Community Managers act as a bridge between organizations and their audience. They are responsible for the maintenance and engagement of the organization’s core community and audience through content distribution, community initiatives, customer support and digital engagement. Community Managers contribute to community engagement through creating content, providing customer service via social media channels, interacting with the community on digital platforms, organizing events, collecting and analyzing customer feedback all while maintaining brand image. Performing this role requires excellent communication and interpersonal skills, adaptability as well as the ability to launch and monitor community initiatives.
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Content Management
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Data Analysis
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Community Strategy
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Adaptability
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Creativity
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Relationship Building
How to interview Community Managers effectively
While it might seem difficult to figure out whether a candidate will succeed as a Community Manager in your company, a well-developed set of interview questions that tap into the core skills required to perform in a Community Manager role will go a long way in helping you decide.
But where do you start? How do you develop a set of great interview questions?
The best interview questions come directly from a job analysis. A job analysis is an evidence-based method that focuses on assessing key features of a particular role. These features describe both the job itself (i.e., tasks, responsibilities, and performance objectives), and the characteristics required of someone to perform successfully in the job (e.g., knowledge, skills, and abilities). A job analysis forms the basis of many HR practices such as compensation, performance management, and - you guessed it - how to interview and hire candidates.
At Hireguide, we’ve done the job analysis work for you. We’ve used the method to identify a core set of skills associated with the Community Manager role, and we’ve developed and validated a list of behavioral and situational questions with answer guides that tap directly into those core skills. And that’s not all. We’ve compiled these questions and created a Community Manager Interview Template for you that integrates other interviewing best practices. Skills-based interviews will not only help you make higher quality and evidence-based hiring decisions, but research also shows they enhance fairness and reduce bias in your hiring process.
Example questions to ask
Question 1
Tell me about a time you successfully facilitated connections and discussions among members of your community. Please describe the actions you took and the outcome of those actions.
Answer Tips
- Clearly describes the context (e.g. goals, audience, actions, results, etc.)
- Discusses various strategies to efficiently encourage connections among users
- Highlights their own personal contributions
- Used suitable strategies for the situation (e.g. workshops, seminars, etc.)
- Outlines the outcome of their actions and has evidence to back it up
Question 2
Tell me about a time you tried to build a community but your strategy didn't work. Why was it not successful? What would you do differently next time?
Answer Tips
- Explains the situation and clearly identifies the cause of failure
- Discusses the target audience, content, channels and metrics they used
- Analyzes the reasons behind the strategy's failure
- Takes responsibility for their actions; recovers quickly from mistakes/failures
- Discusses key learnings and takeaways
Question 3
Imagine you want to use social media to spread a message about [insert topics] to a wide audience. What metrics would you use to measure your reach?
Answer Tips
- Mentions likes, comments, shares, mentions, post engagement rate and followers
- Discusses the importance of looking at a combination of metrics
- Notes that relevant metrics can differ depending on the intention of the post
- Understands how to measure engagement and followers on different platforms
- Discusses how to use metrics to influence a social media strategy
