Who’s getting hired right now? Community Managers!
For many the current economic climate is making for a gloomy employment market, it truly isn’t the best time to be looking for a new job. Unless you work in tech of course, and especially if you’re a Community Manager.
ReadWriteWeb are reporting today showing which parts of the tech industry are recruiting, taking data from their JobWire service for November and the first two weeks of December. Overall they are seeing Marketing firms doing a lot of hiring, in fact more so than any other department with 31 out of the 235 jobs advertised on JobWire. Social networking firms are also hiring actively, suggesting that although many analysts are unsure how these firms are going to monetise, they are still bullish.
However, the most interesting part of the report is to look at which job categories and expertise areas are being hired. As you might expect for the tech industry, developers are the most common hire, but it is the number of community manager and social media roles that is striking. Almost as many online community manager roles were advertised as roles in sales and marketing; almost one in ten of all tech jobs. A real sign that online community managers are hot property at the moment and a growth area for employment and good news for those of us involved in promoting community management.
We posted over the weekend about the importance of the community manager and their role in building and growing an online community. These individuals are critical to the success of any online community or social media project and these hiring statistics prove that more and more. We’re seeing the professionalisation of the online community manager role and it being embedded both in agencies and client-side. I’m not usually in the business of making predictions (unlike many people are at this time of year!) but I suspect 2009 will see this role become more important and more embedded in the organisation – more training, more conferences, more networking (like the Online Community Manager LinkedIn goup) and more meetups (like the one we organised in London last month). This data from ReadWriteWeb helps to underline the growing importance of the role, even in the current economic climate.
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Richard Millington:
It does make you wonder if perhaps we, as community managers, need to brand the message we send out to clients in terms of the economic outlook.
e.g. Cost-effective promotion or sustainable CRM.
16 December 2008, 11:06 amMatt:
Richard. This is true and I’ve seen quite a few of the white label software providers doing just that…
16 December 2008, 11:08 amseparati.st » Daily Interesting Shizzle for December 16th:
[...] FreshNetworks Blog » Blog Archive » Who’s getting hired right now? Community Manag… [...]
16 December 2008, 11:08 amStuart Glendinning Hall:
Thanks Matt, interesting post. There’s been discussion on my current community IT Counts (www.ion.icaew.com/itcounts) on ways to survive the recession, which overlaps with the value of the community manager. In terms of the wider IT spend those projects with online collaboration at their heart are going to look increasingly attractive, a line backed up by Ross Mayfield from Socialtext.
16 December 2008, 2:39 pmAriWriter:
Share Inspiration…
I confess I talk a lot.
17 December 2008, 3:38 amDavid Mullen knows what I mean about talking too much. Talking more than listening. Blending into the noise.
Too many times we marketing types talk way too much and don’t listen nearly enough. We spend the entire hour or two i…
Heidi Foster:
This has been true since the summer. 2008 appears to have been the year of the CM. I think 2009 will be as well. It’s been a long time coming!
17 December 2008, 1:57 pmSonny Gill:
I’ve most definitely seen the influx of CM roles, active and those looking for one. I’ve unfortunately been hit by the layoff bug but have remained positive as my focus in marketing is within social media and community management and confident that CM roles will begin surfacing more and more. This post helps me reaffirm my thoughts as well.
Cheers.
17 December 2008, 3:08 pmFreshNetworks Blog » Blog Archive » Five blogs you should read in 2009:
[...] Who’s getting hired right now? Community Managers! [...]
20 December 2008, 8:00 pmacidlabs » The Right Stuff - attraction, engagement, retention in a hyperconnected world:
[...] example. I have a client for whom sometime in the next few months, I need to recruit a high quality Community Manager to take on the management of their social media engagement inside and outside the wall. I know of [...]
6 January 2009, 10:16 pmScott Drummond:
It’s funny, but even within my first three months of being a community manager I have noticed that more and more people are at least aware of the existence of the role. When I first started many people I met had no concept of what an online community manager does.
To be perfectly honest, I’m learning more about the role every day
I agree with Rich that it’s important that we brand the role correctly at this particular time in the economic cycle. I don’t want to tie the value of the role to the recession too much though. I fear that further down the track employers will see the community manager as a short-cut to economic success. I agree that the CM role is likely to be cost-effective, but it also requires proper resourcing and is a long term strategy.
That’s obvious to those of us involved, but for agencies and many businesses only used to dealing with promotion on a campaign schedule (three months etc) it’s a profound change. The way then that the CM role is resourced needs to be considered in light of this changed approach to the customer.
Great post – the RWW piece is excellent and in spite of everything, it’s nice to feel that you’re in demand
6 January 2009, 11:05 pmGary:
management is not so simple unless you can be objective, organized and have good time management. Tricks of the trade is handy in the business world but what is most effective in organizing your people, material and your expenses with and agenda for what ever it takes to get the job done.
3 June 2009, 8:47 amRudy Turinay:
More and more companies and brands are investing in Social Media Optimization.
Crowd sourcing, Social Media Member Acquisition, Gaining of Customers Loyalty, Customer Satisfaction, Community Feedback…
Community Managers are the ones who can handle it in the better way for both Brands and Communities.
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23 November 2009, 8:47 pm