Finally, those Anthropology/Theatre/History degrees are really going to start paying off!
The AimClear blog just posted a theoretical job description of what will be the next round of really interesting jobs. Since I’m right in the middle of publishing a series on how to introduce social media into your organization, I thought that posting my thoughts on this position would be highly appropriate.
I met Marty Weintraub at Searchfest in early 2010. He’s a really sharp guy and his post explains pretty clearly a thing that I’ve been telling people for a while – creative thinkers with really strong soft skills are the new hot commodity. Sure a basic level of technical knowledge is necessary to play with HTML, CSS, and various graphic software, but the thing that corporations are going to have to start paying for…that’s the soft skills (no less than Seth Godin agrees with me – check out his latest book, Linchpin).
As commenter John K points out, this is going to be a position that will have to report directly to the C-Suite. No interns or entry level employees. Got to have someone smart, with some serious marketing experience.
While John makes a serious point about a spokesperson being able to seriously affect a company’s stock and brand, it’s a position that large companies can’t afford to not have. As people become more comfortable doing their due diligence online, companies that don’t have people managing their community will be in serious trouble.
The thing that I find really challenging from the corporation’s standpoint, is what happens to the networks these people build up when they leave a company? People who are good at this kind of job are going to get lots of offers for consulting gigs, other companies are going to try to lure them away, and when they leave, they will take at least a portion of their network with them. The age of personal branding is here. It’ll be interesting to see how companies balance the need for this position with the reality that they can’t build walls around their networks.
