In today's digital age, fostering a thriving online community is more important than ever. These communities can be a powerful tool for engagement, brand loyalty, and growth. But building a strong community requires a special kind of leader: a community builder.

This guide equips you with the knowledge and tools to find the perfect candidate to nurture and guide your online community. We'll delve into crafting a hiring strategy, conducting insightful interviews, and making the right offer to land the ideal community builder who will become the heartbeat of your online space.

Remember, the 'hire slow, fire fast' approach reminds us to be thorough in selecting the right community builder. After all, this person will be the face of your organisation. The right fit can cultivate a strong and engaged community, while a poor fit can stall growth and do more damage than good. 

By investing time upfront in finding a good match, you can take decisive action if needed, avoiding long-term problems.

So let's now unpack some key tips about how to hire a great community builder. 

Hiring Criteria 

Before you start reading applications and conduct interviews, it’s important to map out exactly what you’re looking for. How are you meant to know if they're the right person if you've never thought about your dream candidate?

Example Criteria, inspired by The 5 Levels of Leadership, by John C. Maxwell:

• Chemistry - do you connect with this person and want to spend time with them? 

• Character - do you trust this person? 

• Capacity - do they have potential to give and capacity to contribute? 

• Contribution - do they possess the X factor and would contribute beyond their role? 

• Connection - are they connected to the vision and mission of the role?

• Skills - do they have the right skills for this role and are different to others? Skills to assess:

  • Stress management, Skill, Thinking, Leadership, Attitude

After you've landed on your criteria, create a decision matrix to manage any biases you may have during the interview process. You can take notes during interviews to consistently check yourself against these. Feel free to put each criterion into either a 'Role Fit' or 'Culture Fit' category to keep it simple. 

Example:

Now that you know what you're looking for. It's time to create an application for people to apply. 

Key Community Building Skills

To ensure you know what you're looking for, some of the top skills expert community builders should have are:

• Strategic Thinking:  Developing long-term plans that align with the community's purpose and organisational objectives.

• Organisational Skills:  Juggling multiple tasks efficiently and prioritizing effectively.

• Empathy & Communication:  Understanding member needs, actively listening, and communicating effectively across channels.

• Community Passion & Vision:  A genuine enthusiasm for fostering connections and a clear vision for the community's impact. 

• Engagement Expertise:  Creating strategies and implementing tactics to consistently drive member participation.

• Data Savvy:  Interpreting key metrics to measure community health and track progress towards goals.

• Growth Mindset:  Constantly seeking to learn, adapt, and improve the community experience.

• Cultural Competency:  Understanding and appreciating diverse perspectives to foster inclusivity.

• Optional: Financial Acumen:  Developing strategies for long-term financial sustainability of the community, if applicable.

• Optional: Public Speaking:  Feels confident facilitating and speaking in both online and in person contexts.

Key Community Building Experience

It's also great to look out for any past experience they have including:

• Launching a new community from scratch for a business

• Managing an existing community either in person or online

• How to build a community strategy and actionable roadmap 

• Measuring community impact and success (e.g. metrics and reporting)

• Scaling existing communities without jeopardising the member experience

• Automating mundane tasks and establishing efficient operations 

• Setting up the correct tech stack and platforms for community building 

• Building a data dashboard to display the metrics you need in real time

• Amplifying community engagement & growth through co-creation 

• Building an Ambassador program for businesses

The point here is that you're looking for someone who understands how to strategically build community to drive business outcomes and member value.

Application

A well-crafted application form is the first hurdle for great hiring. It sets the tone for your process and helps you identify quality candidates efficiently.  Focus your questions on assessing relevant skills like communication, community understanding, and strategic thinking. Don't get bogged down in generic questions – feel free to experiment with other formats such as written answers, videos or voice note replies too. 

Great tech tools for applications include Airtable, Typeform or even Applied if you'd like a full suite service. 

Interviews

After you've selected the top 6-10 applications based on their fit for your criteria it's time to start meeting people. We recommend having 2 rounds of live (online or in person) interviews to ensure you can interview them and they can interview you. 

The purpose of each interviews:

- Round 1 Interview: A quick 15-30min interview to get a sense check of the person and fit for the role

- Round 2 Interview: A longer 45-75min interview to dig deeper into their experience, skills and allow them to fully understand the expectations of the role

Round 1 Interview

You are interviewing them (15-30m). This is designed to be a quick interview as you really want to get a sense check for whether it's worth progressing this candidate any further. You'll know in the first 5-10mins if it's worth continuing conversations. This allows you to save time meeting other candidates who you may instantly realise are not the best fit.

Here's a possible flow for how this can go:

High level agenda 

• Intro (1m)

• Questions from you (5-15m)

• Questions from them (5m)

• Next steps (1m)

Detailed agenda

• Intro

  • Welcome - how are you?

  • Very excited about this role. 

