Quality or Quantity: Twitter Edition July 17th, 2009 by Christopher Musico

Tweet

Earlier this week, news came out about retail chain Best Buy requiring applicants for an open position to not only have a Twitter account, but at least 250 Twitter followers … in addition to two years of mobile or social media marketing experience, a year of active blogging experience, and a Bachelor’s degree.

According to Best Buy’s Web site, the position of senior manager of emerging media marketing, which required 250 Twitter followers, has been filled.

It’s not surprising that some companies today are requiring applicants to have experience in social media, as it is playing a larger role in the lives of consumers and businesses. What does surprise me and, quite frankly, scares me a little, is the fact that companies are trying to quantify what counts as active twittering experience.

Who’s to say that 250 followers is the magic number? What if 225 of those followers are spam bots, leaving only 25 legitimate, quality people left? Does that make someone better than another person who is only following 150 people on Twitter, but all of them are quality followers? And, who’s to say what is quality and what isn’t? Does it mean the followers have to be germane to the field in which you’re looking to gain employment? Does it mean all of the people you are following must have a set number of legitimate followers as well?

There are just too many gray areas, in my humble opinion, to try to blindly set a number of followers one must have on Twitter in order to meet a requirement for a job. I believe this is just the beginning, and we will be hearing more and more about companies looking for particular social media qualifications just to get applicants in the door for an interview.

For those in a position to hire employees, are you requiring applicants to have social media experience? If so, what are you looking for and how have you come to the particular benchmarks you have set?

Tags: Best Buy, CRM, CRM magazine, Facebook, Generation Y, marketing, social crm, Social media, social networking, Twitter

4 Comments »

With Best Buy, it’s not so much a matter of the quality of the Twitter contacts, they just wanted to make sure that the person they were hiring had a basic understanding of Twitter and chose the 250 number at “semi random” along with the year of blogging experience — not bad requirements for a “senior manager of emerging media marketing”, at least the person they hired has some practical knowledge. As for valid metrics for a position like that, it’s hard to say — puffed up and non verified numbers will seem more impressive than actual quality conversations and dialog – but not for long, the Twitter stream is a fast moving body of water. Comment by Dean — Twitter: @5stonescms — July 22, 2009 @ 7:59 pm

Hi Dean, Thanks for your comment — I think you raise a valid point in that 250 and a year of blogging experience are not bad requirements for someone who would be taking a job involving “emerging media marketing”. How do you believe companies will begin to focus more on the “actual quality conversations and dialog” that job applicants are involved in on Twitter? When do you think that could begin to happen? Twitter may be a fast moving body of water, but I’m afraid because it is moving so quickly, that companies will just fall on a number that isn’t really valid at all, it just looks impressive — say 250, or even 500. Thanks again, Chris Comment by Christopher Musico — — July 23, 2009 @ 9:09 am

I wonder if Best Buy was trying to gauge how connected the applicants were, not from the Twitter perspective, but in the offline world. For example, we can assume that Twitter users are early adopters of technology (although I think we’re in the mid- to late-adopter phase now), and we assume that early technology adopters are also influencers among their peers for tech-related things. Then if an applicant’s Twitter followers are many, it may indicate that the applicant has a large peer group made up of early adopters of technology – also a very valuable trait for an emerging marketing media job. Just my two cents, but it may be possible that the Twitter metric may be the 2009 version of hiring someone for their Rolodex. Comment by Leah Neaderthal — — July 23, 2009 @ 7:20 pm

[...] Lastly, do you believe this is something that will work itself out in time as the site matures, as was discussed in the commentary from my last Twitter-related blogpost? [...] Pingback by Quality or Quantity: Twitter Edition, Part 2 | CRM Magazine Blog — — August 21, 2009 @ 8:38 am

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