Hiring for a solo social media or community manager could mean that you’re trying to assess expertise you don’t have. It’s a common trap for smaller businesses where capability might exist inside a single role.

It’s a bit of an uncomfortable idea to acknowledge, but I think it’s a critical one. Like hiring a trade to come and work on your house. They’re going to know things you don’t, and you need to be ok with it.

It’s easy to fall into traps like how familiar someone is with a given platform, how confident they sound, or even content aesthetics that match the look and feel you’re after. It makes perfect sense; those things are easy to see, easy to ask, and easy to verify.

Platforms change, and often quickly. Familiarity can fade quickly. The aesthetic you love could have been driven by an existing stock library, a favourite photographer, or be completely irrelevant.
You cannot assess a good community manager by looking at their outputs alone. You need to create situations that reveal how they think.

Community management is problem solving 

How do they handle incomplete information?
Community management can often hinge on filling in the blanks, but without making assumptions. Situations can be ambiguous, information could be missing, and there are always things we don’t know.

Being willing to ask questions when they matter, and to defer when needed is a critical skill and is going to be the difference between a positive and negative outcome in a lot of situations.

This is a critical thing to focus on, because it’s never about the conversation at hand, it’s an assessment of how someone processes things and their ability to separate facts from the conversation. Community management is always about the things you’re going to do, and then how you say it to someone.

A sign for weak candidates is going to be rushing to certainty. Certainty sounds confident. And it might be the moment you really wanted a strong candidate to be comfortable saying what they know, what they do not, and what they should establish before responding.

Can they balance empathy and boundaries?
Looking at things like empathy and how it balances with organisational boundaries. Can they find and work across that line, engage and connect with people from a broad set of backgrounds, opposing views and complex needs.

It’s considering that broad picture, like knowing how to connect and talk with someone who’s less tech savvy than the comment before it. Or someone far more aggressive. Even with English as a second language. These things help truly demonstrate someone’s communication skills and adapting to their audience.

And through it all, what do they offer someone, allow to happen, or imply the organisation is and does? The tone and words used can easily allow a community manager to create a commitment, expectation or precedent through tone alone.

A strong candidate can demonstrate that even when empathising and caring for people they will have limitations, restrictions and obligations inside their role.

Do they know when engagement matters?

Talking to someone about their judgements on engagement vs genuine community management. On how they plan to connect and speak to people when it matters, versus when there’s no stakes at all.

Being able to identify a conversation worth joining and where there’s no value in being there. Or, more often when it would be counterproductive to jump in. Not every conversation needs your voice, even on your own pages and profiles.

But separately, a community manager’s role isn’t just about the things you say publicly, it’s recognising what the business needs to hear privately.

Can they see, find and escalate ongoing issues and get them in front of the right people in the right way. Critical examples, fresh conversations and knowing what matters to you more than anyone else.

Being able to dig in and describe and talk to you about their process for building trust with a customer, whether they’re preparing to hire you for the first time, or in the middle of a crisis is a great way to dig into how someone wants to handle things.

It’s easy for a weak candidate to say they’ll show empathy, understanding or to solve someone’s problems. But a strong candidate is going to let you know how. They’ll get specific on where they’d lead the conversation, and why they’re making those decisions.

Don’t confuse knowledge with capability

One of the easiest mistakes to make when assessing someone’s skills is defaulting to asking questions about the things you know. It always feels simpler and it can seem like a much easier way to judge, because we’re simpler creatures than we want to admit.

But you’re interviewing a candidate to join your business, they don’t know you yet. Their expertise on doodads, light bulbs and the unique way your customers think and feel is going to come later.

You want to focus on the how and why of their decisions, and let the brand knowledge come later.

In fact, when I interview people and give them examples I never use our clients or our brand. Because I am too close to it. I’d be judging the wrong things and focused on the little mistakes.

Ask questions about someone else and how problems in social media would be handled, like a national fast food brand, then you’re both familiar with how they appear and talk as a brand and you can keep your focus on the why, instead of your brand specific knowledge they’d never have.

Every decision needs a reason 

Ultimately, what matters is why. There are a thousand decisions to make in community management and there’s rarely a single correct answer. The way someone chooses to approach things is how you make that decision.

So find someone who thinks, plans and strategises the way you need. Someone who can learn, close gaps, and is willing to say “Actually…I don’t know yet”.