We recently posted a job that got a lot of buzz because of its qualifications. The Senior Manager, Emerging Media Marketing role had among the qualifications, one year of active blogging experience, and preferred qualifications of a graduate degree, and 250+ followers on Twitter. The last one is what led to the most commentary, spawning at least a couple of blog posts, and dozens of re-tweets and conversations. The graduate degree qualification also created a lot of discussion.
In following the conversation around this job posting we discovered that many people had other ideas for how this job description should look, and what the qualifications should be. We realized that perhaps we hadn’t thought of everything. Beyond that we thought perhaps we could find a way to enable a more pointed discussion about this relatively new job category of Emerging Media.
It seemed to us to be a natural progression to get the community involved in crafting the job description and qualifications. So that’s exactly what we’re going to do.
We’d like you, (yes all of you), to help us write the job description for our Sr Manager of Emerging Media Marketing job.
We’d also like you all to help us pick the best description.
Here’s How To Participate
1. Starting now, until Tuesday, July 14th, at 5pm central submit your job description idea to our Best Buy IdeaX site. IdeaX is a site where people like you can share your own ideas on how to make Best Buy better – through idea posts, popular vote and discussions with the rest of the IdeaX community.
For consistency’s sake, we’ve offered some parameters outlined in the ‘Guidelines’ (See below). However, if you feel you have a better way to structure the job description and qualifications for this type of role, have at it.
2. To make the voting process easier, use the phrase “job description” – in the tag field on the IdeaX entry form. See the picture below..
This will make it easier for voters to find all the entries more easily by simply clicking on the “job description” tag on the IdeaX site.
3. The winner is the one with the most votes on IdeaX as of Thursday, July 16th at 5pm Central. What does the winner get? Mostly just publicity, some satisfaction maybe. We debated about offering prizes but decided an authentic discussion is more likely to happen when people are interested in the topic without secondary motivations. We’re hoping for a really robust discussion that perhaps will foster clarity for how to craft these types of roles.
Of course the resulting job description that we post is ultimately still up to us, but we plan to incorporate the winning idea’s description and qualifications. It may be that we mash-up the top three, or even other entries. We’re confident that good ideas will come from the discussion, and that we’ll incorporate those ideas.
Why on earth would we do this?
1. No, not because we’re lazy, we just recognize that a large group of people will come up with more ideas than a small group. We’d like help thinking through the important and relevant stuff for this job.
2. This role is a new one for us as it likely is for other companies. We have a lot of smart and social media savvy people here and amongst our partners and friends. However, there are a larger number of smart and social media savvy people “out there”. So instead of thinking we know it all, we’d like to increase our chances of getting it right by surveying the wisdom of the industry.
3. One of our recruiters Joshua Kahn announced this role via Twitter a couple weeks ago. Thanks to Jeremiah Owyang, Jason Falls, and others it spawned dozens of re-tweets and at least a couple of blog posts. Pretty incredible buzz considering it’s a job posting. Many people had alternative ideas for us; good ideas. We thought it would be an interesting experiment to be more deliberate about capturing and actually using those ideas.
4. Based on the buzz, we also thought, it would be a great way to spread the message that we’re hiring for this role.
The Guidelines
A suggested minimal structure for submitting your job description idea to the Best Buy IdeaX site that contains the following sections:
- Description of responsibilities
- Basic Qualifications
- Preferred Qualifications
- other
Some guidelines for what we’re looking for in this role, and the real challenge, passing the HR test for legitimate qualifications. You’re free to follow whatever creative structure you like, but this is more or less the structure of most job postings.
1. Responsibility section:
Here’s the most basic description for what we need this person to do….
- Be the leader for marketing Best Buy’s brands, products, initiatives, services, et al via Social Media, Mobile, and Video.
- Lead direct reports and agency partners
- Strategy/Budget/time line/project management responsibility
- Inspire/Generate ideas
- Develop an internal/external network to get the above done.
Please add to, expand upon, and embellish these starting points to your hearts content.
2. Basic Qualification section:
For those unfamiliar with the technical bits here, ‘Basic Qualifications’ are also known as ‘minimum’ qualifications; i.e. the price of entry to even be considered for the role.
A basic qualification is not THE determining factor for who will get the job, it’s a minimum barrier to consideration.
Also, legally, a basic qualification has to be objective. One has to be able to use the qualification and say conclusively if a person has it or doesn’t either via the resume or other visible evidence (CV, Portfolio, etc). “Fabulous personality”, “creative communicator”, “effective leader”, “great dancer”; while great things in a candidate and person, are not verifiable via a resume, cv, or other document, thus are not technically legitimate qualifications. Those more subjective things are important, and are discovered or identified in the interviews.
3. Preferred Qualifications:
Simple; these are the nice-to-haves, not have-to-haves. Again, they have to be objective. This is where we previously had the “250+ twitter followers” qualification.
4. Other
For this part throw in whatever else you think we need to think about for this job. Interview questions, tests to determine social media awareness or capability, creative interview formats, or anything you think relevant to selecting the best person for the role.
That’s it. We look forward to hearing your ideas, and the conversation sure to follow. Stay tuned here for updates. Follow the discussion, vote and submit your ideas at Best Buy IdeaX.
