The digital workforce is generally understood to be split between technical and marketing. To effectively present information to the public, digital communicators must be interpreters between these two groups. We develop and organize all the content on a website or other platform—yet our role is often overlooked or misunderstood. HR recruiters have difficulty distinguishing what lies between computer code and advertising clicks. Digital communicators are dependent upon them as the gate keepers to get it right. I hope to unpack the misconceptions and clarify the vital role of digital communications within the internet ecosphere.
What we do
Digital communicators manage the spectrum of work between building a website and the ads that drive people to it. We are known as web content managers, digital producers, and digital strategists. We oversee the editorial plans across departments, create the content, layout the webpages, manage daily updates, and curate the complete digital experience throughout its life cycle.
Recruiters naturally categorize our skills by the hiring department, whether marketing, IT, or user experience (in larger corporations or digital firms with separate UX departments). From the very start, the universal role of digital communicators is constricted, which initiates the misunderstanding.
Road less travelled
Digital communicators have been around since the first baby steps of the internet. We were were referred to generically as web editors when the industry was new. Four decades have passed since the first copy writer or print editor made the transition to digital. This has not caught up to the general public. Telling someone at a party that I’m a digital strategist and manage web content is often met with a puzzling look; I say “website editor” and they nod.
This confusion extends to recruitment. The introduction of digital marketing, and later social media, should have helped flesh out the difference, but only expanded the gray areas between backend and frontend. When the second wave of the internet hit, it landed in marketing. If you work in HR, the Marketing Department down the hall was where all the digital communicators worked. Recruiters intuitively dichotomized the web into technicians vs. marketers. To wit, digital communications was obscured from inception. We had to forge our own path.
Digital bridge
The more recent creation of User Experience (UX) as a profession and separate departments, at least in large corporations and digital marketing firms, should have naturally encompassed all digital communicators. The dawn of UX is the bridge between application and viewer. In practice, however, digital firms have specialized user experience roles into precise skill sets for production. They don’t hire someone to manage content long term nor include it in the contract. The clients are expected to direct their own digital communications. However, a typical Marketing – Communications (marcom) leader does not forecast how to manage digital going forward after their vendor launches a website, runs a social media campaign, or builds the brand. Marcom teams are usually small (from big corporations to tiny nonprofits) with people filling traditional marketing, PR, and editorial roles. We are plugged in as an afterthought to fill this void.
Enter the recruiter
Recruiters are confronted with no-win scenarios. A digital marketing firm may try to please the client (and extend their contract) by finding a digital communicator to work for them but be placed at the client. The firm’s recruiter is suddenly faced with figuring out how to fill a role which appears “hybrid” and “unique” after years of hiring specialists.
An organization’s marcom director may seek help from the IT department to fill a digital communications role (always a mistake). With no knowledge of the field, an IT recruiter is forced to search blindly, or worse, farm out the responsibility to a technical vendor. The vendor may not be U.S. based and unfamiliar with HR best practices nor have experience recruiting communications talent. The results are invariably chaotic. It’s a lose-lose situation but also a common practice.
Good marcom directors turn to their own HR department and/or a recruiting agency. This is the best option; a recruiter will be able to take the time to understand the role and the hiring manager’s needs. Marcom directors, however, are notorious for letting the digital world pass them by. They rely on vendors to run operations without oversight, and junior staff informally fill in the gaps. When the vendor or staff leave, the institution’s entire digital communications knowledge goes with them. Directors may have only a theoretical grasp of the digital job duties and provide little help to a recruiter.
It’s no wonder why recruiters are left unprepared to fill an unfamiliar role that, by comparison, appears strangely niche yet broadly multi-disciplinary.
Making ourselves invisible
Core job skills are mis-identified from the outset because digital communicators don’t fit the standard recruitment model. We possess both marketing sense and technical sensibilities. If recruiters spot HTML or CMS on a resume, you are a technical recruitment target. If they see blog writing or managing Google ads, you are a marketer. And if you mention UX, you are tagged as a user experience designer.
