Community Director Interview Preparation Guide

Engaging, keeping, and attracting new users are goals for most (but not all) communities. Be prepared with two or three ideas to achieve these goals. Don’t worry about presenting original ideas here—you’re interviewing for a job, not providing free consulting advice. Just show the hiring manager that you have ideas. If you suggest ideas they’ve already tried, well, that shows you’re on the same page.

Your interviewer is asking this question to see if you can demonstrate your understanding of what a community is and what it means to belong to one. We’re all part of many communities throughout our lives. If you’re an active commenter on BuzzFeed and know the other commenters there, then you’re part of the BuzzFeed community. If not online, maybe you were a member of an after-school club or local charity. Be capable of talking about a time you contributed to a community in some shape or form.

Getting the candidate to draft up some email responses, forum posts or a blog post gives you some insight into their writing and communication skills, and how they approach solving problems by email. You can also find out whether they are finding it easy to pick up on the voice of your company, or have any thoughts about how to modify it when communicating with online customers.

Content works differently for each brand. Some fans appreciate videos more than photos, others like good ol’ fashion links. We all know that photos generally reign supreme on Facebook, but maybe your brand’s videos are engaging your users as well. Either way, the most important aspect of this is understanding which visual content your customers appreciate the most.

If all they suggest are hosted community platforms, you might have a shill. An open-minded and competent community manager will be able to build a thriving space using free tools if necessary, and will most likely respond by asking what the requirements are, as this will dictate the toolset, not the other way around.

The first part of this question will answer what makes them tick, and what matters to them when building and managing an online community. The second part allows you to ascertain whether they are knowledgeable about your product, passionate about being your digital mouthpiece and evangelising about your company. You could also ask them how they would identify whether an issue needs to be shared with another one of your departments, which also provides a good opportunity to move into describing your company structure and progress the interview to answering their questions.

An obvious question, but one that throws up almost everything you need to know about their skill set. An ex-Community Manager may turn out to be more competent than a Head of Community, depending on the scope of their role and their position in the organisation. As job titles are still very fluid, use this question to flesh out just how experienced they are and whether they were running teams or influencing any other departments.

“Community” as a term is something tossed around in conversation frequently, but few folks have thought to consider what it actually means. Good community talent will have their own opinions and theories and will be able to provide a succinct definition off hand. Red flag answers will include vague references to social media and content — and community management is not the same as social media.

Comments contribute to the conversation and can help users gain additional answers or perspective.

Answers are solutions or contributions that do not need further elaboration or clarification.

Many community manager roles involve elements of customer service. After all, you’re interacting with people daily and will often encounter someone who is reaching out to you with an issue that needs solving. Let your interviewer see that they can trust you to be the face of and voice for the community.