The community approach to recruitment is often as obsolete as any other type of recruitment.
We create generic job ads and look for people who:
a) have some community experience and
b) we get along with.
This reflects a lack of strategy (or a failure to use the strategy we do have).
If you have a community strategy, you should have a logical plan which outlines the goals, objectives, strategy, and tactics.
Each of these tactics requires skills to be executed well.
This means you a) have these skills, b) learn these skills or c) recruit someone who has them.
When a strategy doesn’t achieve its goals, it’s often because the tactics were poorly implemented by people who didn’t possess the right skillset.
It’s one thing to say “we need to host in-person meet-ups”. It’s another to find someone who can execute that well. Someone who knows the technology to use, can effectively persuade people to volunteer to run them (and keep them motivated), and provide them with the resources/tools they need etc…
Some more examples:
If you’re looking for someone to run your MVP program, you need someone who is extremely personable, fantastic at building relationships with top-tier customers, and comfortable dealing with big egos.
If you’re planning to move platforms, you need someone with technical expertise who knows how to create a specification, negotiate rates, work with implementing partners, and the process of making a community project succeed.
If you’re launching a community from scratch, you need someone terrific at building and sustaining internal relationships, can guide everyone (and vendors) through the process, and then persuade your audience to engage in a community where nothing exists today.
If you don’t know what your strategy is, you don’t know what tactics to prioritise. If you don’t know which tactics to prioritise, you don’t know what skills you need to recruit for. And if you don’t know the skills, of course, you don’t know who you should be recruiting.
p.s. I recommend our community strategy course.
