The Community Roundtable

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

New Community Careers and Compensation Research

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We are excited to share our latest Community Careers and Compensation report! Based on a global survey of over 600 community professionals, the Community Careers and Compensation 2024 report highlights trends in the community management industry and provides salary data for four different community roles. You can download your free copy here.

The 2024 Community Careers and Compensation report explores salary data, key skills, and job responsibilities for four key community roles:

  • Community Specialists
  • Community Managers
  • Community Strategists
  • Community Executives

It also features community job descriptions, advice for hiring managers and community practitioners, and profiles of four community professionals Helen Chen, Geneva Cooper, Tarek Khodr, and Allison Brotman.

Looking for salary data for a community manager in the Midwest? It’s in there!

How about recommendations for hiring your first community specialist? Also in the report.

Need ideas for how to take your career to the next level in community?

Yup, this will help. Want to understand how to write a job description that will attract top talent from the community industry? Run, don’t walk! Download your free copy of the report.

(Roundtable) When Growing Your Career Means Leaving Your Community

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In light of recent layoffs in our industry, it’s hard to ignore how it impacts our communities and business outcomes.  How do you say goodbye to the community you’re leaving behind? How do you advance in your career? How do you navigate the job market? These are some questions we’d like to have a meaningful conversation about and learn from each other because they affect our meaningful work.

So come join us in a discussion panel-style roundtable call with Amanda Petersen, Shannon Emery, and Meghan Bates.

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.

Community Role Profile: Community Strategist

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Community Strategist

OVERVIEW OF ROLE

​ The community strategist role is an expert role dedicated to what the title implies – community strategy. Typically, strategists are individuals with community management experience who have particularly strong strategic skills; analysis, community architecture, business models, and the ability to understand the interdependencies between different parts of a community ecosystem.

​ RESPONSIBILITIES
​ Community strategists are most likely to work in professional service firms or as part of a centralized community program office that provides internal community consulting to business units and other groups within large organizations. They are more likely to be individual contributors, and they act as subject matter experts within their ecosystem supporting and auditing a portfolio of communities.

​ MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THE COMMUNITY ​

Community Strategist

Strategists have a special knack for understanding community performance and the levers that impact it. Successful strategists work with community managers to ensure their strategies and approaches will yield successful shared value and keep the communities productive.

Community Strategist

To learn more about the Community Strategist Role, and view Community Strategist Job Descriptions download our Community Careers and Compensation report – now available for free download.

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 Management Skills That Matter: Technical

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Technical Community Management Skills: Designing and building effective communities

Technical skills are unique in that they are most easily outsourced and often score lower than their true importance because not everyone on a team needs each specific skill. But as noted in our Community Careers and Compensation Report Key Findings,
developing a technical specialty is a great way to increase your value within a community team — and add to your paycheck.  Not everyone needs technical skills in data analysis, API  development or UX and design, but team members that have them provide great value. Community teams and those who lead them do need to understand where their technical strengths lie and what individual skills can do to strengthen the community if they are to reap the maximum benefits from them.

TRAINING OPPORTUNITY

Data. Data. Data. ROI and engagement statistics are critical, and your community’s existence is heavily based on demonstrating behavior change and measuring community value, so it’s not surprising that the ability to collect and analyze data is seen as both a valued skill and a training need at all levels. Because community teams often need just a limited number of “experts” in other technical skills, community professionals may want to pursue the opportunities that most excite them, while keeping in mind community needs and desires.

CLIMBING THE LADDER

Technical skills are unusual in that strategists and directors value the skills themselves less than their ability to manage the people who have strong technical skills on their team. At all levels, being tech savvy will help you move up the ladder — and investing in specific knowledge can help you develop into a community technologist role, a horizontal career path that has great value, particularly as a consultant. Software and application programming, for example, was the lowest scoring skill of all we surveyed — but being able to code software and APIs can be a hugely valuable to certain organizations or the vendors who serve them.

Want to level up more of your community management skills? Click a skill set to learn more:

community manager skills community manager skills Community Skills Engagement

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.

Join TheCR Team: Community Research Analyst Wanted

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Do you love digging into data to discover the story it tells?

Are you comfortable questioning assumptions?

Do you enjoy debating what something means?

Are you fascinated by human behavior and how it impacts decisions and organizations?

Does working in an emerging industry excite you?

If so, you may be a great fit for the Community Research Analyst role at The Community Roundtable

Community Research Analyst Role

This is an exciting opportunity to learn about the future of work and how community approaches affect outcomes, financial measures, workflows, and leadership. The ideal candidate will have research experience, familiarity with analytics tools, good written communication skills, and strong critical thinking.

The Community Roundtable (TheCR) is the leading research and consulting firm in the community management and digital transformation space. Our core research platform, The State of Community Management, is read by tens of thousands of people every year and we work with 200+ clients to support their organizational transformation efforts.

The Community Research Analyst will be responsible maintaining and delivering high-quality research, analysis, reports, and content. This includes building and maintaining TheCR’s research databases and tools as well as supporting client work.

This is an individual contributor role for someone with 2-5 years of analysis and writing experience. This is a high growth opportunity, working with TheCR’s co-founder and head of research, Rachel Happe.

