The Top 5 Social Media Hiring Mistakes
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It amazes me that more than 20 years after social media “became a thing,” companies still have no idea how to properly resource or hire for it. But when you think about it, it actually makes sense. Unlike other departments within a company, social media tends to be misunderstood and left on its own little island. People who don’t do social media have an attitude like, “The social media team does its thing. I don’t have to worry about it.” While that leads to my somewhat infamous gaps in understanding, it also leads to big errors when it comes time to hire a social media role. After years of interviewing and hiring social media professionals for my own team and for clients, here are my top 5 mistakes companies make.
Someone who doesn’t do social writes the job description. Especially for the first few full-time social media jobs within a company, it’s very common for someone like the director of marketing or director of comms to write the job description because there’s no one else to do it. The company doesn’t yet have a full-blown social media team or someone in charge of social (after all, that’s why they’re hiring!)
Unfortunately, these people are too far removed from the actual work to understand what’s required to do it. Corporate social media requires a vast number of skills, requires people to be tool and tech experts and requires high levels of critical thinking and responsibility – not to mention writing, editing, photo and video skills. A proper job description needs to encompass all of these things, and it also needs to include the soft skills that are equally important to the job. Additionally, there are personal qualities that are equally important. You need folks who are “digital natives” and already glued to their screens. If you hire someone who is not a digital native, the amount of online time and constant incoming messages will burn them out in less than a year.
Completely unrealistic job descriptions. The scenario above is how we wind up with job descriptions for a mid-level social media employee with 20+ years of experience in the space. I will let you in on a secret: job descriptions asking for 20+ years of experience in social make those of us who are close to 20 years of experience LOL. Why? MySpace was founded in 2003. So social media is 22 years old. If you want someone with 20+ years of experience, no one is going to qualify except for Tom Anderson (the guy who invented MySpace). These types of mistakes in job descriptions literally scream “we know nothing about social” to any qualified candidate out there. If you want to attract top social talent, you have to write a job description that indicates you know what the job entails. Companies that let non-social leaders write the job descriptions for social jobs often shoot themselves in the foot because their job descriptions themselves tell the qualified candidates that they should stay away.
People who don’t do social are 100% of the selection committee. After nine years in a big corporate job, I know how complicated the “selection by committee” process can get for new hires. I think my personal record was a candidate who wound up interviewing with almost 20 people over the course of several months. While of course, there are some people who should absolutely be included in the selection process, it is a common mistake to fill the selection committee with people who don’t do social day to day. Especially if you are in the early days of building your social media team, it is crucial to make the right hire for the first couple of positions. If your selection team doesn’t include people who are true experts in social and know what it takes to do the job, you have made an error. People will base their decision on other criteria like which candidate they liked better personally or who threw out the most impressive-sounding social media jargon. Even if you need to find an outside expert like me to help, that’s better than just blindly going with the candidate people think is the coolest. It is a common request from my clients to help with writing job descriptions and interviewing candidates. If you don’t have the expertise on staff, go find it.
Expecting director-level work from a junior-level staff member. I understand. For many companies social media is new. Leadership won’t build a team for you instantly. Instead, you get one FTE. Then maybe two once that first person threatens to quit. Unfortunately, this scenario the definition of setting someone up to fail. If you only have one social media position to fill, and it’s a junior- to mid-level type role, it is completely unfair to expect that person to also manage things like strategy, budget, vendor relationships, etc. I see it happen all the time. Companies won’t dedicate the budget for a director-level role and then they ask some poor 25-year-old to build a global social media strategy. That is just insane. That person does not have the experience yet to do such a task successfully, and it is really honestly unfair of you to ask them to. They also have no one above them in the org that they can ask for help. Just because they are the only social media person doesn’t mean you can ask them to do things that are outside of the scope of their job.
Imagine if you hired a new person to work on the line at your factory assembling widgets and you then ask them to run the plant because they’re the only person there. That’s what you’re doing to these social media professionals. It puts them in a completely unfair position. So, if you have one mid-level role, make sure your job description and scope are appropriate for that level of position. And make sure you find other resources (agency, consultant, etc.) to help fill the gap for that more director-level work. If you are a large company, consider footing the bill for a SocialMedia.org membership – where your lone social media pro can find a network of friends at other companies doing the same type of job that they can tap for advice.
IMPORTANT: If you want director-level work, expect to pay for it. Anyone capable of doing that type of work is not going to accept a $60K annual salary.Pick the right candidate – parts a and b. Another thing that makes social media hiring hard is that there are literally hundreds of unqualified candidates that apply for every job. It is still true that everyone and their brother thinks they can do social media because they have a personal Facebook page. So, when a social media job is posted, all those people come out of the woodwork. I would guess that 95 percent of people applying for corporate social media roles are totally unqualified. It’s a mess to slog through to find the actual candidates. It’s massively time consuming. And it’s really frustrating. You can help yourself by doing two fundamental things:
a. If you are working with a recruiter in your HR department, spend some real time talking with him/her about what you are looking for. The qualities, the experience and the intangibles. It is extremely common for recruiters or even the automated computer systems that screen applicants to eliminate folks who should make into consideration. It’s a really easy way to lose the right person from the jump because the machine or the recruiter doesn’t understand their qualifications and skills well enough to see that they’d be a good fit. So, if you’re the hiring manager, do some legwork to make sure the right people aren’t being screened out before you even see them.b. Hire the right person. That may sound stupid, but I can tell you from years of experience that it’s easy to be duped by someone who walks the walk and talks the talk. Check references. Include a skills test as part of your application process for your few finalists. Ask them to show you what they are capable of, and vet what they tell you they can do. There have been times when my final two candidates have been a younger person and a more experienced person, and the younger person got the job because they showed me more diligence, thoroughness and willingness to learn. Again, if no one on your team is versed enough to make this type of assessment, find some help. It’s too important to mess this up.
So, social media hiring is never easy, especially as more companies look to beef up their teams (or build them for the first time). Top talent is hard to come by (and honestly a lot of the most experienced folks are getting out of social because they are tired). Make sure you don’t fall into one of these traps and you should make a great addition to your team.