Hiring for Social Media: The Ugly Side

Easiest job ever. Sign me up!

This says to me that companies are in the weeds. They know social media has value, but they don’t know how to invest. So, they are looking for help executing, but don’t want to spend real money. The responsibilities are mixed among junior and senior roles. Updating Twitter is not the same as developing an editorial mix.

Great post, Amber. Look forward to the upside too

This is such a great post, I am going to share it, but the tweet this button keeps failing for me. So I will copy the URL and tweet it that way.
I think some companies are getting social media exceptionally well and some should read this article.

Great post Amber!

I can certainly see where a lot of companies just want to be “using” social media without the comprehension of “how” to use social media. We say time and time again that it’s not about selling things or advertising your 20% of sale, but about communication and engagement. Yet, you look at businesses on twitter and there they are, using it like another traditional form of media and hammering people with sales!

I think when social media first emerged, it was innovative to be using it… Now that everyone wants it, you’ll start to see clutter. Businesses need to understand the bigger picture before jumping in the deep end.

That is one of the beautiful things of social media though. Let these hires go through, let the players play themselves in public and you then see a culling of the herd from the authentic to those who aren’t getting it. I love the one job description to go be a human link scraper for twitter. Yea those are the people I follow, for sure!

Amber – seriously awesome post, one I will RT and bookmark for a future best-of. This is a bit depressing, but you nailed it. I work with clients every day on making social media outreach part of a strategic change, not a bolt-on or worse, a “campaign.”

Amber – seriously awesome post, one I will RT and bookmark for a future best-of. This is a bit depressing, but you nailed it. I work with clients every day on making social media outreach part of a strategic change, not a bolt-on or worse, a “campaign.”

Too many businesses refuse to let go of using revenue producing justifications when hiring someone. They feel as though everyone hired has to bring a cashflow with them. If not, then the person is looked at as a vendor that should provide a service that generates revenue.
True, everyone needs to tow their weight but hiring someone to produce a specific amount of revenue through social media is where the problem starts and what is causing some of this job descriptions you have provided.
Businesses today have to hire a team with each player providing value to the business. A valuable employee who uses social media effectively is someone who highlights why a product or service should be used, not be a person that can close a sale with a post on Twitter.

While I agree with the tone here, let me present a counter-intuitive viewpoint, “ripped from the headlines.”

(Well, not ripped from headlines, but maybe a real-life story of some sort. Bear with me.)

It’s possible, in fact, highly probable, that a few of these job descriptions fell into the following categories: Market Research (or, how much should we, as executives, really pay for a social media person); Path of Least Resistance (or, what sort of job description should I whip up that will be most easily rubber-stamped by my boss); Getting a Strategy for Nothing (or, if we say maximum of $500, maybe we can get some brilliant MBA who is looking for resume fodder).

Corporations are besieged with resumes, and maybe some of these were written to keep the over-paid and over-qualified from giving them a second thought.

What bothers me the most about these descriptions is the continued “Us vs. Them” vibe all of them have. There’s still too much separation when I feel we need to get back to the simple fact that we are humans trying to appeal to and help other humans. The lack of customer focus is disheartening.

Another concern of mine is that companies don’t know themselves well enough to know what they really need anymore out of their employees as a whole. If you don’t know what you offer, what you stand for, and where you want to go, how do you know what you need out of current team members and what to look for in future team members? This is bigger than social media, of course, so I’ll stop right there.

Maybe, as you suggested, I’ll take a stab on my own blog at writing up a job description. There’s definitely room for improvement.

I think, since social media was created to converse, engage, and develop relationships by the people for the people, the understanding of it is A. Not understand B. Missunderstood C. blurred by the fact that it is new and there are very limited ‘success stories’ proving its validity. Although, I have seen some FANTASTIC examples of community relationship building, engagement, and pretty friggen awesome conversations between companies and their clients, it does not happen enough.

Amber this post is BANG on! If only you could some how get into the heads of those trying to hire community managers, it would do them some good.