Key responsibilities include:

  • Developing research approaches and hypothesis
  • Working with large and complex data sets to develop analyses and key insights
  • Building surveys that include contextual logic
  • Cleaning and reformatting data for analysis
  • Developing tools to access key data required for reporting
  • Analyzing data and developing conclusions
  • Developing dashboard and research presentations
  • Building narratives based on research findings
  • Writing analysis and recommendations
  • Presenting research findings
  • Managing the research process
  • Collaborating with clients and team members to develop, execute, and publish research

Expertise required:

  • Bachelor degree in social sciences – economics or sociology a plus
  • Strong analytical and communication skills
  • Research and report writing experience
  • Excellent MSExcel skills and proficiency in PowerPoint
  • Proficiency in database development and reporting tools like Tableau

Why join The Community Roundtable team?

If you are looking for a predictable job in a big, slow-moving, and bureaucratic organization… this is not the job for you.

The Community Roundtable is a small, agile, and innovative team with a lot of opportunities to learn and grow into new responsibilities. We work with the largest organizations in the world, including, American Express, Electronic Arts, and H&R Block as well as established non-profits including AAAS, City Year, and The World Bank. The exposure and access you will get is hard to match and there is never a dull day.

You’ll join a team that works hard but also feels strongly that everyone needs balance and flexibility. We strive to keep the workday to eight hours, but recognize that both extra work is sometimes required and that life sometimes gets in the way of work. Collaboration is our team’s superpower, requiring personal responsibility and accountability, but also providing incredible support and new opportunities.

Salary and benefits are commensurate with experience. New England region preferred.

Are you ready to explore with us? Apply now. 

Community Hiring Is Not Keeping Up

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Community management skills are increasingly required for all management roles. That has not resulted in a corresponding increase in community hiring.

Communities Are Now Strategic

Executives finally see communities as intriguing options for solving their organization’s hairiest issues – from streamlining the customer and employee experience to increasing market relevancy, spurring innovation, and transforming culture for a digital era.

Community Hiring

Community approaches are now applied to more use cases across organizations, resulting in a strategic urgency to make community management a core skill of all organizational leaders and managers.

However, executives are putting their community efforts at risk because they are resistant about hiring senior community program owners and strategists.

 

Still Too Many Lone Community Managers, Often Reporting to Executives

Community Hiring

In 2017, 59% of community programs report to a VP or higher and 47% of communities are reporting up to the C-suite. However, only 38% of community management professionals are Director-level or higher.

While it is exciting that communities are now seen as a mechanism to transform organizations for the digital age, it’s causing a lot of stress and anxiety for community professionals themselves. 27% of community programs still don’t even have one full-time community manager and another 43% have only one full-time community manager.  This is not the kind of staffing profile that is going to transform an organization’s culture and leadership approach.

Community Hiring

This gap between strategic ambition and community hiring is causing some predictable outcomes. Many community managers are under a lot of pressure both to satisfy the strategic interest of their executives and execute the tactical responsibilities required for successful communities.  Those individuals are scrambling to grow their strategic skills without the air cover of more experienced program managers and it’s a lot to take on while still executing on tactical engagement goals.

Organizations are not moving more quickly on senior community hires because they currently don’t have the capability in-house, are not confident in their ability to hire the right person, and know that there is a strategic risk in making the wrong choice. Another reason is that because it’s now seen as a skill set needed for all leaders, it’s unclear whether hiring a handful of individuals is even the right approach.

Measuring Community Value Helps Make the Case for Hiring

Community Hiring

The good news is that because more community programs are demonstrating that they can prove value, community budgets are growing.

In the short term, much of that budget is going to contractors and consultants that can help shape community programs and train internal resources in community management skills.

In the long term, I believe that will open up community hiring for more roles. Those hires will more often be responsible not for individual communities, but as staff for internal centers of excellence that help coach, train, and support staff across the organization. We are seeing this more in client work, where we are helping to build and support centers of excellence in community management.

 

 

Are you our next community management fellow?

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I am thrilled to announce that we are hiring a new community management fellow for TheCR Network. “What?!” you’re saying, “But you just hired, not one, but two back in January!” Well, dear reader, you’re right, and spoiler alert: they were so awesome they have both moving onto full-time roles on TheCR team (yay!) While onboarding, training and mentoring our new fellows each year is a lot (A LOT!) of work, I am always delighted when they find their true spot on our team.

So, now we’re on the hunt for another aspiring community professional to join TheCR team and learn by doing, right alongside our community managers. Our fellows are always neck-deep in the Network from day-one, so it truly is an unparalleled learning experience. Our fellows do everything from planning and eventually running programming, drafting content, managing working groups, diving into metrics and analytics and yes, some of the ho-hum admin stuff that goes with any community management job.

You might think I’m overselling it, so let’s hear from two of our most recent fellows who are still on the team at TheCR (nb: did you know I was our first fellow, all the way back in 2011? It’s true!)

“The fellowship program is an incubator of knowledge – you are given space to test and explore, in a real time environment, with the support of experienced mentors who want to see you succeed.” – Rachael Silvano, TheCR Fellow 2017

 

“It was great to learn more about community and community practitioners while actually being one myself. You do valuable work and get a lot of experiences that internships and fellowships don’t usually offer.”

– Kelly Schott, TheCR Fellow 2017

 

Our application for TheCR Fellowship role is now open! Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions.