As you might imagine, I get a lot of inquiries from folks seeking and offered social media positions.  An interesting question that has popped up lately - will taking a social media job hurt me in my career?  At first glance, this seems laughable.  Social media is cutting edge, it's hot for the media, and everyone wants in.

But what if social media is a career dead end?  I'm not suggesting social media is a fad - it's clearly part of a broader trend towards transparency, connectedness, and personal publishing.  And yet the long term social trends have little to do with the actual positions being offered.

Community manager, social media specialist (entry level), and even social media consultant are fun titles that keep you learning and connect you to a bunch of other social media types, but if you need to make a career transition, will your skills in social media transfer?  Will they get you raises? Promotions? Will someone who graduates college and takes a job in social media eventually make it to the C-Suite?

My experience is pretty relevant here.  The people I place aren't top level strategists.  Mostly I work on two kinds of positions - social media doers in the 50K-80K range, and sales, marketing, PR and technology professionals with a good background who made some inroads into social media in their current position.  A social media doer is not a position with career advancement. It's the person who executes the strategy and serves as the face of social media, but I'm always very clear this is not a stepping stone, it's position set in stone.  Lots of people want to do strategy, but few want to lay the groundwork down and get in the trenches.  I hire trenchworkers. And I hire trenchworkers with a background in marketing or PR.  It's hard to imagine a company coming to me to find a social media anything who didn't have current experience in their industry.

Which brings us back to that question.  Is social media a career risk? 

These would be my three top concerns.

1) This is a temporary position with no way to measure success.  A lot of companies are hiring people to test the social media waters, or tasking internal employees to handle the social media duties.  Far too many of these people think time invested is invested time.  If you can't talk about what you learned, and how it applies to your career, you may be in a temporary position.

2) Social Media lends itself to fluff.  If you've spoken with me, you know I mock "engagement" and "transparency" on a regular basis.  I believe in those values, but I also believe that no company is going to pay you for some engagement metric.  Those involved in that fruitless search are going to be dissatisfied, or they're going to be selling snake oil.  Engagement is an intangible benefit of social media, but companies pay for tangible benefits.  If your job is leaving comments and interacting with people on Facebook, your job just isn't that important.  Make sure you're actively engaged in solving business problems if you want to avoid this trap.  Find out how your efforts make or save money, and you'll be in good spirits.  Simply being the social media person in a company that wants to "engage" customers is a dead-end.

3) Don't get trapped on an island. One of the best benefits in social media is the networking, both in and outside of the company.  A good social media person is not a standalone division, but an integrated part of their division.  Connect all of the disparate contact points in a company (recruiting, sales, marketing, customer service, tech support, corporate communications, event planning, philanthropy) and make each one of them aware of company strengths.  Be a good networker, and you may find yourself eventually as a power broker. 

Ultimately your goal is simple.  Companies like employees that get things done.  That skill is in short supply.  If you can leverage yourself into a position where you are an effective manager of resources and a go-to person for information, then the position you hold is not as important as your value to the company.  When being recruited, look for opportunities to make decisions and hold responsibility (especially for budgets and personnel).  The career risk lies in taking a job where you don't see the future, not the position itself.

If you're up in Minnesota, I want to talk to you.  I have a number of positions up there for different companies (one of the reasons I haven't been blogging much), so please contact me and I'll say hello.  The experience I need is Social Media, but only with Marketing or Public Relations experience.  There just isn't much I can do for folks who want to break into social media.

And if you're in St Louis, and you're one of those folks who don't tend to go to the Social Media events but you are indeed working in Social Media, contact me confidentially - I've got some good things here in the River City coming up on deck.

A really cool posting was put out on the JobsinSocialMedia.com website.  It was unique enough that I thought I would post it here.  I'm not working on it, but if this fits you, by all means follow up with it.  The job is for Team Detroit, a melding of five agencies.  The position description is 10 years marketing work, with a MBA sought, and of course social media strategy.  Very interesting.  Very exciting.  I wish I was working on this one.   

http://jobsinsocialmedia.jobamatic.com/a/jbb/job-details/66901

You're lucky this isn't my MySpace page, or you'd have been greeted with a little hip-hop when you got here.  Connie Bensen, pretty much the go-to source for all things community manager related, writes up the question of salaries for Community managers, and tackles the question of working remotely.

The short version is 50-100K, but there's an important point she leaves describing why this is the correct salary (a level I wholeheartedly agree with).  Here's what she's

The phrase that caught me was to not insult professionals by offering them less.  How could you insult someone by creating a position at a salary level?  There's a lot tied up in that statement, but it essentially boils down to understanding the role of a community manager.  If you're serious about building value in your brand and wrangling the social media crowd, you need someone who knows what they're doing.

Hiring a newbie and calling them a community manager is like hiring a med student and calling them an open heart surgeon.  Sure you can do it, but why in the world would you pretend to have an open heart surgeon on staff if all they were doing was fetching you coffee? 

Community managers need experience and authority to be effective.  They have to be able to respond to the public, communicate the message of your company, and work with executives without losing the human touch needed to gain credibility online.  That's not a job for someone making $20,000 a year, and it's not a job for someone you pay well but has no access to decision makers. 

In terms of remote work, this is very important.  You can't hire a contractor or employee to work remotely (or outsource to a company), and not have that person plugged into company decisions.  They'd be a fool to take the job.  I know I wouldn't take a search for someone like that.  Hiring needs to be based on success, and success is impossible in social media without knowledge and authority.

So if you want to build a social network and manage a community, or bring the disparate pieces of your social media profile into a coherent strategy, build a job description for someone with the intelligence and maturity to actually generate results.  We're past the time of hiring someone for the notoriety of having a social media program.  It's time we start building the long-term framework of delivering value.    

Today in St Louis has a feature on using social media to find work this morning.  The link to view the segment is here.  This post is for job seekers from come from the segment.

Looking for work?  Hoping to use social media to find it?  Here are some resources you really ought to be tapping into in your job search.

Ultimate Job Hunting Secrets. This is the best book I've read for jobseekers, ever. Most books are written for only top people.  They are written with the assumption that you are a highly driven, highly successful, name brand employee with the ability to negotiate high salaries and with the resources to wait out job offers. That's not many of us.  This book lays out the basics for those who aren't used to looking for work.  

Jibber Jabber: JibberJabber.com, and his book, I'm on LinkedIn, Now What.  Jason Alba was a jobseeker a few years ago, and launched a site to help him find work.  He's since turned it into a program that is extremely helpful in managing your search. 

BeYourOwnHeadhunter.com - run by Paul DeBettignies, the MNHeadhunter, who is turning a lot of his focus to helping candidates.

Are you an executive, with your own unique jobhunting challenges?  Head on over to NetShare.com, where executives learn to pitch themselves, network with other executives, and get advice from top coaches.

There's also this post of mine that was published at Marketing Profs on how to raise your profile so headhunters will find you.  And an old favorite, 8 ways to get noticed online.  It all boils down to a single piece of advice.  Figure out what you're interested in.  Go online and find people discussing that topic.  Engage those people, and make sure that you have a profile somewhere online that tells people you are available.

Top Secret Recruiting Tip:  Don't say you're "looking for work."  Instead say you are "interviewing for new positions."

If you're a client, call me at 314-485-5480, or email me at socialmediaheadhunter@gmail.com

There are three main ways to get in touch with me if you're a candidate.

1) Send your resume into my database.  You can upload your resume, add tags and keywords, and update your profile on this site, and I can see when people have been added and updated.  The first thing I do when I get a new position is go to the database.  What I don't do, what I can't do, is talk to candidates when I don't have a position for them.  If I'm working on a job in Chicago, I can't talk to someone in California, because I'm then wasting my client's time. 

2) Join http://JobsInSocialMedia.com.  This site is for anyone in the social media industry. Other recruiters spend time there, looking for candidates, as do companies.  Writing a blogpost, leaving a comment, or submitting a video case study are your best ways to get found, as you can work with several recruiters, and not just one person working on one job at a time.  You have much better odds, and it adds to your overall search profile.  This is a very good option.

3) Follow me on Twitter.com/smheadhunter, and say interesting things.  I respond best to interesting information I can share with my networks.  If you're part of my community on Utterli, Friendfeed, Skype, or a dozen other places where I use smheadhunter as my handle, I'll know you, and you'll stay fresh in my mind.  Calling me or emailing me doesn't do that. 

I promise you - if you are a fit, I'll find you if you're on my networks.  And I'll treat you with slavish devotion and loyalty.  And when that happens, do you really want me talking to someone else who calls in, or working to make that position work for you?   

A big thank you to all of you who've contacted me about social media positions.  My database overfloweth, and I want to take the time to say thank you, and remind you that all contact with me is confidential, and will never be shown nor sold to another company.  My database is solely for the purpose of finding candidates based on positions.

To add yourself to that database, or change your profile, simply head on over to this link and fill in the appropriate information.

That said, it's important you know what to expect when you send me your information.  As a recruiter, my primary responsibility is to work on positions that clients put in front of me.  If I'm not working on those positions, I'm not getting paid, and I'm not doing my job.  Many candidates want to contact me to ask what I can do to help them find a job.  As much as I'd like to, I can't find you a job.  I find people for jobs, and not the other way around.

That can come across as harsh, but it's the truth. No one is paying me to be a career counselor, and so when I act in that capacity, it's because I have some down time, and am trying to be polite.  I used to give a lot of advice, but in the last ten years, I've had exactly two people take my advice and use it to get a job (with big title and salary changes).  That's a lot of wasted time.  It gets so bad, that sometimes I fantasize about a new salary arrangement. You pay me $10,000.  I tell you how to get a job.  If you do what I suggested, and get a job, I give you the $10,000 back.

No one would take the deal, but it's probably the best strategy.  When you ask me how to get a job, you're asking me how to do my job.  I go out and find open positions - so just do what I do.  Still, no one listens.  Mostly because they don't want to look for a job - they want to be handed a job. Fair enough, just don't ask me to pay for it with my time.

