Social-media careers are growing—and in search of young talent.
Richard Vogel / AP
Every day when Olivia Ma turns on her computer, she takes some time to read NYTimes.com, Google News, and a host of niche sites. Then she might check her Twitter feed to see what people are sharing, or browse Facebook for trending stories. Sure, it probably sounds a lot like your morning, but there’s one difference. For the 27-year-old Harvard graduate, who serves as a YouTube news manager, it’s part of her job. As a video curator, she has to know how to sift through social networks for news that’s gaining momentum, or look through some of the video uploaded to the site each day to determine what’s interesting to the YouTube community as well as the news media, which tend to link to YouTube videos. “I am basically reacting to what happens organically on YouTube and the Web to determine what’s noteworthy and interesting,” she says.
Related: Crazy, Sexy College-Application Videos »
For years now, studies and news articles have talked about the value of using social networks to make potential employment contacts. Today it turns out social networking is the job—or at least part of it. The proliferation of sites like Twitter and Facebook as marketing tools has led to a boom in social-media positions at just about any company with a Web presence. In response, colleges are adding related courses and even entire M.B.A. programs to prepare students who are interested in turning an otherwise amusing hobby into their profession.
At many schools, the decision to add social-media classes and degrees has been largely market-driven. “In our case, recruiters were coming to us saying, ‘We need people who know social media,’” says Chuck Martin, an adjunct professor at the University of New Hampshire. And the demand will likely continue to grow. According to a report by SocialMediaInfluence.com, titled “The State of Social Media Jobs 2010,” online re-cruitment sites are being flooded with potential positions. At Indeed.com the number of social-media job postings has increased by more than 600 percent, from roughly 3,000 in 2005 to 21,323 as of May 2010. Yahoo HotJobs has also seen a significant rise in positions with a social-media component: “Year over year, from May 2009 to May 2010, we saw a 974 percent increase [in] job offerings that had some kind of social-media requirement,” says managing editor Charles Purdy.
But Purdy adds that while the field is currently wide open, employers still have high standards for what makes a good social-media guru. “People have to remember that someone is not social-media-savvy simply because they spend a lot of time on Facebook socializing and playing Mafia Wars,” he says. “What businesses want is someone who has been blogging in a certain field, or has some experience with using technology to promote or build a business.” Employers also value people who can easily glide between the more traditional parts of a company and its growing digital division. (Employees entering the field can expect an average introductory annual salary of between $60,000 and $90,000.)
Many of the undergrad courses that are offered across the country teach students how to apply their natural social-networking skills to the business, marketing, or editorial world. Martin, who taught the social-media and marketing course at UNH’s business school in the spring of 2010, says his students do learn social-networking basics, but the curriculum mostly focuses on gaining real-world experience. “The larger, semester-long project required students to come up with a social-media strategy for three local companies that did not have a big Web presence,” he says. “It was a way to give them practice with a real business rather than doing something theoretical.”
If students are interested in getting into the social-media field, Martin suggests taking one or two undergraduate classes—usually found in the business, marketing, or new-media departments of a school—to get a general understanding of what a job in this sector will entail. “If it turns out you’re good at it and you like it, then get an internship and keep promoting yourself on social sites,” he says. “You really can’t lose [because] it’s an exciting time to be in the field.” .
http://education.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/college-grads-find-jobs-in-social-media.html
wireless yogi