Talent crunch drives up salaries for social media managers

Bengaluru: The demand for social media managers has shot up considerably over the last few years as professionals with two-five years of experience are commanding salaries of upto Rs 30 lakh annually. Hiring experts and employers say the surge in compensation is on the back of a demand-supply mismatch and the dearth of quality talent.“We have been looking to fill a social media manager position for the last three months but to no avail,” says a hiring manager at a Bengaluru-based online fashion brand. He adds that a professional with about three years of experience had been negotiating for a Rs 15-lakh pay package, up from the current Rs 7 lakh he was drawing at a bikerental startup. The manager adds that he has received multiple resumes from candidates who were being paid between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 30 lakh with two-five years of experience.Seeing the lack of specialised skills in the market, the demand critically soared over the last two years, say the employers. “The early social media managers who built their careers with biggies like Flipkart and Snapdeal, went ahead to open their own agencies, maximising their income after seeing the lack of availability in quality skillset. To match those salaries and onboard quality talent, we had to widen the salary bracket,” said Abhishek Mahajan, cofounder of vehiclesharing platform Drivezy, which has raised an estimated $128 million till date.Kamal Karanth, cofounder of Xpheno, a specialist staffing venture, explains that in the current scenario while the overall supply is high, the niche talented pool is small which is leading to an imbalance. He adds that many of these young executives stay on for six months before being lured by fastgrowing startups.The top companies paying for these roles include, Flipkart, Amazon, Swiggy, Rivigo, Drivezy, Early-Salary and Hotstar. Among the traditional companies, Godrej, IDFC, Kotak and Samsung shell out the best salaries. 67843677 Akshay Mehrotra, founder of EarlySalary, said that when the company started there was only one person in marketing. “Today 40% of our marketing budget is allocated for social media,” he said. Facebook has been their largest social channel surpassing Google. “But, to find the right people who can drive the company’s reach through these channels is quite difficult.”Mahajan of Drivezy added that digital marketing, which includes social media, has become one of the major cash-burn areas for consumer startups especially the ones targeting millennials today.Besides, the job role has also evolved over the last few years. Initially, social media managers were only asked to handle mediums like Facebook, LinkedIn. Not anymore. “Six years back when I joined as social media executive, I had to write copies, understand the backend of it. Today, freshers are handling lot more channels, writing copies if required and co-ordinating with the design team for visuals, design campaigns and analyse trends,” said Ankita Wadekar, a social media manager working with an agency Digit 9.0. “Teams across companies have grown from 1-2 to more than ten. Majority of the consumer startups have increased their budget on average from 1% to 9%,” she said.Bengaluru and Mumbai are the top two cities witnessing the highest demand, say the experts.

from Economic Times http://bit.ly/2UExFzW