Good examples of the proper use of social media (In terms of engagement and relationship building): Sprouter.com, zoompass.com, and believe it or not Molson Canada.

Thanks, Amber, for this very interesting post with your usual insightful comments. These job descriptions in a way shouldn’t surprise us. I think they just evidence companies seeing social media as an add-on to business as usual, rather than seeing it as part of a sea change in the business and marketing environments. Thus, they hope to add social media on inexpensively, and put it in the hands of digital natives because they’ll know what to do. It reminds me of so many agencies that added digital-interactive departments staffed by younger professionals because the established professionals don’t know how to deal with the changes in technology. But of course, as you said, this is not about technology. It’s about the changing market of technology empowered consumers and communities.

The thing that kills me the most about this?

The race to the bottom that always ensues. Someone out there will do all of this stuff at the costs prescribed. The economy is just that bad and the knowledge base is just that low.

Most people can’t even tell the difference between an integrated marketing and segmented marketing. (Hint: It’s in the first word…)

Strategy isn’t sexy to a lot of people. People want to drive a Ferrari, not see what makes it run.

Amber,
I’m so glad it’s not just me! This post hit the source of my frustration when dealing with prospective clients. I have lost count of the conversations I’ve had where reasonably intelligent people believe that:
A)integrating social media into their marketing efforts is easy because creating a profile is free
B)social media can wholly replace their marketing and sales efforts
B)anyone with a profile can do what I do, and should do it for free
C)social media can be measured in web site type metrics

I recently began a consultation with a very smart guy who had just read Crush It. His take away from Gary’s book? Twitter should be his primary sales presence. Please. Make. It. Stop.

I agree with Andy; the truth will out, as they say. Knowing that I will be among those left standing does little to assuage my discomfort as I watch the Titanic sink. I see many organizations sailing in the wrong direction because they refuse to view social media as a channel worth investing in; but they’ll pay for SEO by golly! I look forward to the “better” posting tomorrow!

Entirely disagree with the first point. If you were hiring a graphic designer you’d list the tools you’d expect them to use on a daily basis. While the strategies might not be about the tools, companies should be able to expect intermediate to advanced skills in social media platforms to then leverage the ever changing technology to best meet objectives.

Being on the job search, as you know, I’ve seen so many different variations of these examples you’ve posted here, Amber – and it’s scary as hell. Scary to see what companies, big and small, look at social media as – and scary for those of us looking for SM related jobs and unfortunately having to accept (depending on their situation) what’s out there.

The biggest thing I’ve seen is companies wanting to be ‘social’. To transform their business from the traditional mindset and utilize the fancy tools & lingo that makes them ‘new age’ in an instant. Sadly, that’s where they start that thinking – with what they want and with what tools that they think will accomplish it. Where they need to start is understanding where they want to go and being able to map that plan out for the long-term, not the short-term one-hit wonder that they most likely planned for originally.

Given that, if the company has gotten that far in those 2 steps, do they have the proper leadership for this sort of shift and are they able to hire the right people to help in that?

Of course these ideas can go much deeper and into its own post, but just my two cents on the matter. Glad you posted about this, Amber.

Wonderfully written post Amber! Having managed a team of Community professionals for seven years, I find job content like this to be inexcusable. But, the good news is that companies are realizing that they send someone to manage “Social Media” for them. They may not know what this means right now but over time, they’ll get it right. It’s people like you who help to set the landscape for them to know what is and is not acceptable. Keep writing great posts like this!

Nicely done. What organizations need to understand is how going social means for their bottomline. Keeping this in mind will prevent these misstep from becoming the ugly fugly monster nightmare waiting to blow over.

Being in the social media front, practice how to connect the organization goals to social media.

It is one thing to hire someone for the sake of social media and another thing to hire for a specific goal in mind.

Good highlights of the missteps Amber.

Some of these job descriptions sound as if they were written at the end of a congo line. Reactive. Must have shiny object.

Executive management needs to get education. Everyone else, take a deep breath. The media in Social “Media” says tactical. Lug it on. Solved.

