So that means light out of darkness. And it's painters at Caravaggio in the 17th century that was more experimenting with that. So that's where you see those incredible techniques where somebody looks very lit and then they are coming out, literally coming out of the darkness. So yeah, good, good phrase to uh to know.

SPEAKER_01: Now I'm really curious. Have you tried experimenting with AI in a way of putting some prompts? Oh, create a painting in uh Caravaggio style. Have you done something like that?

Because I'm realizing I haven't, but as you're talking about those techniques, I feel there would be so much discoveries and so much surprises if we started doing that in AI. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think I'm a bit scared to do that because I don't want to see how good or, you know, potentially how bad that is. And I think, you know, that's obviously the one big debate about AI is preserving human creativity. And I know even if you're looking on Instagram and a lot of people are putting AI videos up now, people don't like them.

They I think there's still that need for reality. I think we're looking at AI for a practical enhancements, help usage. We don't want it to replace at the moment, anyway, that creativity that comes from our our minds and our brains. So yeah, so I haven't experimented with that.

I I I did use it to help my daughter think about how to write a bit of creative writing for her homework, though. And we've put a concept into Chat GBT, and it the story it wrote was actually very, very good. And that was quite shocking, you know, and that it could produce something so good so quickly. So I yeah, it's it's a bit concerning, but a bit inevitable actually, how AI is gonna end up infringing on the creative worlds.

SPEAKER_01: And you're so right, especially as we see all of those different photos and videos that are AI, and and you're just finding yourself not knowing what to trust. Uh, some stuff are almost too good to be true, almost easy to understand. Yeah, it's AI, it can't happen. But there is so many gray spaces or gray zones that you are actually not sure.

Just recently I had a conversation with uh a few people about the music in AI and whether you would ask AI to compose in Beethoven or Mozart style. And I'm really afraid of that. I I don't want to give it that prompt and then see what happens out of it because I'm sure it would be incredibly similar to what they did, but then is there the direction we want to go? Like, do we want a machine to produce Mozart's music?

I think I would have my limits with that. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I I really hope that's not the way we're going because I I think we want to attach ourselves to the genius, to the personality. Like we want to know about the life of Michelangelo, for example, and you know, this man that could produce something so beautiful out of marble, and you know, and Mozart who could compose something so unbelievably incredible. Yeah, if machines are doing it, then where where's that person?

Where's that personal history that's driving that creativity or driving that that music or or art? SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's not only the technicalities of what is being composed or or drawn. SPEAKER_00: Oh wow. Lots of things to consider that, I guess.

I know, I know. I I wonder whether younger generations will just accept the way that they are born with new technology, that that is the way that things will go. So I'd I'd be interested to see how how that evolves with each generation. SPEAKER_01: I agree, especially the default of AI.

For example, when you have a question, you know, we used to go and Google it, right? And now you just go straight to AI to ask the questions or produce something or write me an outline for a book or anything else. That's yeah, very, very different after generations. But I'm interested to hear what was the journey from history of art and renaissance into tech and then customer success.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I guess I sort of started to tell a bit of that. So, you know, I obviously learned how to build websites and you know got into Photoshop and we sort of took the artistic side into technology. And then with a couple of friends, we set up a small company building websites, and we didn't really know what we were doing, we didn't really know how to run a business or how to pitch. So, you know, we ended up kind of really undercharging and building some websites.

So we built the first ever website for what's now Price Waterhouse Coopers. It used to be called Coopers and Library. We built their first website, and I think we charged them 400 pounds. And we were in the boardroom explaining to the you know, there was senior leadership really what a website was.

And and in in those early days, it was like grey pages with graphs, and nobody really knew what to put on their website. Um, and then we built a lot of web pages for a travel company. So we we you know handcrafted all of those pages with all the destinations, uh, every flight. And the guy obviously saw that we were totally green and didn't know how to run a business.

