Why Australia’s most in-demand social media jobs are being sourced from overseas
With social media skills in high demand, why aren’t Aussie candidates making the grade? Pippa McMahon looks at the skills spectrum required to secure the top jobs, in this guest post.
Having moved to beautiful Sydney from the UK, I see a lot of similarities within the digital recruitment spectrum – big corporates and small agencies looking for experienced digital talent who can work with them to grow their tech offering.
But one thing that is different is that the field is so much smaller – in terms of actual numbers, there are fewer companies and candidates in this space.
And this has a direct impact on what clients are looking for – in many instances they don’t have the resources to take on board a team of specialists but instead need someone with a broad spectrum of skills.
The area I’ve seen this in the most is in an emerging demand for candidates who demonstrate excellent social media and content skills and experience – as these two areas of expertise become interchangeable.
Thanks PIPPA for sharing this, I really appreciate every point in this article. And this is true the demands of social media jobs in Australia is very high. In the past year, I receive 60% of my business clients for social media management from Australia.
Really good write up Pippa… I know one of these people you’re on about. Laura Magnano. She runs FWRD Agency!!
Thanks for the read Pippa, however, I will disagree with your point -“Appointing a suite of agencies to manage media planning, PR, social media and other marketing disciplines, is no longer viable.” As a Social Media Agency owner, i see a major disconnect between people being employed in-house and a brand’s social media results. And the problem is often blamed on the social platforms when in fact it is the people in charge of the social strategy and content.
Creating engaging native content across platforms requires skill and talent. Often i read social media job ads that leave out the three key requirements a social media manager “must” have, which explains why the same jobs are advertised on LinkedIn every 6 to 12 months.
What a great article, I couldn’t agree more. Well done Pippa.
You’ve literally just described what a full service social agency offers…there’s plenty around. You don’t need to search for this holy grail of a candidate.
I agree, Pippa, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to place people with enough experience to perform the roles on offer! I deal a 3000-strong network of Australian community management and social media managers as well as brands and organisations looking to recruit to these roles. The market is becoming flooded, however folks either don’t have enough commercial experience (working mostly for small businesses and friends or as a small part of a bigger role) or the diverse array of skills a lot of organisations think one person should be able to do isn’t feasible. I think organisations need to get smarter about the roles they create – it’s not feasible to have one ‘social media manager’ that is everything to everyone. It’s also not going to continue to be feasible to ask one, in-house social media or community manager to work a 40 hour week in the office and conduct endless checks for risk on their own time. Rather than asking people to diversify their experience, why not select those that excel in an area and split a position into various roles. This is how it works for marketing roles. It’s also important to invest in training the good people you do find as well as offering them flexible working conditions if you’re expecting flexibility in return – no job engaging with consumers can be done 9-5 weekdays only. Especially if the remit falls to one person. Once you’ve found a great recruit, you need to ensure you can retain them. It only makes sense that if the market isn’t great for hirers, it *is* great for candidates who can be selective about their next role.
Any reasonable corporate thinking it’s a one person gig is deluded.
Lack of understanding and effectiveness expectations result in insufficient investment. They need to audit the performance and also their understanding of the space, I would suggest.
The 1% counts to make social scale and work into business objectives. Anything else is scrambled eggs, merely plugging holes with fingers.
It’s unfair on the employee.
Significant level talent is not readily available in Australia. Until there is more resource support and dollars to make things work, Sponsor away and hold the intl talent while you can.
An agency likely has attracted the best people because of the level of resource and knowledge and the team workflow allowing more sophisticated programs to happen.
Hi Pippa,
There’s no need to look overseas. I just wanted to let you know that Miami Ad School here in Sydney teaches all those social management skills you describe, and more:
‘analytics tools, CMS systems, and creative software such as InDesign and Photoshop.. a strong understanding of the paid and digital media space and ability to write compelling copy…’
Great article. But so many SME companies still regard Social Media as a simple one-step upload plus a competition or two and a quote on Instagram.Yet the skill set demand is high and the pay is breathtakingly low in Australia. The casual requests are mind bending – eg “Can you do a logo with that? What about a bit of videography?”
“Certainly. Here’s my price for an across-the-board Social Media design concept, using my Design Degree for effective monetary response. And my years of strategic content writing.”
“Oh. Your unpaid project intern is good at that stuff … can do a bit of design? And knocks up a bit of a video?” Expect to hear more “outsourcing to Asia etc” because they can do it for less. But don’t call me to lift your mess of a strategy, response fail,and spellcheck. Pay up or count your likes in single figures.
Not in Australia but also in the rest of the world the SMM jobs is now a day at peak. I am also working as a social media strategist for world banks.