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The Community Roundtable

Empowering global community leaders with research-backed resources, training, and tools.

(Roundtable)Learning a New Organization

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How do you make a move to a new organization? What are some things to consider when making the move? Making the move from one organization to another can be tricky – especially if you’ve spent a significant amount of time at your old employer or if the business models are completely different.

 

In this roundtable call, we’ll explore:

    • Navigating new waters, new co-workers, and new leadership expectations
    • Setting yourself up for success – things you must do in order to ensure you have what you need to do your job well
    • Getting buy-in and support for your community strategy when you’re the new kid on the block

5 Critical Hiring Characteristics for Community Management Roles

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Critical Hiring Characteristics

Looking at community job descriptions, it’s clear there are some characteristics that are prized by hiring managers.

While empathy, communication skills, and collaboration have always been a component of a community professional’s responsibilities, the growing recognition of the need for negotiation and strategic skills is newer. As community roles become more common, and as they continue to diversify into more specific areas (like community operations, technical community management, etc.) there will continue to be a core set of characteristics that are critical for successful community management.

We’ve found these five characteristics to be key when evaluating community talent. This is obviously not a complete list – thinking about your unique needs as a community program and an organization will always be important when thinking about the right fit for your community team.

5 Critical Hiring Characteristics for Community Management Roles

1 – Empathy.​  Many community management job descriptions share a key requirement: empathy. The ability to understand and share the feelings of another is quickly becoming a critical part of effective community management. Emotional intelligence is a key attribute.

2- Strong communication and negotiating skills. Community professionals interact with a wide range of people and have to gracefully navigate differences of opinion and perspective. That requires sophisticated communication and negotiation skills – no wonder these skills are becoming more common on job descriptions.

 3 – Ability to collaborate across the business. Community professionals are being asked to partner with teams across organizations. This requires leading discussions and training on community topics, as well as implementing projects that generate shared value. The ability to listen, translate concepts across different groups, and collaborate is essential.

4 – Strategic planning. In an environment where you rarely can tell people what to do, staying aligned around a strategic vision is key to a successful community program. This strategic vision informs planning, governance, and tactical programming in ways all community professionals need to understand.

5 – Ability to thrive remotely. We admit, this one is new and we aren’t seeing it on too many job descriptions yet, but just wait. As the world becomes more comfortable with employees working remotely the ability to thrive both working remotely, and also connecting people who are working remotely will become a sought-after skill.

If you want a primer on 50 common community management skills our Community Skills Framework™ includes five skill families with ten skills in each family, prioritized based on what we learned from our extensive community management research. You can use the Community Skills Framework™ as you craft your community job descriptions to ensure you are using industry-standard terms and including the skills critical to your particular community needs.
Learn more about the Community Skills Framework™ here.

If you want to browse community management job descriptions and get more advice on smart hiring for online community management roles you can download our community job index here.

Writing Effective Community Management Job Descriptions

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Community roles – and their priorities – change not only by level of seniority and decision-making, but also by other factors; the use case, audience, community size, and community maturity.

Managing a new support community for a B2B company is very different than managing a mature, internal employee social network of 80,000 people who are all actively collaborating in hundreds of sub-communities during the day. Consider and emphasize these aspects in job descriptions, as they will determine who is the right fit.

The Anatomy of Community Roles

Community roles are differentiated by their focus on enabling and connecting others by architecting environments that make collaborative behaviors easy and rewarding. Most of community work is done under the waterline – the iceberg effect of community management – and typically does not prioritize the community professional as the primary leader, influencer, or support agent.

Community roles – and job titles – do often get confused with communication and support roles that are primarily tasked with responding directly to individuals and while that can be a part of a community role it is not the dominant priority. This can be evaluated by understanding the hiring managers’ objectives – and the level of engagement for which they are looking. If the role is predominantly about visibility and exposure of content, then it is likely not a true community building position.

Learn more and browse 30+ community management job descriptions in our Community Careers and Compensation report – now available for free download.

Community Career Pathways

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The community field is expanding in exciting ways, with an increasing diversity of roles and career routes available. Where once there was ambiguity and limitations on professional growth, there are now too many possibilities to map out. The map below is just a sample of the avenues that could be taken by a community professional.

If you aspire to senior leadership, community is an excellent way to build your leadership capabilities. If you are interested in moving from moderation to more of a strategic position, there are steps you can take to stand out from the crowd. Whether you are just starting your community career or have a few years of community experience under your belt, there are a variety of options and taking the time to understand them will help you decide the best path so you can be strategic in your career planning.

Recommendations for Community Professionals

1. Assess your skills and experience – Identify strengths, weakness, and gaps using the Community Skills Framework


2. Proactively fill gaps – Select one skill to improve and seek project work and support for training. Ensure skills, accomplishments, or certificates are added to your resume


3. Treat the hiring process as a collaboration – You likely know more about communities than a hiring manager. Use interviews as an opportunity to reframe needs and expectations.

Learn more in our Community Careers and Compensation report – now available for free download.

Online Community Professionals Emerge as Transformational Leaders

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As organizations evolve, community managers provide leadership and engagement models to suit a new era of work.