And when we sent him an invoice, he said, I'm gonna pay you in free travel anywhere in the world instead of with money. So we got five-star hotels, first-class flights anywhere we wanted, but unless you had like no money to spend when we got there. So it it was it was really good fun at the time, but yeah, it was a bit of a we didn't really know what we were doing. And then from there I actually went into Sorry.

Can I just ask, where did you go? What did you actually do? Some cool locations. So I we mainly stuck to Europe.

So I I remember going to Amsterdam and going to Paris, and I think we went to Italy. So yeah, we and stayed in literally the best hotels, but couldn't afford to eat in the restaurants or anything. So it was uh kind of fun, but uh if we'd had a bit of money to spend, that would have been good as well. But you know, I think when you're young, you don't really care so much, you're just kind of living on energy and kind of good fun.

So yeah, that was good. And then and then from there I went into the charity sector. So I worked for Mencat, which is the learning disability charity in the UK, and that was fantastic. So I I kind of relaunched their website, which was all about campaigning, providing information for parents and carers, and we could be really creative and we really had to think about actually how to design accessible web content so that people with learning disabilities who found it harder to read information or needed more imagery, we had to design a lot of the content with that in mind.

And I think when you're thinking about someone that really needs to kind of have information presented clearly, you're designing well for everybody. So that was quite a nice to kind of go and give talks about accessible design, which I I really enjoyed. So that that was great fun. And then from there I actually went into more the corporate side of tech.

So I had a bit of a break, had uh my children, sort of really took a bit of time out, and then went back in part-time to work for a technology implementation partner, and then was there for six years and then ended up at Sitecore, and then after that ended up in Contentpo. So it's been a bit of a kind of round-the-houses sort of journey, but I definitely stayed with tech really sort of for most of my career. SPEAKER_01: Today's episode is brought to you by DeployFlow, your partner for digital transformation.

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Deployflow.co. I would like to go back into the moment when you're saying that you you took career break to spend some time with your children. How long was the break and what were some of the steps that you took to get yourself back into the workforce?

How was that experience? SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's a good question. And in fact, I was interviewing someone for the for my team today who's on maternity leave and just that kind of anxiety about going back to work after you've, you know, you've had your first baby, and it's terrifying to think of leaving them. So I actually made a decision and I knew it was going to impact my career to have that time out.

I just really wanted to kind of spend those early years with my children. And I know it was a luxury, and financially, you know, we we really kind of had to pull back for that. So we we had to kind of have many holidays, we really had to think about cost savings, but I just really wanted those sunny days in the park and and to spend that time when they were little. So yeah, we just had to budget, we had to be super careful, and uh you know, it was only when when my son was about nine nine, ten months, I did work part-time, so I didn't completely come out of the workforce.

I did one or two days a week, and I I did that consistently. And then I had my daughter a couple of years later, and it was only really when she was a little bit older and properly at primary school, and I thought, actually I can I can start to up my days and and work a little bit more full-time now. So it was hard. I mean, I we we brought in just enough to cover all the bills and the mortgage and enough to sort of have a bit of fun, but I I wouldn't have done it any other way.

I mean, and I I think I was very lucky and very happy to do that. And I can see for uh for a lot of women nowadays with the cost of living, it's it's really, really tough. And I think a lot of people do just have to go back into work and make those sacrifices and put their children in in childcare. So I I kind of knew I was lucky to to be able to do it.

SPEAKER_01: Did you say something that it was a decision that you knew would impact your career? What do you mean by that? SPEAKER_00: So I mean, I think when you take those breaks, for example, when I when I left uh the charity where I was working, I was probably on track for my next career role to really go into kind of being a a director of digital at a charity. And because I took that chunk of time out and decided not to go back to work to that job after my son was born, just because they wouldn't entertain part-time, they wanted it full-time.

Uh I knew that I really had to scuff at my chance to actually progress my career in that way. And I think that is really hard, you know. With with careers, you've got to get that momentum and go from role to role. And I think it's it's often quite hard to take a break because you're questioned about it.

You maybe kind of lose some of the trends or lose some of the aggression that's happening in tech. So I think it's tough. And and I would say the majority of women that have worked within tech, I would say 90% of them have pretty much taken their assigned maternity leave, maybe eight, nine months to a year, and then gone straight back into work full-time. It does impact your career when you take that time out.

