Best interview questions for a Community Manager

Community Manager Interview Questions

A Community Manager is a great asset to have to improve your organisation’s brand awareness throughout your customer base. They are particularly skilled in building, growing and maintaining communities, they can also help with organising events and being the face of the company.

While this position is usually fairly entry level it’s important that you can find someone with:

A responsible attitude.
Someone who’s digital-savvy and has a lot of experience using many different social media platforms.
A background in brand would be advantageous so that they will accurately reflect and understand your company values.
You should be focused on finding a candidate that is strategic and well spoken as they’ll be representing your company.

Interviewing a Community Manager

Do you need a new Community Manager in your team? With our Community Manager interview questions, your interview is prepared quickly and easily.

Please note: Our interview questions are suggestions for the earlier stages of the application process and for candidates with average work experience. They are therefore a little more general.

How to open the job interview

Interviews naturally breed nerves, so the first part of your interview should aim to make the candidate feel comfortable speaking with you, you’ll get much more information out of them and a better sense of the person they are if they feel like they can trust the environment they are in.

To do this you can ask some fun and interesting questions linked to the role, they should be open-ended and encourage conversation.

Job Description available

See our Community Manager Job Description here

For the interview

A positive opener to start

What do you enjoy most about your job?

What has been your journey so far?

Behavioral Questions

Could you give some examples of communities and brands that inspire you?
A good candidate should show a passion for communities and brands, and be able to talk at length about what they like about their favourites.
What are some of your favourite communities that you’re already a part of?
There is no right or wrong answer for this question, but the answer should include a few different platforms and an active role. A good candidate will be able to talk about at least a couple of communities that they stay up to date with.
What is the biggest lesson you learned from your previous job?
A good answer will be somehow related to building relationships or improving conflict management.

Soft Skills

How do you define a community?
Should be looking for someone with their own opinions but with a good overall understanding of the benefits that building a community brings.
From what you already know about our company, what would you say our online presence is like and how would you change our strategy?
Displays an understanding of your brand and shows they have done some research, they should be able to think proactively and have a flair of creativity.
How would your past colleagues describe you/what would you say was your main impact on the team?
Displays what they are like working within a team and their strengths/weaknesses. It's important that the candidate will fit into the team environment you've already fostered.
What is the difference between Community Management and Social Media Management?
These are similar job roles and they overlap quite often, a great candidate should understand that community management is more about building a brand, and less about managing accounts.

Hard Skills

What are the best practices for measuring the success of a developing community?
Shows experience in developing communities and should display experience in tracking KPIs in a developing community (engagement rate, number of followers).
How have you used social media in the past to promote a company brand in the past?
Shows experience with different digital marketing strategies and experience with using different social media platforms, or even setting up events (they should understand that multi-posting the same content is not optimal).
What steps have you taken to improve web traffic to your company website?
Should have a good knowledge of SEO practises and experience in creating marketing plans for communities, gauging their success and adapting for future campaigns.
What are some good steps to start building an online community?
Shows their general experience in the role and experience in building communities from the ground up.

Operational / Situational Questions

How would you deal with issues among your community members?
Shows experience as a moderator and displays problem solving skills. Should be able to write community guidelines and enforce rules.
Could you discuss a time when you have had to provide information to users to help them understand a new feature or product?
A good candidate will have good and timely communication skills, an ability to break down complex features into understandable points and display a commitment to helping users.
If you were tasked in setting up a community for our company from the ground up, which platform would you start with?
Community Managers should be able to think about different audiences and how to target them using different platforms for different goals.