Twitter Comment
RT @AxelS: You won’t get a job with less than 250 twitter followers. http://xeeurl.com/A01560
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Customers are demanding more transparency and interactivity from their brands. Once again, Best Buy are showing the way. [link to post]
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RT @23Kazoos: Help Best Buy write a Job Description Sr Manager, Emerging Media Marketing – [link to post]
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RT @BestBuyCMO an update on our crowdsourcing experiment for creating our Emerging Media Job Description at [link to post]
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write your own job description for Sr. position at Best Buy [link to post]
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@nacholimon y El Universal se equivocó, no salió en la página de Best Buy, sino en el blog de Barry Judge [link to post]
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Not all blogs are factual: Twice I’ve corrected fresh posts w/ wk-old info about our SM job posting. Here’s the current: [link to post]
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@KellyGroehler Set ‘em straight, sister!
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@simplydawnb – seriously, week-old incorrect information served up as truth. Yes, Martha, there is a downside to this.
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@GuyKawasaki – you’re sending around outdated info! Here’s the current: [link to post]
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@KellyGroehler love the new profile pic!
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@judypdi – thanks! Still digging around to find one as wicked-cool as yours.
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[...] resulting buzz generated quite a novel response by Best Buy’s CMO, Barry Judge. On his blog, Judge acknowledged the resulting commentary and revealed, “It seemed to us to be a natural [...]
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@Jeremy1069TheX yup, here is more info about it: [link to post]
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@karolijn Thanks! =D
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I like the idea, that in a dynamic, emergent role we have to come up with something more fluid than our traditional means of description. Therefore, I present to you my entry into the contest; a humorous slant on the over-hyped savior of business called “social media”… no, I mean “digital marketing,” which is an awfully old word for a new medium… um, “emerging media”… hasn’t word of mouth been around since there were enough people that they couldn’t all make the town-cave meeting?
Anyhow, I ramble… here is my entry:
http://bestbuyideax.com/ideas/653
Enjoy (and vote)!
[...] alerting me to this. Best Buy crowdsourced the design of a job description. Check out the details here. I love how this has evolved, and enjoyed following the discussion around the ideal person [...]
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@wakachamo @Izzymyster – that’s for a Sr. Mgr of Marketing (specific to social media) at our corporate office. [link to post]
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@agent1675 Ah, I see. Thanks very much for the info
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@debmarkham Barry Judge put out a “help us create the job description” deal because they realized they were full of doh. [link to post]
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RT @agent1675: that’s for a Sr. Mgr of Marketing (specific to social media) at our corporate office. [link to post]
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@kendellrt It’s a joke – ppl are seeing this and misinterpreting it as meaning store based employees. [link to post]
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[...] and employees for help in creating the perfect job description. He announced the contest in his blog: We recently posted a job that got a lot of buzz because of its qualifications. …In following [...]
[...] — and gosh I hate that term — Judge and Kahn decided to hold a contest of sorts. From his blog, Judge decided to ask people he interacts with in social media to help “crowdsource” [...]
[...] to help write a job description for a Sr. Manager, Emerging Media Marketing. Best Buy CMO Barry Judge is also asking those who want to contribute to post the job description on the Best Buy Ideas [...]
[...] Stage 4: I went to Barry Judge with the idea that we should crowdsource the job description. He loved it, fully supported it, said go. We went. [...]
[...] the idea submission and voting part of our crowd-sourcing experiment has been over for a few days. We have a few more stages to get through before we’re done, [...]
Twitter Comment
Just saw this great use of crowdsourcing by Best Buy to write a soc. media job descrip: [link to post] & followup http://bit.ly/jZomq
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Best Buy soliciting input on job description for Sr. Mgr Emerging Media; follow-up to the 2500 Twitter followers [link to post]
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[...] embedded at Best Buy. He’s now helping Barry Judge, Best Buy’s CMO, find this role. From his blog (which by the way is a great example of an open CMO) Barry asks the community to help define the [...]
[...] posting for its Emerging Media Manager role. Kudos to them for reaching out to the community and crowdsourcing ideas for key skills and requirements for the position. But anyone who applies for the role must do so [...]
[...] Want to share an opinion good or bad, you have blogs, micro-blogs and review sites. Want to speak direct to a representative of a company, you have Twitter and social media portals on company websites. Want to help influence decisions? Focus groups are moving online with companies like Ford and Best Buy trying out initiatives where their customer’s have their say. [...]
[...] Judge, CEO of Best Buy recently completed a crowdsourcing campaign to get his community involved in crafting the job description and qualifications for the Senior [...]
very good job
[...] embedded at Best Buy. He’s now helping Barry Judge, Best Buy’s CMO, find this role. From his blog (which by the way is a great example of an open CMO) Barry asks the community to help define the [...]
Twitter Comment
@newmediajim @star_search Thanks to @shel these links: Opening post: [link to post] // Follow-up post http://bit.ly/4jBETr
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[...] So the new gig is Social Media Manager. This is not to be confused with the Sr Manager of Emerging Media Marketing for which we did the crowdsourcing experiment. [...]
Scary… is how far ahead you are in the social media recruitment…
I actually thought I know a bit about it myself… and then I see his…
Thanks a lot for sharing this important information with us it will really help us to get a better job.
Thanks a lot for this post.It is a helpful info for us.This is the important thing which we all should know.
[...] by Giuseppe Taibi on December 9, 2009 BestBuy is really opening up to the social web. Barry Judge is their CMO and has a pubic blog chock full of interesting posts, including “Help us write the Job Description – Sr Manager, Emerging Media Marketing“ [...]