SPEAKER_01: I think we both are speaking from the context of UK, where it is very common typically to keep the job only for 12 months during maternity leave and then go back. And I think only in some maybe rare cases, you can go part-time. And for what I have seen, especially in tech, it's not typically an option. But I wonder, can we can companies, can managers do something about to help ladies?

As I work a lot with German customers, for example, it seems very common there that women go back to work either after taking break or even for any other reasons, and they decide to work 80% or 70-60% of work, and it doesn't impact the employability. It's almost a given, which I think it's it's incredible for women. Wondering, have you noticed the ways that we could kind of give mothers a bit of more opportunities in that aspect, or it's always difficult because of the bottom line?

SPEAKER_00: I I think it's hard. I mean, and I think if you take the other extreme, which is the American culture, where you're expected to go back to work when your child is four months old. Oh gosh. I mean, that is really, really tough.

And I think we're sort of middle ground of a set. I've worked for a Danish company before, and in Denmark, and you get time, really good time out. You the man and the woman get the time out, and then I think it's the same in Belgium. You also get a period of a year that you can take up until when your child has 10 years.

So you get it, it's not full pay, but you can take like a month, for example, in the summer. So you can really enjoy your children when they're growing up. And you know, that's there's a reason why Scandinavian countries are very, very happy and very productive. When I worked for that Danish company, people would be in the office probably from about eight, and then by 3:30, the office was empty.

Not because people were lazy, it's because the culture is you go and pick your children up from school, and then you spend quality time, you eat together, and then maybe you'll do a bit of work in the evening. But people are really happy because they're not missing out on family life, they're getting the best of everything. And I think you can see that with the success of you know, Scandinavian businesses. There's some of them are the most successful in the world.

For example, if you look at our high street at the moment, most of it is Danish. So Oli and Stein, the uh sticks and sushi, the swart and green, the new homeware, you know, all of these incredible Danish business businesses, Bang and Olsen, you know, that are are really top-end kind of businesses, they're all coming from that culture. So I don't think you can always say that giving people that time with the family equates to a lack of productivity and a lack of success. I think it builds a really positive culture.

And even actually, that I know they pay a lot of tax, so they can do things like this, but if you're deciding on a career change, there's actually compensation that you can get. So you can be paid for up to six months while you contemplate what your next career move is. So you don't feel the need to go straight from one job to another. So obviously, that's like the ultimate benchmark if you pay a lot of tax and you live in a in a sort of culture like that, and then you've got the other extreme, which is the sort of American, North American culture.

So I think it's tricky. I I think we're we're we're fairly well looked after in in the UK, and that you do get a fairly good maternity time off, and and also with flexible working, working from home, that's been a bit of a game changer in that that people can be more present for their children. So I I I think it's not too bad. SPEAKER_01: Oh, the dream of Scandinavian countries, right?

Um I remember every time I worked with Scandinavian customers, we knew that July was off because everybody should take the whole month off. Then in Germany and some other parts of Europe, August is off. You don't dare to put any calls in place, of course, because everybody needs to have the time off. Just the other day I found out that in Belgium it is actually common in the whole country that there is no schools, there is no school on Wednesdays afternoon.

So mothers typically have this time off from work and they they spend it with their children again. So for the purposes of family spending more time together, which is wonderful. All the ladies that I have ever worked with in Belgium are incredible performers. So there must be something amazing about increasing our happiness and productivity by giving us time to spend with our families.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely. I think if you're trusted by the business that you work with, then you give back, you know, if they if they trust you to be flexible and you know have have that time maybe an hour or so in the afternoon with children and then go back to work. As long as you're being productive and as long as you're hitting your targets and achieving, then that that kind of nine to five ideal, I think, is is becoming less and less common. You know, and I think it's also important when the children are young.