Digital communicators are constantly trying to overcome discrepancies between what is stated in the job description and the actual needs of the job. In doing so, we may be treated as professionally flakey or a curiosity who do not conform to any digital role. Therefore, we have learned to sell one set of our skills to a recruiter, knowing that the job actually needs our breadth of technical, creative, and project management expertise. We often take positions in IT that should be in marcom (and vice versa). We accept erroneous job titles as a strategy to re-create the position once inside. I have squeezed into several narrow job descriptions only to break out of them and flourish.
Digital communicators invented a profession that few people can articulate but organizations rely upon. Our flexibility and self-creation means employers and their recruiters have never learned to adapt.
Gig work feeds the phenomenon
The gig economy has further marginalized the field. Most digital communicators are in freelance contracts not permanent positions by necessity not choice. Digital communicators are the first to go during budget cuts and the last to be hired during growth periods. Gig employment devalues us as temporary “fillers” and exasperates the recruitment chasm. The vast internet is not all AI generated (yet!), and the tens of thousands of digital communicators who create the content people read and watch every day are shuffled around ephemeral assignments.
De-coding the job
The majority of my time during job hunts is devoted to deciphering the job description and reading between the lines. I regularly see “website developer” job postings that are mislabeled and should be titled a digital content manager. Conversely, digital strategist positions will require an advanced computer science degree and competency in multiple programming languages. Jobs under the “digital marketing” umbrella can be schizophrenic:
- Technical writer with demand generation sales expertise needed
- Are you a SaaS ecommerce pro that can write academic white papers?
- Social media influencer wanted who can manage an enterprise website migration
- Seeking a press officer who can code
The positions are laughably contradictory.
Top 10 tips for recruiters
Throughout my career (and affirmed by many colleagues) I have had to help recruiters recruit me. About 95% of recruiter calls I receive are inappropriate to my resume at face value. Most digital communications professionals spend hours talking with recruiters to help them comprehend the job duties, only to discover there’s no match. It’s a huge waste of everyone’s time.
Undoubtedly, HR recruiters have their hands full trying to navigate all the demands of hiring managers without the knowledge to recruit with confidence. Over the years, I’ve gathered together a list of tips for recruiters that may help them help us:
- We are not web masters, developers, designers, coders, scrum masters, or “IT guys”: To avoid chasing wild geese, it’s worthwhile to drill down on the skills and learn the differences between various digital roles.
- We are not sales staff, influencers, or social media “rock stars”: Many marketing and social media skills and job duties overlap, but the expertise is not one size fits all (particularly at the senior level).
- Do not write job descriptions in a vacuum: Do a little research, review competitors’ job descriptions, and ask around. There’s probably a digital contractor working behind the scenes in your company who is dying to help you write an accurate JD. Note: job titles are critical and should match the real duties.
- Do not select resumes based on a job title alone: Read the details to see if the candidate’s skills match the job before picking up the phone. Note: AI is exceptionally bad at this type of experience sorting.
- Do not repeatedly call, email, and text us: We are expert communicators and interpret such desperate behavior as a red flag. You may be on commission, trying to beat out competitors on a deadline, or have a hiring manager breathing down your neck. These pressures should not be reflected in how you interact with talent.
- Do not contact us until you have a full job description and hiring authorization: You won’t save time by recruiting without all the details and jumping in too quickly before the role is approved.
- Do not read off a list of requirements you don’t understand: Do the homework and ask colleagues for assistance so you’re ready to recruit.
- Do not use us to define the role or fish for other candidates: We are job applicants not a free wiki or referral service. We will gladly discuss the role and whether it’s a match, and we regularly refer colleagues to recruiters. But we also possess a finely tuned radar for exploitation.
- Do not alter our resumes before submitting to a hiring manager: We can best describe our experience. Manufacturing a resume-to-job alignment is not an effective short cut.
- If we decline, do not ask if we know a “less experienced person who will accept a lower rate/salary”: Undercutting us is off-putting. If pressured by hiring managers, simply tell them that alienating candidates may harm future recruitment and do reputational damage to the company.
Many recruiters already follow these commonsense tips, and many digital communicators are invested in a recruiter’s success. The best way to match the right person with the right job is to encourage a mutually supportive network of recruiters and talent. That’s a win-win for us all.