By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.
As organizations begin to increasingly recognize and reward the value of good community management the market for jobs has begun to heat up. While at any given moment there are literally dozens of interesting community jobs open around the country (and truly, the world) the competition for these roles is getting stiffer. How can you set yourself apart?
Working with communities requires a diverse skill set and is more complex than many assume.
Through our Community Manager Salary Survey 2014 research we identified community management skills in four skill families:
- Engagement and people skills: These skills enable relationship development, understanding motivations and the design of social environments that reward individuals.
- Content development skills: These skills enable the creation of multi-modal content and programming designed to build engagement and drive value from multiple segments.
- Strategic and business skills: These skills include the program management, governance, advocacy and training required for organizations to understand this new approach.
- Technical skills: These skills include an understanding of the need for and implications of platform architecture, integration and analytics.
The best way to differentiate yourself from the competition for community roles is to strength your skillset in the above families – especially in areas that other candidates might be weak. One example? We found only 51% of community managers have graphic-based content skills. Use your downtime to brush up on traditional graphics tools like the Adobe Creative Suite and new tools like Canva and Pitkochart. Not only will you be able to add valuable skills to your resume, you’ll set yourself apart from 49% of the competition!
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TheCR Network offers dozens of skill-building professional development opportunities and a network of hundreds of top community leaders to help you build and grow your skills and expertise. Make an investment in your community – join us!