So what can you do? I'd suggest that if you want a job in social media - you spend your time improving your profile, building your network, and focusing on how your work led to measurable results.  Each of these gives you better connection to the jobs you want, and makes it a lot easier for me to find and place you (which I'm very good at when I have a req that fits your skills).

So do this. Follow me on Twitter, and shoot a note telling me that you're on Twitter.  I will follow you back.  Connect to me on LinkedIn or Facebook.  Join Jobs in Social Media and start contributing. Use social media tools to suggest your content and successes to me, and I'll follow them as I do a lot of the industry - using your RSS feeds and livestreams to get a sense of what you can do.  The industry is too small to get jobs from your resumes, and I'm more likely to call you if I know what you do, then I am if you send me a resume and tell me you'd like to talk about your options.

A final note - if you have an interesting story to tell about hiring in the social media industry - I'd be happy to publish informative pieces, giving you more exposure.

ReadWriteWeb does an anecdotal survey of what social media folks are making these days, and the spread is as varied as a Vegas buffet.  There are no surprises, but I can tell you that consulting fees range from $20 an hour to $400 an hour, salaries range from $24,000 a year to $170,000, and the difference is based almost entirely on your non-social media employment background.

That's good and bad news - good for experienced types that want to use social media to move their careers along, bad for entry-level and college graduate salaries who want to learn social media, but lack the business background to truly be effective.

The survey was based on 10 responses from social media types, ranging from bloggers to social media consultants, and it's fair to say that Marshall got it right.  It doesn't pay that well for most people, but then again, it's hard to compare salaries without knowing what they've accomplished.  For the in-house blogger, expect 40-50's.

Our respondents reported annual pay rates ranging from $45k and $55k with benefits (!) up to $70k, $80k and $90k with bonuses. We're tempted to say, based on the anonymously submitted but descriptive replies we got, that the closer to pure journalism our respondents were doing the lower their wages were. That's not always the case, but social media management and working for marketing firms were clear indicators of higher end pay rates. That makes sense.

Consultants make a lot more, but be careful believing those rates.  Rates very by state and company, and are much different when comparing agency to independent (which is funny, as far too many agencies sell the project and immediately reach out to independents to sub-contract the work). 

The per post bloggers are the worst examples, because blogging is primarily a part-time gig, and it entails more work and less pay than journalism, something journalists don't want to hear in a time of layoffs.  You want salaries?  I'll give you a list based on eight months of headhunting.  Feel free to argue, but this is what I'm hearing, and recommending.   

RecruitingBlogs.com is a staffing and recruiting social network that boasts almost 12,000 members.  In terms of community size, it's not the largest of the disciplines, but the recruiting blogosphere has been active and influential in the last three years, getting an early start as a networking tool for recruiters.

John Sumser has been writing some great posts about what's happening inside this community, and last week's touched on the question of acceptable behaviors in a community.  It's not couched in terms that social media specialists would use, but anyone who has run a community can surely sympathize, and it's a great example of what to expect as a community manager. 

John set about trying to discuss what it took to make a community work, but the comment section quickly became an example of thread hijacking, moderation, and the difficulty of being understood online.  As in all instances, I urge you to read, read, read, to get the full story - and save your comments if you don't have something positive to add, but the question that so often comes up is how much leeway should the community manager give the community members?

And if you're hiring a community manager, do you want one with a firm hand, or one that encourages sugar and spice and everything nice?

Be careful before you answer that.  It's a trick question that will affect your traffic, influence, reputation, and it may end with heavy legal bills, a PR disaster, or the biggest, most influential , and profitable community in your industry.  The choice of a community manager is not an easy one, and although some great work has been done on researching what it's like, let me offer a few questions to help you in your search.

Community Questions:

1.  What is the purpose of the community?
2.  How big do you want it go grow?
3.  Do you have a major brand behind it to drive traffic?
4.  Realistically, how big will it get.  Now go out and ask some social media people you trust how big they think it will get.  Are those numbers close?
5.  How do you plan to monetize it?  Ads?  Referrals? Product Placement?  Branding?  Subscriptions?
6.  Is the tech ready to go?  Is it simple, or complex? 
7.  What is your marketing plan for the community?

Community Manager Questions:
1.  What communities have you run in the past?  How much control did you have?
2.  What was the purpose of those communities, and did you succeed in the original purpose?
3.  What help did you have? 
4.  Where do you hang out online now? 
5.  What would a search of your name and community turn up on different search engines and/or forum search engines?
6.  Is there a single software that monitors blogs, social networks, forums, and the general web (that answer is no)
7. What is the difference between those types of sites, and how do you monitor each?
8. What tools did you use for online monitoring, and what was their cost?
9.  What was your reporting structure like? How did you communicate with management what was happening, and how did you create relevant metrics?
10.  Flame wars:  How do you/should you stop them?
11. How do you deal with security risks (youth sites)
12.  How do you deal with crazy people? 
13.  Write some responses (forum/e-mail/blogposts) to deal with hostile commenters/users.
14.  Who matters online?  How do you know when something needs attention beyond your department?
15.  What hours does a community manager work?

For more on this topic, check out Connie Bensen's multiple posts on the subject, including her latest salary survey for community managers.