Connie Bensen

My regular readers know that I’ve been providing salaries for community managers since last fall. In May I asked Bill Johnston at Forum One to collaborate on a survey of salaries. The results have been released so we now have specific numbers.

Here are the highlights:

• The majority of the 225 responding were women (55%) vs male (45%).
• The average salary was $81 k with a median of $72.5 k
• Women earned 91% of what men are earning.
• The majority have a bachelor’s degree & work 41-50 hrs per week (but don’t get OT)

I find it interesting that it was the first time they had surveyed for gender. Many of us have discussed the idea that women make better community managers (but that’s another blog post).

The majority are older than 31.

The majority report to marketing. I find the next 3 categories interesting: on their own comm team, no formal structure & throughout  the company.

There is more information in Bill’s post. The full Online Community Compensation 2008 report is available at Online Community Research Network & has more information, including:
• Community team size
• Respondent education
• Hours Worked
• Benefits
• Salary by Country (US, UK, Canada)
• Salary by Title
• Salary by Experience
• Salary increases in last 12 months
• Full write in comments from Survey

What are your thoughts? Is this in line with what you expected? Is the industry in it’s infancy & moving in the right direction?

My posts related to the Community Manager position

The online job search has changed so much. The advent of 2.0 practices has also affected job descriptions & how people are advertising. What I see as a huge advantage for the job seeker is that the job descriptions are getting more creative. Does this mean they are more descriptive of the position & the culture? I would guess so.

Awhile ago I saw this in a job description for a community manager at a well known traditional electronics company.

The Community manager will be responsible for building (company name)online community as a product creating ways to acquire and retain new community members.

ACK! Who would ever say that a community is a product? or even try to treat it as a product? Are they going to package it? resell it? Ok, you can maybe tell that it got me going? Wikipedia’s definition of a product in relation to business:

Product (business), an item that ideally satisfies a market’s want or need.

I think that a community is THE market looking for satisfaction of their wants or needs.

A COMMUNITY IS A FRAGILE ENTITY THAT WILL GROW WITH NURTURING. It is about people & relationships. It is NOT a product to be built in a conventional manner! (I applied to this posting just to see if I could pass on my message. I don’t think I’m a good fit though.)

Now, in contrast – this is the most wonderful, warm fuzzy job description ever!

Description:

crowdSPRING www.crowdspring.com is a private-equity funded startup that has just launched an online marketplace for creative services. Just entering our second month after launch, we’ve already been featured in the Chicago Sun-Times, TechCrunch, Mashable, Springwise and a host of others – so you know we’re on to something here!

We’re looking for a Community Manager to develop an army of stark raving fans of our site. We’re looking for someone who lives and breathes Facebook. We’re looking for someone who can’t get enough of MySpace. We’re looking for someone who loves to blog and comment on other people’s blogs and talk to people who knew a guy who had a blog once.

If this sounds like you, read on…

What you’ll do:

• Post ideas, stories, random thoughts, dirty jokes, videos, and recipes for the perfect banana daiquiris to our blog, forum and anywhere else you can think of
• Moderate our message boards and public comment areas
• Reach out to influential sites, blogs, creatives and small businesses and share the crowdSPRING love
• Dream up, execute and promote community events
• Be the voice of crowdSPRING throughout the internet (yes, the whole thing)
• Be vocal and fight for the needs of the community within the company
• Track the performance of, and report on, your efforts using metrics from web traffic, events, forum and blog activity, etc.
• Be a general, all-around grassroots/social media marketing goddess (ok, or god)
• Attack inbound customer service requests and respond with cat-like reflexes
• Assign, track and follow up on customer service issues assigned to others within the company (programming stuff, marketing stuff, etc.)
• What you’ll need to bring to the table:
• Undying, passionate, over-the-top love affair with all things web
• Absolutely, positively outstanding writing skills
• Interest, curiosity, advanced degree or mild obsession with any/all of the creative arts (graphic design, web design, writing, photography, video, music – anything creative will do)
• Experience with WordPress and vBulletin is nice
• Experience building online communities is a huge plus
• Experience with MySpace, Facebook and Twitter an absolute must

What we’ll bring to the table:

• Competitive compensation, including an incentive plan
• Full benefits
• 401(k) investment plan with matching contributions
• Unlimited ping pong
• Strict shorts and flip-flops dress code

So, do you have what it takes to be on Facebook and MySpace all day, every day? Can you handle the crushing responsibilities of having to be ‘fun’ and ‘interesting’? If so, you really ought to let us know. We’re holding your place in the ping pong tournament…

http://crowdspring.com

crowdSPRING is an equal opportunity employer.

To Apply:   169994-crowds@jobcoin.com

Kudos to you crowdSpring & your HR department! I still remember the day when my sister & I were referred to as ACDSee Goddesses. Customers truly love getting help.

So if you’re going to advertise for a Community Manager, I challenge you to write a job description that really represents the position & expresses your culture. It will make it easier for job seekers to apply for the ones that fit them.

Recently I wrote about the importance of Investing in a Qualified Community Manager. Kathy asked me to address how to find a job in this area.

There are a number of factors that add to the usual challenges of a job search. It’s an emerging role and there is a broad spectrum of expectations for responsibilities & qualifications. As with the salaries I’m starting to see some trends. Most positions are for the type of position I talk about. Only a few are looking for programmers. And working remotely is another factor that is a personal choice for some of us.

So you’ve decided that you want to be a community manager, where should you look? As with anything you need to be proactive! So let’s do this -

• Let your personal network know that you’re actively seeking a job
  • 80% find jobs through people they know
• Jake McKee’s job board is great
  • for job seekers
• Jim Durbin (Social Media Headhunter) has one also
  • job seekers can post your info
• Simplyhired.com – set up ongoing search for ‘online community manager’
• Indeed.com – set up ongoing search for ‘online community’
• Jeremiah Owyang has a list most Sunday’s (some are listed above)
  • and he has a job board
• Social Media Job Seekers Board

Please share if you have others.

The Community Manager role is becoming more prevalent in organizations. Along with that comes the question of salary (or at least people are asking me about it & it’s one of the highest search terms hitting my blog).

Here are the trends – based on information from the Facebook Community Manager group (which I’d recommend participating in if you’re interested in this area). These are numbers for North America.

• Some are viewing it as a professional position & asking the candidate what salary they’d like then negotiating from there
• Some are placing the position under marketing & paying the going rate for that local area

From the Facebook group, seeing job postings & talking with my peers the salaries range from $60,000 to $110,000.

There are also other factors:

• the role is personalized to suit the organization’s needs so it’s difficult to compare numbers across the board. I think the organization needs to consider what percentage of the position is tactical versus strategic. These positions generally aren’t managerial.
• a factor that I think is very important is how much training does the new hire require? That will require an investment of resources on the employer’s part (even though they can start the person at a lower salary).
• working remotely – I consider the cost to bring me to the home office every 2 months as part of my salary because it allows me to live at a locale with a much lower cost of living.
• working as a contractor – in the US we need to add 15% to cover Medicare & the half of social security that the employer usually pays. That doesn’t really include health insurance costs.

In Germany – $95 k (avg provided by Tom Noeding, community manager extraordinaire)

In the UK I saw one advertised for $80 k

If you want to provide info let me know & I’ll update this post.