January 23, 2020

Boston, MA: The recently released Community Careers and Compensation 2020 report from The Community Roundtable reveals that online community professionals are uniquely situated to lead their organizations into the future of work. According to the research, 63% of community professionals were promoted in their roles in the last year, suggesting they will have an outsized impact on the organization’s success in the coming years.

The Community Careers and Compensation 2020 report explores how online community roles are evolving to meet the needs of an evolving workplace. Based on a survey of 325 global community management professionals, the report provides a research-backed snapshot of trends in community roles, responsibilities, team structures, and compensation, and includes a comprehensive index of community job descriptions.

Individuals that participated in the research represent a diverse set of employee and customer community programs that span industries, organizational size, and use cases. These community programs range in age from pre-launch to a handful that have been operating for over 20 years.

“Over the last decade we’ve seen the career path for online community professionals grow, and we’ve now reached the point where organizations realize how critical the role is to overall organizational success,” said Jim Storer, Principal at The Community Roundtable. “Still, only 19% of organizations with communities have a defined career path and only 17% have an approved and resourced community roadmap. Now that communities are poised to provide immense ROI for their organizations, it’s time for HR departments to focus on how to best recruit and retain seasoned community talent.”

The Community Careers and Compensation 2020 report is designed to help community professionals, and those that hire and manage them, get a better understanding of emerging trends and develop a strategy to ensure community teams are properly resourced to maximize organizational value.

About The Community Roundtable: The Community Roundtable is the leading, global resource for the community management industry. The Community Roundtable helps organizations from Fortune 500s to start-ups and associations recognize, define, and leverage the power of their communities. Through the industry’s only comprehensive community management research, The Community Roundtable provides training, events, and consulting to help companies recognize real ROI from their community programs. TheCR Network – the world’s premier resource for community professionals, connects hundreds of community practitioners worldwide for networking, professional development, and support. Learn more at communityroundtable.com

How do you direct your own career path when one is not defined?

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One of the interesting career-based findings from the SOCM 2019, was that only 25% of community roles are approved by HR. This is a crucial number because it means that three-quarters of CM’s do not have clearly defined roles or paths to promotion to go along with them.

When we look at the profile of emerging leaders, we see a wide range of functional backgrounds, skills, and industries. Community leaders are ready to move to a new stage. Are you one of them? 

To utilize the SOCM while negotiating a title change, you can reference the section on communities with advanced strategies. Outlining how your role fits into a detailed community strategy, including ROI projections, provides a tool for execs to understand the importance of management to the success of the community.

So you get the new title, but what about compensation and influence?

Even in companies that are supportive of community, CM’s are frustrated with a lack of resources.

Obtaining resources requires organizational influence. Finding opportunities for training and collaboration is helpful in establishing new connections. Using your current network to gain access to new executives and stakeholders is one tactic to get in the door. These interactions help increase the visibility of the community and foster relationships that can propel your career forward.

If you are being asked to help design your new role, this is an excellent opportunity to build a strong foundation of tasks and responsibilities that give you access to other department leads, creates opportunities for collaboration, and facilitates training for executives.

Maybe you are exploring other options and want to design a list of what to look for in a company. Consider things like the organizational governance structure, titles, and roles within community, responsibilities of community staff, and current organizational strategy.

Does the company support a community mindset? Are you willing to help create one?

Knowing what kind of role is right for you, and then defining the duties that support it is empowering and necessary in a market that is diversifying and growing rapidly.

Members of TheCR Network are discussion role transitions, career paths, and compensation every day. Join these vital discussions to contribute your perspective on industry standards and trends. 

Although we’ve published several career development resources in the past, such as the Community Careers and Compensation Report 2015, TheCR is also working to develop more careers and compensation information and we would love your feedback. If you have questions around your career path, trends in community careers or anything career-related, drop them in the Community Careers and Development group.

Join TheCR Network today!

Burn-Out Risk is High for Online Community Managers

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Or 10th annual State of Community Management survey revealed that online community professionals are both incredibly optimistic and incredibly burnt out. A full 50% of community professionals experienced a high degree of burnout over the past 12 months. At the same time, 69% see a future for themselves as a community professional and 80% are optimistic or very optimistic about the future for community at their organization. The fact that community leaders are more optimistic for the future of the communities they facilitate than for themselves is troubling and needs to be addressed.

While many community professionals are still on teams of one, the average community team is now six individuals, four of whom are full-time. Surprisingly, the size of the team currently does not show a consistent correlation to use case, the number of members in a community, the ROI of the community, or the sophistication of community strategy. This indicates there is little rationale in staffing to fit the needs or value of the community and suggests that staffing still relies on ad hoc support, that may just be one enlightened executive who believes in the promise of building community.

