Much like communities, the roles of the people who manage them vary widely. There are so many factors to consider when creating a Community Manager job description — particularly ones that span departments and workflows in the way that community management does. Luckily, there are a few common threads running through the fabric of community management across industries.
Your People team will have your company values/story, salary, and benefits down, and they’ll be looking to you for the specifics: who your ideal hire is and what they’ll be expected to do in this role.
With all of this in mind, here’s a guide to creating your own CM job posting — and finding the right manager for your community.
Any Community Managers reading this will likely be thinking, "Uh, what don’t I do?" CMs usually have to be jacks-of-all-trades (and masters of some too — more on that below).
Usually, however, a CM’s role involves a degree of:
These will likely form the foundation of the Community Manager job description, but you’ll need to get specific about your community (or the one you hope to build). What does your community program look like? What technology does it/will it run on, and what are the core elements (forums, live events, etc.)? Which teams the CM will be interacting with the most?
Make a list of the most important things the CM will work on and take ownership of, and explicitly list this in the job description. Here’s an example from our 2021 CM job description at Commsor:
What you'll do at Commsor
Good old Community Management:
Program management:
Experimentation
As we shared above, a CM’s role touches on multiple aspects of community building. While their responsibilities — and the corresponding skills they need — will vary from company to company, there are some basic boxes a great CM should tick.
Jack-of-all-trades, remember? The most successful CMs can seamlessly shift gears between different working styles and regularly learn new processes.
Effective CMs should be comfortable balancing tasks within multiple projects with different stakeholders, which requires a high degree of organization. They should be able to manage both everyday tasks and long-term campaigns.
Easily adapting to new software and user interfaces is a must. CMs will need to be the primary administrator and operator of the software or platform their community runs on. What’s more, CMs need to be confident working across platforms to set up ancillary workflows, like onboarding sequences, forms, and databases.
The best CMs are storytellers, skilled in both written and verbal communication. Different community positions require different modes of communication. For example, some community roles are almost entirely text-based, whereas other roles expect their CMs to speak on video regularly or even host live events.
CMs need to be comfortable collecting and interpreting data. That means being able to accurately describe its significance, and understanding what it means for the community and/or business.
The ability to empathize is a key skill for any CM, useful in everything from building relationships and understanding community dynamics, to diffusing conflict and more.
We’ve gathered a few tips from community experts to get you started thinking about the job description.
In other words, where does your community live? "A Community Manager working on engaging customers in a forum would have different responsibilities, skills, and qualifications to a Community Manager working on offline events," Director of Creator Community at PicsArt Jocelyn Hsu points out. Also worth flagging here is whether your 'community' is exclusively made up of your social media audience. If so, you might want to consider hiring a Social Media Manager instead.
"Community Manager can be a pretty vague title and you should try to be more explicit if you want someone with more strategy experience," says Commsor’s Chief Community Officer, Alex Angel. Note that candidates with four or more years of experience under their belts are qualified for more senior roles.
This means doing your research on what is fair compensation for the amount of work that's expected. Our 2020 Community Job Survey and The Community Club’s Salary Repository are great places to start.
“Community teams have historically been very, very small, and it's important for people to know if they're going to be a team of one or if they'll be working with other folks directly,” says Alex. “Many people can and do thrive in that solo contributor role, but for some that's a deal breaker and it's good to highlight before you enter into the interview process.”
Community teams should work cross-functionally within the company and shouldn't be siloed, adds Alex. “They should touch each part of the business in some capacity, and there will be people from those other teams who are close collaborators with the Community team. By sharing cross-functional partners, you're giving a nod to applicants that your org values community and other teams are already bought in (to a certain degree, at least).”
Hiring managers should not see CM roles as a dumping ground for everything that doesn't fit neatly into another position, says Commsor's Director of Community Education Noele Flowers. "For example, writing a newsletter for community members is appropriate. Writing sales emails to the entire email list? Not so much.
Having a list of 15-20 must-haves will limit candidates who apply. Keep your list to the five or six most important things to attract strong candidates who are well-suited for the role.
You might be tempted to include a call-out for applicants with bubbly personalities or extroverts, but Alex advises against it. "Those aren't important traits for CMs to have to be extremely successful at their job, and many fantastic CMs are introverts."
You take your Community team seriously, and so do we. That's why we've brought you The Community Career's Guide — an ebook to help you explore various emerging roles, career paths, specializations, and opportunities in the rapidly expanding community field.
The free-to-download eBook is jam-packed with candid perspectives, insights, and tips from people across the industry.
Template, tips, and additional resources to stand out and attract the best talent.
Template, tips, and additional resources to stand out and attract the best talent.