  • Purpose of this interview is to understand your motivations, what you’d like to get out of the role and answer any questions you might have. 

  • Format: We’ve got some questions and then time for you to ask questions then we’ll share next steps 

• Questions (select from the list below)

• Next Steps

  • Thank you for your time 

  • The next step for the interview process is…

  • You can expect to hear back from us on this date… 

  • Anything else you need, please email us 

Round 2 Interview

This is a longer 45-75min interview to dig deeper into their experience, skills and allow them to fully understand the expectations of the role. This is only relevant to your shortlisted top 2-3 candidates from Round 1 Interviews. This is a great opportunity to give each candidate a real deep dive into the role itself. It's key that they understand exactly what they are signing up for as well here. You both don't want any surprises when starting a new role.

High level agenda 

• Intro (1m)

• Questions from you (15-25m)

• Deep dive into the role responsibilities (15m)

• Questions from them (15-20m)

• Next steps (1m)

Detailed agenda

• Intro

  • Welcome - great to see you again 

  • Very excited to dive further 

  • Purpose of this interview is to really understand and dive deep into the role responsibilities and then for you to ask us all the questions you’d like to understand the role and our team.

  • Format: Questions, deep dive, your questions, wrap up

• Questions (select from the list below)

• Next Steps

  • Thank you for your time 

  • The next step for the interview process is…

  • You can expect to hear back from us on this date… 

  • Anything else you need, please email us 

Example Interview Questions

Feel free to take inspiration and pick 3-8 interview questions from the following list:

1. Tell me about your background

2. Tell me about what you are currently working on

3. What stood out to you about this role? 

4. What skills would you bring to this role?

5. What kind of areas would you like to get involved in?

6. How would you describe the way that you like to work?

7. What’s your communication style?

8. What kinds of tasks do you love doing?

9. What would you like to learn from this role?

10. What are your current commitments outside of this role? 

11. Any conflicts of interest if you took this role?

12. How do you like to be managed?

13. What days and times can you work?

14. Do you have a preferred start date?

15. How do you like to celebrate achievements? 

16. What type of environment do you work best in? 

17. Tell us something about you that is unrelated to work. Any hobbies?

18. What do you look for in a team? 

19. Tell us about a time where you had a team disagreement and how you dealt with it?

20. What types of tasks give you energy and drain your energy?

21. What are 3 tech tools you use for prioritising and productivity?

22. Tell us about your greatest achievement to date

23. What 3 words would your last boss/friends use to describe you

24. Any interest in attending or facilitating member events (online or in person)? 

25. Would you prefer to work from home or in an office?

26. Do you have any holidays booked in that we need to be aware of? 

27. Who does you work best with? What type of people compliment you?

Round 3 References

Ask the candidate for 2-3 references of past employers or colleagues who have worked with them. It's great if the contacts have managed them in the past. The key with references is to remember that each candidate are going to give you contacts that speak glowingly of that person. So it's important to do your own external reference checks either outside of their contacts or to really ensure you are speaking to the right person from their own references.

Great questions to ask candidates to get quality references are:

- Who was your previous manager at X role? Great. Would you mind email intro'ing us together please?

If there are hesitations, that is already a red flag. Keep asking this question for all of their past experience until you land on about 3-4 contacts they can email intro you too. 

If you need a template to send to a reference you can take inspiration from the below.

Reference Email Template

Hey [REFERENCE NAME],

My name is [YOUR NAME] and [CANDIDATE NAME] passed on your email to reach out about a reference. 

I'm the [ROLE TITLE @ COMPANY NAME] and we're currently chatting to [CANDIDATE NAME] about a [ROLE NAME] to join our team. 

Would you be happy to jump on a call and chat about how you found working with [CANDIDATE NAME]? 

Specifically would love to chat through: 

• What was it like to work with X?

• What were their greatest strengths?

• What were their biggest areas of opportunity while you worked together?

• What was one of their best accomplishments while you worked together?

• How were they at meeting key deadlines?

• Would you hire them again? 

Thank you so much!

Kindest,

[YOUR NAME]

Optional Project 

If you decide to do a project during your hiring process, I would recommend that you pick a project that is directly related to the job itself and shows you how this person THINKS.

It's great if this project also pays for the time it takes the candidate to complete it. After all they are going to be completing useful work for you so may as well value it. 

Here are a few ideas:

• Content Creation Challenge: Provide the candidate with a specific theme or topic relevant to your community and a target audience profile. Ask them to create a piece of engaging content (e.g., blog post, social media video script, infographic) that would resonate with the community and encourage interaction. This assesses their content creation skills, understanding of your audience, and ability to tailor content for specific purposes.

• Community Growth Strategy: Briefly introduce your existing community (size, platform, demographics) and a specific growth goal.  Challenge the candidate to develop a mini-strategy outlining tactics and channels they would use to attract new members. This evaluates their knowledge of community growth techniques, ability to analyse existing data, and strategic thinking.

