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Got 250 Followers on Twitter? Best Buy Wants You!
This afternoon Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang posted a link to a new job opening at electronics retailer Best Buy. The job title is, “Sr. Manager – Emerging Media Marketing”. The job seems very similar to a former position I held at a Fortune 100 company.
Here’s the general overview of the position (click the link to read the full job description):
“The Emerging Media Marketing Manager is the primary lead for the Best Buy’s mobile, social, and video marketing & media efforts to drive in-store and online sales, create sustainable word of mouth evangelists, and brand loyalists. This leader will create both bolt-on social and mobile marketing initiatives and other new initiatives and identify business opportunities that can be solved wholly or in part by applying or developing social technology, digital and software strategies and technologies .”
If you are interested in a position in Minnesota, this is actually a pretty damn hot job. To be honest if this is the kind of position you would consider, but don’t care much for Minnesota, I’d still recommend considering it. Most large companies only have one of these positions and Best Buy appears to be doing some things right when it comes to online marketing. Best Buy wants a lot of experience which is required for a position of this level.
Here’s where the job goes south for me…it’s in the “preferred qualifications” section which has two bullet points and they are:
Preferred Qualifications:
- Graduate degree
- 250 plus followers on Twitter
I know what you are thinking - Allen must be joking. But sadly I am not. They seem to value education at the same level as a silly metric like number of followers on Twitter. I am sure glad I spent time getting my MBA :)
I wonder what internal employee, agency or analyst told them to add that as a requirement?!? My suggestion is if you plan to apply, beef up your followers before you send in your application. And if you think you fit the bill but have no followers, do a search on “add followers to my twitter account” and you can get 250 followers before you click off of this article.
Twitter followers are the new “hits” as a metric.
[...] then we’ve seen major public companies post for new employees that have a minimum of 250 followers on [...]
[...] job listing was first noticed by Center Networks. Best Buy, listed by Mashable as one of the 40 Best Twitter Brands, fell short in their [...]
what i find most compelling about this and what is going to be something for the HR toads to work out in the future, is–whose tweeps are they? is the requirement for followers just supposed to be an indicator of social media savvy? or are you expecting that i am going to pimp my peeps for your product, whatever it may be? and tweet about best buy or whomever from my established handle? that is likely not the case here, but i have heard it in a lot of other places.
educational requirements are generally flexible, other than for certain companies and gov’t corp contracts. but you non-degreed folks always seem to have a bit of a whiney tone when this comes up, no matter how successful you have been without one.
I would say, use any free marketing media site to gain more twitter followers…
I could not agree more with Bonochromatic.
Personally, unless they’re just looking for someone that received a little sheet of paper stating that they attended school, there isn’t a graduate degree in this world that could prepare you for social media strategy.
Obviously, companies still think they need to post that absolutely meaningless requirement because they’re still stuck in a very, very old school frame of mind.
Personally, 99% of social media strategists/internet marketing consultants that I know were busy learning their trade and making tons of money while their peers were stuck in an old fashioned university, struggling to pay for a degree that would end up pretty much useless.
I’m one of those people who decided that I for what I wanted to do in life (social media) school was a complete waste of time, and the funny thing? My degreed friends, to this day STILL beg me for a job.
Suckers.
:)
Hi Allen,
I’m the guy who started the twitter frenzy around this yesterday. I work in staffing for Best Buy, and its my job to find the right person for the gig. I have to say I’m completely blown away by the response the job description has gotten. Proving once again that its tough to pre-engineer what people will find interesting, controversial, or worthy of mention.
Let me start with this, we’re absolutely not perfect, we know this. Someone said its a post-brand perfect world, and I think its true. This is the first time we’ve carved out a spot specifically for someone in this space, so admittedly, we’re going to stumble around a bit at first to figure out whats right. True enough we’ve had people in marketing and other areas who had a strong interest in social media and took it upon themselves to start trying stuff and learning. But up until recently, there wasn’t specific spots outlined for it under the marketing umbrella.