This disconnect further reinforces that community roles are not well rationalized – and justifying new headcount relies more on persuasion or vision than on responsibilities and results. This implication is further reinforced by looking at the disconnect between growth in value and the resulting increase in staffing and resources. 67% of community programs saw an increase in value and 70% of professionals report that the perception of their credibility and value has increased, yet only 34% of community programs saw any increase in staffing. Additionally, only 49% of community professionals have been promoted, despite that increase in value and credibility. Not surprising then, when asked about their biggest frustration, community leaders identified lack of resources. Community value is growing significantly, but resources and compensation is lagging behind and often never materializes. This incongruity needs to be addressed by organizational leaders.

Download the State of Community Management 2019 to read case studies, access more data and read the full report.

Note: This post contains content originally published in the State of Community Management 2019 report. Download your free copy here.

Community Management Skills That Matter: Strategy

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Strategy: Proving the value of communitycommunity skills strategy

Strategic skills are the most valued skillset across all community roles, and community strategy development is the most valued of the 50 skills in the Community Skills Framework. For community professionals, this demonstrates the constant need to assess input and activity through a strategic lens — without doing so, community professionals can quickly get consumed by reacting to tactical issues that keep them making significant progress.

TRAINING OPPORTUNITY

Across all roles, improving how communities measure, benchmark and report their success on key goals is seen as a number one training need. That’s more than just mechanics — a key piece of training must address identifying the right metrics to really get at behavior changes.

CLIMBING THE LADDER

Not surprisingly, community strategists place a high priority on strategy. If you want to head in that direction, an understanding of strategy, roadmap development and consulting approaches are required. Want to make your mark as a Director of Community? Learning how to effectively coach executives will not just improve your job success — it correlates highly with community engagement.

Want to learn more about critical skills for community managers?

Check out our Community Skills Framework and download our Community Careers and Compensation report.

Building A Skill-Based Community Manager Job Ad

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Community Manager Job Ad

A quick search on LinkedIn finds more than 1,000 jobs with “Community Manager” in the title at any given moment. Subtract the ones about property management, and add in “Online Community”, “Community Specialist” and a dozen other terms and you are left with several hundred job descriptions — not two of which have the exact same requirements or expectations. As we have noted on many occasions, many current community management job descriptions are not well balanced and tend to be misaligned in one or more of the following ways:

  • Hiring organizations want more experience than they can get for the compensation they are offering.
  • They expect more specific expertise than is reasonable for the general years of experience required.
  • They ask for more advanced skills than are required for the role’s responsibilities.
  • They have too many responsibilities listed for one individual to reasonably be able to handle.
  • The traits they are seeking are misaligned with the work environment (i.e. agile in a big bureaucracy).Community Manager Job Ad

Enter The Community Skills Framework

Using the Community Skills Framework to craft job descriptions based on the skills you value, and aligning those skills with the appropriate roles and compensation can do a great deal for talent acquisitionand retention. A simple exercise can help. On the Framework, check off the skills you value and need for your team. Those skills can form the basis of a job ad.

Then ask yourself some questions:

  • What level of individual (i.e. — a moderator, manager, strategist, etc.) are these skills most applicable for? Set the right title.
  • Is there a reasonable expectation that I can attract the skills I want, with the experience I need, at the compensation I can offer?
  • Am I seeking a unicorn? (A person with such unique qualifications — such as a business model expert who can code APIs — that I’ll never find them, and would be better served with a narrower focus or two hires.)

The best job ads take into account not only the skills you value, but the experience you need and the traits you desire in your next hire. By making sure your expectations are realistic and your compensation competitive, you can find talented community professionals — and keep them.

Community Career Profiles: The Director of Community Role

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By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Director of Community

Directors of community are responsible for community programs – strategy, governance, team management and budgets. Not every community has a director – instead, a functional executive often takes on these responsibilities. The director of community role is more common in mature communities, in large organizations and in organizations where the community program is central to the business model.

Directors of Community in the Organization

Directors of Community command respect in organizations, both in terms of the number of people they oversee in the organization and the place they occupy in it. 4 out of 5 of those who identify themselves as Directors of Community have direct reports, and most of those have 3 or more of them. When we think about communities being truly integrated into the business, Directors of Community sit in a place to make that happen — our research shows that 83% report to vice-presidents or higher in the organization, including 43% who report to the C-suite.

director of community

Access to top managers and connection to the business side of things comes at a small cost for Directors of Community, who are expected to be in the office, rather than work remotely. Just 1-in-5 Directors of Community in our sample works remotely most of the time, and a majority are generally found in the office on a daily basis.

director of community

Skills and Training Needs

Directors of Community don’t forget their roots — highly valuing engagement and strategic skills just as strategists and community managers do, but it’s not surprising their biggest training needs revolve around understanding, gathering data and telling the story of the community in a business context. Skills that feed into understanding the value of the community to the organization and to members are also seen as critical.

Want to be a Director of Community?

Your best opportunities may be within your current organization. About half of Directors of Community in our research say they were promoted into their community management role, and nearly two-thirds say they either defined their own position or were approached directly by the hiring manager. Just 13% of Directors of Community say an external job posting led them to their current role.

Are you a Director of Community at your organization? We’d love to hear how your responsibilities and priorities stack up against our survey participants. What is your top community focus for the coming year?

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Want to learn more about the director of community role?

Download our Community Careers and Compensation report for free.