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We're starting out small and wanted to find a local digital native person familiar with Social Networking, Marketing, Facebook and at least a little "real world" post-college experience.
Like you mention, a recruiter was beyond the budget for us. As well as a even a mildly seasoned "social networking" professional.
Some leg work on Facebook surfaced 4 candidates to interview. Our new person starts in two weeks. Her profile was open and I was able to look back at old wall posts, her comments on friends', etc... The personality she presents online was in-line with the personality of our company. The personality/chemistry mix being paramount, we figure her natural personality is the intrinsic un-trainable aspect and the rest is trainable items she can learn.
I'm hearing the phrase "Poaching" more. I like it! Means we need to be working hard to "get the right people on the bus and in the right seats" and giving 'em lots of love in all the right places.
All the best,
Dave
Yeah, you can do it fast, cheap, or good. You can only have two, right? :)
Honestly, there are many of us "not so young" folk who are completely enamoured of the Social Media and Online Community development, but without the entre to break into this field even though we would, given the opportunity.
Just a thought!
But with regard to this piece? Excellent points. I can only hope that those looking to acquire CMs read it and understand why it is so on target.
Great discussion! I'm the founder of a non-profit for third culture kids and a community manager of several communities.
In my experience, the #1 most important skill in managing a community is Compassion.
A community is made of people. Without a deep understanding of group psychology, conflict-resolution skills, empathy, compassion, and social emotional learning, you won't have an engaged community.
It's a bit like being a coach, a facilitator and a friend all at the same time.
A community is the operating mind of the community manager. If the community organizer is overwhelmed, disorganized, and lacks conflict-resolution skills, then that will reflect in the community.
Anyway, great discussion!
Brice
P.S: You can learn more about me here: http://briceroyer.com
If you hire a CM for youth, make sure they have great instincts & opinions regarding kids & online safety/play patterns.
From my tender experience, it's all been about strong gut instincts, internal yellow flags, and keeping up to date with the best practices of the big sites & the small sites, the quality sites and the sketchy sites.
Your CM should arm himself/herself with information, and build a strong core of objectives and understandings, and they should be on a good path. From there, it's all about project & people management.
:)
One thing that I think gets overlooked, or perhaps under appreciated is knowing what your competition does... ALL of your competition. This can include, as you say, the sketchy sites. It's surprising how many people think "oh, they're sketchy so they're not worth my time to keep tabs on, they won't amount to anything anyway". Truth is, you're influenced by anything around you, good and especially bad.
You may be a great, upstanding email marketer, but knowing how the spammers do things helps you to actually understand what you're dealing and how to ensure that your messages aren't seen as spam.
So, as Jake mentioned, it's not always about their Online Community savvy-ness but it sure does help if they're netheads and understand the online culture. The learning curve can be several months otherwise and you can end up with someone not suited for the job.
I'd be very cautious about hiring from within the Community. My experience is that a great volunteer/active Community member is not alway happy getting paid for their interest and passion, skill set or not. However, I have hired fabulous people from within a Community and it's worked out quite well. But over the years, those folks have been the exception and not the norm.
Also, people management skills can't be hurried and are rarely intuitive or innate. They come with time on the job (more than 6 months, and usually more than 2 years, imo). Everyone needs someone to whom they are accountable, even CEOs have a Board of Directors for that very reason. So, don't drop someone in a Management job and assume they can manage people just because they managed 3 part-time Mods or managed a forum online. And I have found that using an 'open door policy' allows me to get the whole story on how things are going for all Community staff. Use discretion and respect confidentiality and you'll get good information. Foster good relations within your team the way you foster good relations within your Community. Lead by example. Simple and old school but has worked for me since 1982 in various management positions.
We've hired over 30 community managers for our clients' sites. But we are a little different in that we don't use virtual moderation, we have everyone together in a single location.
What we've found is that there is a HUGE untapped market in people who have left the workforce for one reason or another and want to return. We usually pair up teams from multiple groups (former stay at home moms with early retired folks) to job share. The idea that you need a single person isn't always the best way to approach the market. Job sharing is a very effective way to meet your community needs while also meeting your community's needs.
And more importantly, don't write off older candidates. These folks bring life experience and domain experience in some cases that can be invaluable when issues arise in the community.
Good topic... and like Rebecca, I'm old school too having managed people since 1985... gee seems like just yesterday that I was in college and having fun...
Mike
Some great ideas... liked the idea from someone else. "how do I become a Community Manager?" ...
One final thing is.... if I search on wikipedia for a Community Manager. I get a housing manager. Whats another term?