One note on the Job description: we recently rewrote it with the help of Gary Koelling. Gary is the guy who started BlueShirtNation, the internal social network at Best Buy. Featured in Groundswell by Charlene Li. Gary knows whats up. I will say he doesn’t have final say on the HR stuff surrounding the qualifications.
I’d like to respond to a few specific comments above with my perspective on the inside here.
Sean – sorry, our qualifications for VP are 10,000 followers on Twitter. Keep truckin’.
Ryan – interesting thought, but no way do I have time to go through anyone’s list of followers. Nor am I qualified to determine worthiness/unworthiness – thats Google’s job :)
Rex – agreed, being a native Minnesota boy, the weather is not for everyone. If you like change of seasons, great schools, killer art and music scene, and can handle the occasionally brutally cold winter then Minnesota is the place for you.
Sameer – agreed, most of the time big companies don’t get it. There are some that do though, and I put Best Buy in that category. Ask Jason Falls, ask Jeremiah Owyang, Shel Israel, Robert Scoble, and Charlene Li. There’s plenty of evidence out there that Best Buy, while not perfect, has as good a handle on social media as any big company. Its a much different challenge to take a large enterprise with entrenched culture, rituals, ways of being and then apply a completely different world view and expect everyone to “get it”. Small companies and start ups are by their nature more agile. So while its easy to look at a big organization and say “bah, corporate morons, they don’t get what the cool kids are doing” I know, I’ve said it too. But be assured there are plenty of us that are passionate about getting this right, and actually relish the challenge of changing the thinking of a goliath organization so that they do get it right.
Curt – you’ve sort of touched on what the crux of this thing is. The qualifications are preferred (graduate degree, 250 twitter followers) so you don’t have to have them, it would just be nice. Also, even the basic qualifications, which are required to be considered for the gig, are a minimum filter, not the ultimate determining factor on your ability to do the job successfully.
Bonochromatic – on the degree you’re right. I spoke with Barry Judge about it, our CMO and he agrees. We may reconsider that. While a graduate degree is definitely a signifier of accomplishment and higher learning, it certainly isn’t an automatic indicator of future success. So maybe we have some further thinking to do on it. Be assured, with all the buzz around this, we are.
More to come today on this…
I’m @joshuakahn on twitter if you’d like to throw any additional comments my way, I welcome the discussion on this.
You’re being sarcastic, right? The job is “Emerging Media Marketing Senior Manager.” What degree could POSSIBLY prepare you for that position? How would a traditional education prepare you for it?
When it comes to social networking and emerging media, education is pointless. Higher education, as always, lags at least 10 years behind the times, and this position is to manage cutting-edge social media. Six months in social media = an eon.
Anyway, if you have less than 250 Twitter followers, I wouldn’t hire you for ANY emerging media job, let alone this one.
Wake up, people. It’s called a Sea Change.
I have neither 250 Twitter followers nor a graduate degree, but since they are “preferred,” I’m assuming I can still get the job. :)
It sounds like a pretty sweet gig, but number of Twitter followers is a really odd metric to use to gauge the effectiveness of a potential employee.
Imagine this same ad being posted in the 90′s:
Preferred qualifications:
1) Bachelor’s Degree
2) Must have a Web site with a counter that shows you get 250 hits per day
I have 461 followers. gIve me a jOb!!!! LOLz! (Just kidding.)
The big companies just don’t get social media!
[...] Stern of Centernetworks just wrote about Best Buy looking for a “Sr. Manager – Emerging Social Media Expert”. So what are [...]
OMG. Perfect. I live in Minnesota lol
To clarify: BTDTNA = Been There, Done That, Never Again – living in Minnesota! Cool job though I guess if you can get a corp gig like that! ;)
This would be less of joke if those 250 followers are people who are deemed influential on Twitter. I would bet they’ll look through your 250 followers and deem you worthless or worthy.
what a joke.
I have 8000 followers, are there any VP positions open? :)