Two job titles most educators can't tell apart.
Customer Success. Implementation.
Same software. Same customers. Sometimes the same team. In my LinkedIn post Tuesday, I asked one question to split them:
What would you rather do in your next job: keep existing customers successful for years, OR take a brand-new customer from purchase to launch?
Hold onto your knee-jerk answer. By the end of this, you'll know which one I'd search first and the count I ran to decide.
Both are reachable from a school, by the way. Laura taught K-3 and is now a Customer Success | Onboarding Specialist. Sarah taught music and is now an Implementation Specialist II. One of each.
In my LinkedIn post Wednesday, I said I'd hand you the corporate words for your work. These are two of them. They're the words a hiring team types into a search bar, so they're the words you type into yours.
Customer Success, in plain English
A company sold its product to a school district, a hospital, or a business. Customer Success keeps that customer. You help them use the product well, solve the problems that come up along the way, and make sure they keep getting enough value to stay a customer. You're their person long after the contract is signed.
Who it fits: you were the year-round point of contact for staff, families, or community partners. Or you're the one who noticed people had stopped using a program and stepped in before anyone asked.
What to type in: Customer Success Manager, Client Success Manager. Also try Customer Success Specialist and Customer Adoption Manager.
Implementation, in plain English
Implementation gets a new customer set up and using the product for the first time. You get them from "we bought it" to "we use it." The setup, the training for their staff, the go-live date.
In a lot of these jobs, once the customer is up and running, you hand them to Customer Success and start the next launch. Some, like IXL's, stay with their districts all school year.
Who it fits: you rolled out a new curriculum, platform, or gradebook to your building. You built the schedule, trained your colleagues, and answered the same questions all week until everyone was using it.
What to type in: Implementation Specialist, Implementation Consultant. Also try Implementation Manager and Customer Onboarding Specialist.
The renewals count
In my LinkedIn post Friday, I told you to open a Customer Success posting and count the lines about renewals, retention, or revenue. That count tells you how much of the job is sales.
I ran it myself.
I went through 40 postings in the Customer Success section of an edtech job board from the last two weeks. 9 of those 40 were account management and sales jobs. That's why I wouldn't search "Account Manager" by itself. Once I pulled out the sales jobs, the Implementation jobs, the duplicates, a few that weren't Customer Success at all, and one outside the US, 18 Customer Success jobs were left.
16 of the 18 mentioned renewals, retention, or revenue.
Implementation was harder to find. I went back about five weeks on the same board and found 11 real Implementation jobs. Only 5 even mentioned renewals, retention, or revenue, and not one made you responsible for renewals.
Which one I'd search FIRST
Implementation.
The school work behind it shows up plainly on a resume: the rollout you ran, the staff you trained, the go-live date you hit. And none of the 11 I read asked you to carry a renewal number.
If your knee-jerk answer was "purchase to launch," you already know where to start. If it was "successful for years," search both, and let the renewals count sort the Customer Success postings for you.
Two cautions before you start typing.
There are fewer Implementation jobs. I had to look more than twice as far back to find 11 of them. So don't stop at Implementation.
And skip the Implementation postings that ask for SQL or finance systems experience. Those are built for people who've already done that technical work. Look for the ones built around training and rollout. One IXL posting I read required 5+ years of K-12 teaching. That's the kind you want.
Then add the Customer Success postings that are light on renewals. Run the count on each one. If a posting has one line about renewals and ten about training, adoption, and solving problems, apply. If renewals show up in every other bullet, a big part of that job is sales.
Not sure either of these fits you? My quiz reads your school experience and points you at the corporate path that fits you. Take the quiz here.
Want to see who's hiring right now? Jobs Jobs Jobs, my LinkedIn newsletter listing companies currently hiring former educators, comes out every Saturday. Check out the latest one by clicking that big picture at the bottom of this issue.
If you're reading this via email, hit reply, I read my own mail. Tell me which one you're searching first.
Steph
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About Steph Yesil: Steph is a former K–12 educator who moved into corporate education companies in 2015 and built a career across curriculum, professional learning, content, and leadership. She founded Elevated Careers to help educators build successful corporate careers.