I mean, my son's 17 now, and you know, it's hard to get him to come out of his bedroom. So I'm really appreciative of the fact I spent a lot of time with him when he was younger. SPEAKER_01: Caroline, going a few steps forward on your career journey. I know that you experienced some particular difficulties when there have been so many different layoffs uh in tech, and you were you were part of one layoff.

So I wonder if you would tell us a bit of reflection, how did the layoff look like for you and the process of going back into the workforce? SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know. I'm glad you asked about that. So it's it's it's a really interesting point and one that I was quite shocked at the time.

And I know a lot of people have been made redundant over the last few years. We've all seen those heartbreaking LinkedIn posts where people are just worrying about paying their bills. And so yeah, I was at a big tech firm and they decided to remove the whole of the customer's success function for various reasons. So it wasn't just a personal thing, it was that the whole team globally were removed.

It was, you know, obviously being made redundant, as anyone will know, is is horrible. You feel worried and insecure, you lose your work family, you lose your security, you, you know, it's it's not just losing a job, it's it's so much else. And certainly myself and one of the other uh mothers who were laid off, we'd always been quite good at interviews, so we thought, and had never really struggled to get a job. But obviously, we were going back into a marketplace which was highly competitive, a lot of very senior people were being laid off, and so for every job that came up, there was so many more applicants, and you were competing again against people.

So, say for example, you were applying to an HR tech, there were other people who had all that background in that particular vertical, and they might even have been, you know, I was going for sort of manager roles and I was competing against people who had been in VPs. It was very, very competitive. I think in that period of time, I probably did somewhere between 30 and 40 interviews, some, you know, up to certain kind of levels. I was absolutely exhausted and just drained.

And luckily, I had my colleagues who were all looking for jobs, and uh, you know, I was able to kind of message them and go, Oh my god, are you having a tough? And and a little a lot of them were as well. I don't know whether this was coincidence or again, it's not just down to, you know, I guess age, which I'm going to talk about, but also it seemed like a couple of the guys that were looking for jobs seemed to get roles a lot more quickly than the woman. And I don't know if that was just coincidence or whether there was, you know, men are more employable.

I'm I'm not sure. But certainly what I found was with a lot of the interviews, I was being initially screened by a lot of quite young people, as is the way, you know, maybe someone in HR who's screening you before you'll go through to a next round. And a lot of them were were super young. And I certainly felt, and it it was a quite a pattern that I saw that you know, the younger they were, the the quicker I I was probably dismissed out of that work process, even though on paper I was absolutely 100% right for the role.

And I think even with jobs that I was applying to where AI technology was probably scanning the CV and giving me a 10 out of 10, when I actually got in front of a person, again, it was a bit confusing. It was like I'm perfect for this role. Why is this not happening? So, you know, liaising with other people, it just did feel that sort of there's this bias towards taking people maybe in their 20s and 30s into tech and that perception that that's the kind of age that you should be looking at.

And I think, you know, I have seen a few LinkedIn posts aligning with this as well when I was constantly sort of scouring for jobs, that people don't realize actually the value that someone who is a little bit older in their career can bring into a team. So, for example, your children are older, so you're going to be more available. You your kids are walking to school and back, you're less likely to be unwell because you've had all those bugs when the kids are younger, so you're kind of a bit more resilient.

Like, for example, in the job, I've been in my current role for seven months. I've had like maybe one or two sick days. I think also you're a little bit more emotionally resilient. So when I was in my 30s, I would take things very personally, or if my manager says something to me I didn't like, I would stew on it.

So now I just, you know, I'm very good at separating the emotions from from work and not not kind of you know overthinking things. I think also, especially if you're managing a team, you can just bring that kind of experience and maturity. You're not competing with the you know, the people in your team, you're there to nurture them, you're not going to bring your ego into that, you know, you're you're really there to make them thrive. So I think in that sense, you're really valuable to the business because I'm not interested in politics, I'm interested in success, I'm interested in team achievement, I'm interested in really good collaboration with uh with my colleagues and seeing my team really succeed.