Those who “get it” get the importance of strategic assessments – both internal and external to answer THE question: What’s the brand value? Where’s the beef? Finding the beef maps the content, delivery, and measurement needs required through traditional and emerging media, and all the other essential touch points.

Knowing social media as a platform is one thing. Understanding the essence of the messages that travel on it takes another set of skills and experience entirely.

My biggest issue with these postings is that it’s harder to explain to people what I do and help them see the value in creating a strategy that aligns with company goals.

At the same time, if that’s what a company wants, they will get what they pay for…

As professionals (and we aren’t the only ones in a poorly defined field with such a wide array of service levels) we just have to do our best to continue educating and hope that the social media “fad” passes so we can get back to being marketing and communications professionals who use social media as just one weapon in our arsenal.

Awesome post and some great comments.

We still have a learning curve to get around and it is going to take some time. My concern is businesses rushing to jump on the train with the wrong people in control. Social Media can help and it can severely damage your business, if you are not on the right track. Social Media is not just a part of your marketing strategy, a sales funnel, it is customer service. Show your customers you care by understanding what you are hiring someone for.

Interesting article, but not deserving of accolades such as “awesome”, “wonderfully written”, and “such a great post”. I got lost after reading the justification to miss step 1. How do you justify your position of miss step 1 by saying “(the first job description had the word “product” in it 11 times)” when the word doesn’t appear at all in either of your job posting quotes.

It looks like all of these job postings that were quoted were written by HR personnel with the intention of satisfying the CEO with buzz words and catch phrases. They all forgot the first rule of KISS “keep it simple stupid”.

Miss step 5 may be a miss step for this blogger, but may be perfectly legitimate for that business. We don’t know what companies, or their financials, posted any of these job descriptions (and obviously they are incomplete, so we don’t know what else was posted). IMHO, if they are for a multi billion dollar conglomerate then I agree they probably will not have a huge impact on sales – the product and other marketing initiatives will drive that a lot more. But for a small or startup business then it will (or will need to have) a larger impact in order to justify the expense of the position.

Let me use a corporation like General Electric (GE) as an example to make my final point – I have no idea if any of these job postings came from them. I would agree that it would be shameful if GE was looking to pay $10 an hour or $500 one-time for someone to fill this position for them, so I honestly think those postings were from drastically smaller businesses. Conversely some of those postings look like they could have come from GE-like business, utilizing all the corporate buzzwords (except paradigm shift, thank goodness) but could have been for some small startup with big plans that hired some consultant that threw the fancy words out to make it look like an ad for a huge company when it really wasn’t. That’s how they sell their services to the small companies… by using big MBA language to make a small biz sound like GE or on their way to being GE-sized.

I will agree with the author that a social networking specialist may not HAVE to generate revenue for all businesses, but will need to generate VALUE. And there must be a way to measure that value whether it be via revenue, customer satisfaction, or some other measurement. But maybe the companies that placed the ads that did not mention this did this strategically in order to weed out inappropriate candidates. There are thousands if not millions of web sites, books, and employment recruiters that all preach to make sure to mirror these job description phrases in your resumes and cover letters. And maybe, just maybe, they are looking for the applicants to provide this additional value that they can bring to the job (not just quoting the requirements).

The good news? Companies are realizing the value of Social Media. The bad news? They are using traditional markers and metrics to measure success. The most striking, and telling, task description is this:

Proven ability to create and execute online social media campaigns with growth from zero to 500,000 unique views within a 30 day period and more as time goes on in a viral fashion

Clearly, this company does not get the concept of viral. And anyone who takes this job better keep their resume current, because they surely will be submitting it again soon for another job. I would love to track the people hired for these jobs, and see how things turn out.

I read this post and felt alarm, mainly, as Sonny said, I’m in the search for a position like those you’ve mentioned here.

Do you have any advice for those of us in this space who are applying for jobs like these, given these job descriptions? Should we ignore them completely?

“Proven ability to create and execute online social media campaigns with growth from zero to 500,000 unique views within a 30 day period and more as time goes on in a viral fashion”

If you could pull that trick on a regular basis, you’d never have to look for a job.