A list of requirements I'm looking for in candidates for social media jobs.

1) You need to be prominent in the search engines for your name.  If you have a common name, or a famous one, you should be prominent for your name + your industry. 

2) You should be able to explain how social media affects SEO.  This is how you will measure your worth initially to the corporation.

3) You should be expert on at least one application/software.  Expert doesn't mean lots of friends. It means ins, outs, and loopholes. It means knowing more than you can read just by surfing the first page of Google.  Someone who dabbles may be popular, but if they don't know the ins and outs of the software they are using to drive value, how exactly are they expert?

4) References.  Lots of them.  Lots and lots of them.  I may not need to call every one, but anyone in social media should have dozens of people at their fingertips they can contact instantly. 

5) An example of how you used social media to bring value to a client.  This is actually the Number One requirement.  It's what clients are looking for.

6) A list of your skills besides social media. Believe it or not, you aren't actually being paid for what you've done in social media. You're being paid for the sales/marketing/PR/product/management/customer service/e-commerce skills you have from your other jobs.  Social media pays between $10 a post and $200,000 a year - sometimes for very similar work.  The difference isn't the blogging and twittering -it's what you bring to the table.

If you are a business or a corporation looking to hire community managers, social media executives, Web Analytics and Traffic managers, SEO experts, PPC experts, or someone who knows how to craft and execute a strategy for using social media to drive value to your company, contact the Social Media Headhunter.  I recruit social media candidates across the country who bring real value to your organization.

You can search online for my bona fides.   "Jim Durbin Recruiter" You have to go nine pages deep in Google before you get anyone not referring to my work.