So, for example, since I I joined Contentful, two of my team have just been promoted this week, which I'm super proud of. You know, I'm seeing them thrive, we're hitting our targets. That to me gives me a lot of pleasure. So it's it's not about my success.

Well, my success is their success. So I I think there's just a lot of, you know, this having adults in the room can really add a lot to it to a business, you know, and you need those different age ranges, I think, to to make a workplace interesting and and dynamic. SPEAKER_01: The other day I had a conversation with a lady who mentioned, oh, I'm in my 30s and I'm not a VP yet. What's wrong with me?

You know, what what's happening? So I wonder when you reflect to your experience of ageism in tech, do you think it was more of probably a combination of ageism because you wanted to enter start like tech, or is it because you are applying for kind of mid-level managerial roles and not like C level that maybe people expect it? Like what what are your thoughts on it? SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I think that's a good point, and that really resonates as well.

I think because I had that career gap, you know, probably at this stage of my career, I should I should be higher. And people probably are thinking, you know, why why is she not applying for those particular roles? And so yeah, I mean, I think in that sense, I probably did raise a few questions around that. I think now that I'm sort of back into the flow of my career, I feel much more mentally prepared now to to kind of take those next steps at some point in the in the next few years into those sorts of roles.

But I think also this is what going back to what I was saying, because you have those gaps, you actually miss some of that natural progression where you build up that internal confidence within a business and where you can go, right? I've done all of these roles now, I'm ready for this. So there is something to be said about continuity. I've got another friend actually who she was very sort of senior in a tech role.

She was like head of head of customer success within a business. She had to take five years out because she became unwell. She's experiencing the same thing. She's trying to get back into role.

She's one of the brightest, most competent people I've ever worked with. And she's struggling to get a job because people are just questioning that gap, questioning where she's been, even if you've got a very legitimate reason. So yeah, I think it is it is tricky to have those gaps, and you have to just try and justify them. SPEAKER_01: I like your value propositions for having adults in the room, and and what are all the benefits that potentially older people can bring into the workforce?

I wonder what would be your message or some of the strategies for hiring managers? How can they be more intentionally inclusive of people with gaps in their careers or CVs and especially women who might be aging and then want to enter or re-enter the workforce? Uh, you're also in a hiring manager position. So, what is some of your tips for hiring managers in particular?

And then after we can probably go, what are the tips for women who are trying to enter the industry back? SPEAKER_00: I think that's a good question. And I I I think it's it it possibly be rethinking a little bit about the types of questions that you're asked in in an interview. So perhaps there should be some more questions around, you know, what can you bring to the role in terms of how you would manage a team from maybe your experience or from an emotional side rather than the questions can be very formulaic.

So thinking a little bit wider around that uh the human side of what someone's bringing to a role rather than just taking the boxes of what they've done in their career. I think we all know sort of within businesses, it's you know, one negative personality type can actually really affect the whole environment or the whole kind of energy of a team. So I think having those different dynamics can really, really make a difference. I think I give you the example.

I know you haven't watched this program, but the traitors, which is very, very popular program on TV, and actually, you know, using that as a kind of lowbrow example, the most interesting people, you know, everyone gets put in a house and they have to play a game to see who's the traitor and who's the faithful. The most interesting personalities in that were the absolutely the middle-aged and older women. And you know, the young people were fun as well. But when when all of those characters were gone, it was quite flat and one note.

So, you know, that really made me laugh because I was like, actually, these women, they don't really care about what people think about them anymore. Their personalities are just kind of who they are, they're not trying too hard, they're not worrying about anything. So I think it's like let's think about those dynamics and and what makes things interesting. When I was at PsychCorp, our office manager was in her mid-60s, and she was the one that brought the whole office together.

She was hilarious. She spoke to the CEO in a way that no one else dared to by you know, telling him off and not tidying up his desk and things. And she was always bringing in hilarious cakes and games, and and you know, she really made that office such a fun, warm place to work. So I think people need to think about those elements of of the workplace culture and not just thinking, hey, we just want an office full of like 20 to 30 year olds, you know, who maybe are all thinking the same things or competitive or I don't know at certain stages.

