Could your Klout score land you your next job?

There’s quite a bit of controversy over an advert put by Salesforce for a community manager whose qualifications include having a specific Klout score. I’m surprised it’s taken this long for companies to officially mandate that some jobs require a certain level of community influence.

In February 2006 I wrote: A job advertisement from the future . . .

Wanted: Head of Corporate Communications for a fast growing Silicon Valley startup. Competitive salary and stock options. Candidates must have a Google Page Rank of at least 5. And/or an Alexa rank of at least 750 000 or better…

At the time there was no Klout score but there were other metrics. And it makes complete sense. Software engineers originally got into blogging because it raised their visibility in their communities and that led to work. The same is true for other professions.

In reference to Salesforce posting, Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter Group, wrote on Facebook that he is “all for it” because it helps employers hire better people.

On TechCrunch, Drew Olanoff wrote that Salesforce’s focus on Klout scores was “stupid”: “Numbers are numbers, people are people. People make companies win”.

Numbers always win, there’s always a metric and even if it isn’t the perfect metric, there is always a metric of one kind or another being used to judge people’s performance. Klout is part of today’s metrics, like it or not (and many don’t).

I constantly see PR and marketing folk advising clients on social media strategies yet I rarely see them posting anything online, not even retweets, the easiest form of engagement. Surely, there’s a serious disconnect here.

There’s many that don’t “like” social media or they “don’t believe in it” as if it is Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.

Social media is what it is, it can be a pain to maintain your presence but that’s the rules of the game these days. Those rules will change and they do change which is why if you are in communications — both journalism and PR/marketing — you better know when the rules change.

You have to be in it to get it.

This article by Tom Foremski originally appeared on Silicon Valley Watcher and is republished with permission.