How to hire your next community role
Plus: an editable job description template, titles to avoid, the top industry backgrounds I’ve hired from, and why you might be under-selling your job offer
Hello friends!
Community roles are some of the hardest to hire for, and yet the most crucial for any business.
I’ve been hiring community people to furnish my teams since my first job fresh out of journalism school. I’ve written job descriptions and hired teams for The Guardian, Instagram, Condé Nast, and Beams. At each company, I was often starting a search from scratch. And every time, I’ve learnt something new through the process. Often, I’ve written new job descriptions, catering for the changing tech-fuelled industry landscape, and skills required for teams creating community-building content.
I have heaps to say on this and I’ve wanted to share a post for a while about hiring community managers. And then the direct request came from my first two founding members, Kate and Sof, who were both keen on any advice I could give.
I guess I’ve put off this post because the work of distilling down into words what exactly I think you should think about when hiring your community person is really really hard. But I want us to get to a point of clarity, and simplicity. Plus, January is fast approaching, where heaps of roles go on air, and managers start scrambling to fill seats. So I’m going to try.
Plus—paying subscribers will find a downloadable template beyond the paywall, and a festive gift for supporting Tell Their Stories this year. If you’re still on the free list, here’s a special festive discount available until Dec 31, 2023 as a thank you for joining me this year!
Let’s get into it!
The community role is probably one of the most crucial hires you can make at any company, brand, or for your personal project.
The community manager (I’ll call them that for now, but we’ll discuss job titles later), will to some extent be a walking embodiment of your brand—they’ll be guardians of your brand, and shape how it develops and grows.
And yet, recruiters tend to put very little effort into hiring the right community person. Often, they hire very junior level graduates and ask them to manage multiple social media channels, storytelling and online communities. Later, they get frustrated and confused when the junior manager is asked to step up into strategy and growth development, and potentially investor presentations, and struggles to rise to the task.
When it comes to job descriptions, community roles can be the most bloated. Expecting to find some kind of super human marketing-branding-growth-social-director-junior-brand-strategist-editor, who does everything you imagine, is one doomed to disappoint. These people don’t exist.
So what should hiring managers expect, and how can they tailor job descriptions and salary bands to fit the right expectations? I’ll break this post down into three key areas:
Before you start—what to consider;
The job title & description—with a new downloadable template (and a festive surprise) for paying subscribers only;
Interviewing—including the tasks I set for community hires;
As ever, please do feedback on what you read here, either direct via replying in email or in the comments. I hope this helps you find your next community hire—they are gems worth hunting for, and often the most loveable, genuine people on the planet.