I mean, I'm trying not to generalize because everyone is different. Um but yeah, I I think it's think more widely around that culture and and the type of dynamics you can bring in by a range of people, range of ages. SPEAKER_01: I think we have to be aware that currently we have probably five different generations in the workforce all at the same time. People who are 18, 20, straight after school or universities, and also people who are 65 or even older who may not be able to retire immediately, let's say due to pensions in the UK.

And it is an interesting dynamics. But as you said, there is something so amazing about having all of those generations together. If we take it through the approach or perspective of, you know, it's it's amazing, it's beneficial having that diversity, having some of those interesting characters or or role models who are who are having life wisdom and, of course, career expertise. But it is incredibly different having those maybe perhaps older people mentoring younger, doing the reverse mentoring.

I remember in the early days of my career, I had a mentor who was at that time in her 60s, and I was much younger. And that was the best time for me, just trying to get some of trying to soak some of her wisdom. That was incredibly useful. I'm not sure that I'm having the same opportunity these days because I don't see that huge diversity in the workspace.

It's an enormous benefit for diversity of our teams, just bringing so many different generations and perspectives together. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely. And I would say actually, you know, where I am contentful, are doing that really well. There's there is a range of people there.

Obviously, with you know, with sales and maybe the BDR teams, that you you're gonna expect that to be younger. But certainly in my team, it's it's a range of ages with within that team as well. So, and I I think during my interview process there, I never felt that that was an issue. They looked at my skills, they looked at what I could could bring.

So I I couldn't speak more highly of of how they were very open to just really kind of not even kind of thinking about that within the process. So there are businesses that are doing it, doing it very, very well and and seeing the benefits, and then others that I certainly felt when I was interviewing that just you know were put off, or uh, you know, which I was dismissed very, very immediately. And I'm sure that was one of the reasons, although they'd never officially be allowed to say that, but you know, certainly resonated with when I spoke to other people applying for similar roles at those particular companies.

They they had the same experience. SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm glad that experience is behind you, and and you managed to get yourself back on career tracking in a company that obviously has a very good culture and values different types of diversities. Uh, kind of luckily you you didn't end up with some of those companies that that are working in that way, which is a kind of a positive spin on the whole negative experience of interviewing a lot during layoffs. As we are wrapping up, I I wonder what would be your kind of parting words or a message for women who may find themselves currently in a similar position, either coming into workforce from taking a break or from being laid off or just experiencing ageism in interviews.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's difficult. I mean, I think it's just about being tenacious and not giving up. So, you know, I had days where I I just thought I'm never gonna get a job, and I just felt really down. I was thinking, I've got so much to give, and you know, I I really started doubting my confidence.

I actually invested in an interview coach, which was really, really useful. It was it was it wasn't too expensive, but that really brought my confidence back because uh I realized I was overcompensating, I was answering the questions far too long, I was going into too much detail. This person just managed to bring me right back into you know how answering these questions in the right way, being more succinct and going through mock interviews. So that was, I would say don't be scared to invest in something like that if you're feeling a little bit lost.

And I think also, you know, just hold out for those companies that have a good track record. I would say in the first few minutes of an interview, if someone is making you feel uncomfortable, you you know pretty much straight away that that's not the right business for you. I I had interviews like that where I thought, is it me? And then when I look back, I think actually it wasn't me because I'm interviewing people at the moment.

I go out of my way to never make someone feel that level of discomfort that some people made me feel in an interview. So I think it's sort of yeah, look for those positive experiences. It's not you. Invest in yourself, invest in some coaching, and just be tenacious until you find the right role within the right company.

SPEAKER_01: I like that one. It's not you. Well, it's them, right? Be tenacious, Caroline.

This was such an enjoyable conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us all today. SPEAKER_00: Thank you for giving me the chance. It's been it's been great.

I I hope it resonates with some people. SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to today's episode. I really appreciate you taking time to learn something new and propel your career in customer success and beyond. If you like this episode, share it with your colleague, with your team member, with someone you know needs to hear it today.

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