• Community Moderation Simulation:  Present the candidate with a few real-life scenarios involving potential community conflicts or rule violations (e.g., trolling, heated debate, irrelevant posts). Ask them to outline their approach for handling each situation, focusing on maintaining a positive and productive environment. This assesses their conflict resolution skills, judgment, and understanding of community moderation principles.

• Community Health Analysis: Grant the candidate access to a sample of recent community interactions (e.g., member posts, feedback comments).  Task them with analysing the overall health of the community, identifying areas for improvement (e.g., low engagement, lack of diversity), and proposing solutions to address these issues. This tests their ability to analyse community data, identify trends, and develop data-driven improvements.

• Competitor Community Review:  Select a relevant competitor community and provide the candidate with access to public information (e.g., social media pages, forum discussions). Ask them to evaluate the competitor's community in terms of engagement, content strategy, and overall effectiveness. This assesses their competitive awareness, ability to analyse a different community, and potential for bringing fresh ideas to yours.

Round 4 Offer

Only after you've done your references, it’s time for the good news! Send an email making an offer to your ideal candidate. Once they have accepted the role, be sure to let all other applicants know that their application was unsuccessful and you close the application link. 

Successful Offer Email Template

Hey [CANDIDATE NAME],

Congratulations 🎉 We'd love to offer you the [ROLE NAME @ COMPANY NAME] if you're still interested? 

We think you are so well suited for this and would really bring such great value to our team. 

You can read more about the role in the PDF. It would be great to know by [DATE @ TIME]  if you'd like to accept. After that, we can book in a Welcome Call. We'd love to have you onboard. 

Let me know if you have any questions. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

[YOUR NAME]

Only after you've heard back from the successful candidate about whether they would take the role or not, it's ESSENTIAL that you follow up with every single other candidate that applied for the role. Especially those that you interviewed. They took the time to apply for your job, the least you can do is reply to them so you don't leave them in the dark. 

Unsuccessful Application Email Template

Hey [CANDIDATE NAME],

Thanks so much for your thoughtful application for our [ROLE NAME].

We really loved reading more about you and appreciate the effort you put into it. 

We've actually since filled the position, so sadly we won't be moving ahead with your application at this time. In the end it came down to the role being offered to someone who has [INSERT REASON].

We are more than happy to let you know if any other roles come available. 

Any questions, please let us know. Thanks again. 

Kindest,

[YOUR NAME]

My Biggest Hiring Tip

My biggest tip for hiring the right community builder is to hire someone who is BETTER than you. They have deep experience and can hit the ground running with this role. It's clear they have done this before and can do it in their sleep. This allows them to actually take the workload off your plate and help the team. 

Whereas if you hire someone solely on what the business can afford or perhaps need to hire a more junior person, know that there will be a lot of training involved, which can actually cost the business more. 

It's much better to hire someone for 1/4 of the time who is an expert than hire someone for the full amount of time who requires significant amount of training and learning on the job.

Let's Wrap

Overall this process will likely take you 1-2months to do it well. So be sure to identify gaps in the team early and allow ample amount of time to hire slow. 

Finding the ideal community builder takes dedication and a well-defined process. This guide can now be your trusty source of truth to craft a conscious hiring strategy, conduct insightful interviews, and select the perfect candidate to lead your community. 

Remember, a strong community builder is an investment in the future of your team, business and members. By following these steps and focusing on finding someone who aligns with your vision, you'll be well on your way to fostering a vibrant and engaged community that fuels your brand's success.

Hiring Support

Do you need help hiring the right community builder?

We've built a community of 700+ community builders in the APAC region and would love to share the role with them. We also have a vetted list of 200+ people actively looking for roles. 

If you'd like us to share the role with them, share the details here.

Or if you're looking for a new community-role, join our private Opportunity Seekers group.

You made it

Alrighty my friend, you made it to the end. I’ll be back in your inbox on 17th to answer your most pressing questions.

Which reminds me, have a question you’d like to ask about community building? Hit reply to let me know. I’d love to help you.

Until then,

Paz Pisarski
Co-Founder of The Community Collective

You can expect this newsletter on the 17th of every month.
Enjoyed this edition? Forward it to a friend and make both of us smile.

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Bonus Section

Still reading huh? Well you made it to the bonus section where I share an insight into my life.

Proud moment: We’re about to kick off our Community Cohort #5 and I am so excited to welcome all our new members in. I’m so proud of what we’ve built and feel honoured to continue serving people to build impactful communities.

Challenging moment: Ugh our landlord doesn’t want to renew our lease so we have to move house! Never a fun moment to be reminded that the house you live in isn’t yours and you have no control. I’m sure we’ll find something more beautiful down the Surf Coast though.

Personal moment: Our Surf Coast Pot Luck community is going strong and we’ve had some beautiful, cosy, winter hangs. It’s such a lovely group and I’m really enjoying both hosting and attending.

See you next time.