How to Hire the Ideal Community Manager
Over the last few weeks I’ve been feeling a lot of internal tension in my work as head of community at Venwise. Sometimes I feel like a strategic partner to our CEO identifying our newest product features and optimizing our member experience, other times I feel like an admin sending out calendar invites. I’m both, and at times it gets my head spinning.
This is the first of two blog posts highlighting the paradox of community management, and how to identify the right person (or people) to hire for the role.
Last week I spoke to 3 CEO’s who are getting ready to hire their first community manager. They each showed me the job descriptions they’ve put out, all unhappy with the responses.
They showed me Job Descriptions that could fit one of these three personas:
1 — A jack of all trades type, who can manage anything from customer support, social media, event management,
2- Someone who understands your members — I often hear “we’re building a community of moms, so we need a mom” or “we’re a community for kids, so we need someone who connects to kids” or “It would be great to have someone who was formerly a developer, a scientist, a finance person… so they can better connect with our members”
3- Someone who can think strategically about our business, collect feedback from users, and can begin to see the future of our business (think product manager)
Confused and frustrated, they scheduled a time to speak so they could get my advice on how to move forward. Here’s what I shared:
It’s nearly impossible to get someone who can check all these boxes. The person who is more strategically minded may be frustrated spending their time answering support calls (and that may hold them back from their strategic work). It may be hard to find a strategic thinker who wants to work in community but also has a medical degree, a finance background or any other expertise that would connect them to your members. And an ambitious, energized recent grad may not have the skillset to be strategic or may not have the life experience to connect with your members.
So, where do we go from here?
Step 1: Ask yourself — what is the current goal of your community? In an ideal state, you may want the community to inform your product roadmap, but for now, having someone more junior could allow you to get through your current tasks. You may find that having an inexperienced but passionate member (who can connect with other members) can learn the basics and be most supportive to your members. In the future, as your budget and needs grow, you can hire a second team member to compliment the first hire’s skillset.
Sep 2: If you decide to bring on one full time hire consider creating a budget to support this person. If you are hiring someone junior, you may want to supplement their experience with a community coach or consultant who can help guide your inexperienced community manager but won’t weigh you down budget wise. If you hire someone more senior, you may want to give them a budget for outsourcing — maybe they can outsource some admin work or hire a copywriter or content creator if that’s not in their wheelhouse.
Step 3: Consider hiring 2 people, each part time. These days, freelancing is all the rage! And community management is no different (especially since the role often consists of so many various types of work). Do you need a full time community manager? Or could you use an experienced copywriter? Content creator? Social media manager? Data analyst? Customer support person? The list goes on… none of these roles would be true community management, but they’re all parts of what it takes to build a community and could be your best next step. The question you may want to ask yourself is — could 2 part time experts do better than 1 full time generalist?
Step 4: Experiment — put together a job description and publish it. See who comes back your way! Meeting the perfect individual or two may clarify what your next steps. You’ll also get a chance to speak to various folks and start to get a sense for how the market interprets your role and how to tweak the job description accordingly. Feel free to share your JD with me (or another experienced community professional) if you’d like some feedback, I’d be happy to review it!
**a quick note on recruiting community folks: It’s extremely hard. The title “community manager” has been used and abused, so what one company may call community management might be very different from another. There is also no clear career progression for community managers, so it’s hard to tell how experienced they are (number of years out of school won’t help you here). And lastly, some people have been building communities as hobbyists for many years, but may not have it on their resume since the professional role of community management is still quite new. I recommend sharing the job description with your community members directly, with your direct network, and with other community professionals who are part of community communities.
Step 5: It takes a village! A community manager is often one of the faces of your business, at least to your members/customers/potential customers. In order to make sure they resonate with your community, invite a member to be part of the interview process. There are various ways to do this (have a group interview, ask them to plan a small project, have a 1:1 interview with a member you trust) and you’ll have to determine what is most appropriate for you and your community. This is a great way to make members feel valued AND to see how your potential community manager resonates with your people.
At the end of the day, it’s on you to get comfortable with the fact that one person probably won’t check off all the boxes. It’s on you to decide where you can be flexible, to supplement accordingly, and to test your hire with the community so you can feel comfortable with your decision.
If you’d like, I’m here to help! Just hop into my Calendly and schedule a time to chat here.
