The online job search has changed so much. The advent of 2.0 practices has also affected job descriptions & how people are advertising. What I see as a huge advantage for the job seeker is that the job descriptions are getting more creative. Does this mean they are more descriptive of the position & the culture? I would guess so.
Awhile ago I saw this in a job description for a community manager at a well known traditional electronics company.
The Community manager will be responsible for building (company name)online community as a product creating ways to acquire and retain new community members.
ACK! Who would ever say that a community is a product? or even try to treat it as a product? Are they going to package it? resell it? Ok, you can maybe tell that it got me going? Wikipedia’s definition of a product in relation to business:
Product (business), an item that ideally satisfies a market’s want or need.
I think that a community is THE market looking for satisfaction of their wants or needs.
A COMMUNITY IS A FRAGILE ENTITY THAT WILL GROW WITH NURTURING. It is about people & relationships. It is NOT a product to be built in a conventional manner! (I applied to this posting just to see if I could pass on my message. I don’t think I’m a good fit though.)
Now, in contrast – this is the most wonderful, warm fuzzy job description ever!
Description:
crowdSPRING www.crowdspring.com is a private-equity funded startup that has just launched an online marketplace for creative services. Just entering our second month after launch, we’ve already been featured in the Chicago Sun-Times, TechCrunch, Mashable, Springwise and a host of others – so you know we’re on to something here!
We’re looking for a Community Manager to develop an army of stark raving fans of our site. We’re looking for someone who lives and breathes Facebook. We’re looking for someone who can’t get enough of MySpace. We’re looking for someone who loves to blog and comment on other people’s blogs and talk to people who knew a guy who had a blog once.
If this sounds like you, read on…
What you’ll do:
- Post ideas, stories, random thoughts, dirty jokes, videos, and recipes for the perfect banana daiquiris to our blog, forum and anywhere else you can think of
- Moderate our message boards and public comment areas
- Reach out to influential sites, blogs, creatives and small businesses and share the crowdSPRING love
- Dream up, execute and promote community events
- Be the voice of crowdSPRING throughout the internet (yes, the whole thing)
- Be vocal and fight for the needs of the community within the company
- Track the performance of, and report on, your efforts using metrics from web traffic, events, forum and blog activity, etc.
- Be a general, all-around grassroots/social media marketing goddess (ok, or god)
- Attack inbound customer service requests and respond with cat-like reflexes
- Assign, track and follow up on customer service issues assigned to others within the company (programming stuff, marketing stuff, etc.)
- What you’ll need to bring to the table:
- Undying, passionate, over-the-top love affair with all things web
- Absolutely, positively outstanding writing skills
- Interest, curiosity, advanced degree or mild obsession with any/all of the creative arts (graphic design, web design, writing, photography, video, music – anything creative will do)
- Experience with WordPress and vBulletin is nice
- Experience building online communities is a huge plus
- Experience with MySpace, Facebook and Twitter an absolute must
What we’ll bring to the table:
- Competitive compensation, including an incentive plan
- Full benefits
- 401(k) investment plan with matching contributions
- Unlimited ping pong
- Strict shorts and flip-flops dress code
So, do you have what it takes to be on Facebook and MySpace all day, every day? Can you handle the crushing responsibilities of having to be ‘fun’ and ‘interesting’? If so, you really ought to let us know. We’re holding your place in the ping pong tournament…
crowdSPRING is an equal opportunity employer.
To Apply: 169994-crowds@jobcoin.com
Kudos to you crowdSpring & your HR department! I still remember the day when my sister & I were referred to as ACDSee Goddesses. :) Customers truly love getting help.
So if you’re going to advertise for a Community Manager, I challenge you to write a job description that really represents the position & expresses your culture. It will make it easier for job seekers to apply for the ones that fit them.
That’s a good question . Actually , I have read about company named daqi.com in China has been helping all muti-national companies on monitoring and eliminating negative discussions ; contracting with thousands of students talking about company products online at very low cost . Daqi got paid scaled from usd$500 to usd$250K per month . I am wondering what’s the difference between community manager and those online marketing agents .
Hey Connie – thanks so much. We had a lot of fun with the job description and we thinks it speaks really well ABOUT our community. iStockphoto opened the door to millions upon millions of people who previously had no way to get noticed in the creative community. We think there is a huge opportunity beyond stock photography to radically change the way creative services are bought and sold. And we think this opportunity starts with crowdSPRING building a great community.
We’re 40 days old as a business (we launched on May 6), and already have over 2,600 buyers and creatives. And your words about building a community are so true! Here is one way we’re doing it:
http://blog.crowdspring.com/2008/06/19/12-questions-meet-fred-kylander-sweden/
So thanks so much for noticing and for the compliment. There’ll be smiles all around in the morning.
And as an aside – ACDSee was for MANY years one of my favorite programs…
Best,
Ross
co-Founder
Connie,
Thanks for the great post! Both this one and the previous one have helped me to believe that there are still companies out there that understand the role of a community manager.
I have seen way too many positions posted that assume that the community manager is there to be the voice of the company. I don’t believe this is what the role is. For me, a community manager is one who acts as a communications mechanism between the community and the company. It isn’t the job of the community manager to only tell the good. It is instead their job to make sure the communications lines stay open via as many different ways as possible. Further, a really good community manager will make sure that the rest of the world knows that they are willing to respond to the bad as well as the good.
Just my two cents.
Kathy
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