Influencer Discovery Expert

“Essentially, you’ll be in charge of digging up hard-to-find influencers 🔎 that are the perfect mashup of creativity + relatability + relevance + other important characteristics brands want to see in the influencer partners who’ll represent their brands.

And, of course, those important characteristics – they shift from campaign to campaign.So, you’ll be key in making sure our Account Managers can run campaigns that include THE PERRRRFECT creators for each brand. You’ll actually be working pretty closely with several of our teams, including the account managers, our strategy team, and our engineering team as our expert of influencer search.

And you’ll float around from campaign to campaign like Mary Poppins, helping out whenever you’re needed… singing a happy song… making witty observations… being confident. Flying umbrella not provided.

With this being a new role, I think I’ll start with a little bit of background, just to set the scene and give this post a little textual ambiance. Who doesn’t like contextual ambiance, right?

Our account management team is currently running around 60 campaigns. Which is a lot. 🙂 And it’s why we’re currently scaling up this team. Lots of new people are coming in and having to learn a TON of stuff in a very short period of time. ⏰

And while our process for running campaigns feels like a well-oiled machine to us… our process for finding influencers is not. It kind of feels like a chaotic free-for-all… with everyone utilizing different strategies… and no one really having the expertise to handle every influencer type. Which leads to the discovery process taking way longer than it should.

Which leads to…

More than a dozen frustrated account managers. 😫 And equally as bad, we end up occasionally missing deadlines ( #pearlsclutched) as we’re running around like headless chickens – crazed headless chickens – trying to lock in the best set of influencers out there.

Influencers are the foundation of an influencer campaign. So, we already know that rolling out a campaign with a set of influencers who are – how do we put this gently?

Basic AF… or overly advertisementy… or flaky… or just a joyless pain-in-the-butt to work with… or a near miss for the client…

Sets the stage for a lackluster influencer campaign and irritable, unhappy clients emailing everybody in ALL CAPS. Which no one wants.

Despite it being super hard sometimes and taking us forever, we take influencer selection VERY seriously. So, this is the part where you come in and make everyone’s job easier. We want you to be our Nancy Drew (or Hardy Boy) of influencer discovery.

I will now take one more stab at summarizing… in a nutshell, you’ll be finding and sourcing the most perfectly matched influencers for each of our client campaigns… vetting these influencers to make sure they are way above average in terms of quality… and working to improve the search process over time with our development team.

(Of course that’s just the summary… there’s more, read on if the gist of the role sounds 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽.)”

🏋🏽‍♂️ You’ll start out in this role with some rigorous training. We need you to be the expert who knows every strategy inside and out. Blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back.

👩‍🏫 You’ll be working closely with the account management team to learn what their clients need and understand the important characteristics we referenced earlier like follower counts, engagement ratios, blog traffic, etc.

🔎 Next you’ll design a variety of searches that target all of the required personas and use those to find a ton of influencers.

👩🏽‍💻 You’ll also work with our engineering/development team to test out new search features and provide feedback in order to make sure our internal tool becomes as useful as humanly possible.

✔️ Once you have a nice list, you’ll be doing more of a vetting process to come up with your short list of influencers.

💌 Depending on availability, you may also be assisting with writing smart, engaging, informative, and sometimes quirky outreach emails.

💰 You might also be dealing with negotiations and spreadsheets a bit.

📝 Once we’ve decided on what lists to submit to clients, you’ll provide write-ups and example influencers to present to our clients.

🎤 And… if you’re somewhat charismatic, we’ll loop you into these presentation calls to run through why you’ve selected these influencers.

🎬 And that’s basically it.

Here is a fun visual breakdown of the qualities and characteristics (related to this role) that we find important when hiring. (There are more qualities listed below that we feel are more global… these are specific to the Strategist role.)

• We provide the usual benefits: 👩🏽‍⚕️ Medical, 🦷 Dental, and 👁 Vision. (The medical insurance is through Aetna, which is really pretty good.)
• We just started doing 401K’s (with a pretty sweet match, too)! Yay!
• We are all remote now, thanks to COVID-19… so that might be a perk if you hate commuting.
• If we ever decide to have an office again, you can be darn sure it’ll be super cool-looking and dog-friendly! 🐶
• We’re a small company without the typical corporate hoops… People who perform well end up advancing quickly.

• We’re a team of 50.
• We’re growing.
• We’re about as scattered as a team can be… East Coast, West Coast, the middle of the country… a bunch of us are in Canada, 1 in Ukraine, 1 in Russia… we like to keep our options open in terms of company retreat locations.
• About half of us are really funny.
• We’re currently working with some pretty amazing brands: Famous Footwear, Zenni Optical, KISS, Lenox, a big chain of malls (I don’t think I’m allowed to say who), a big toilet brand (again… I don’t think I’m allowed to say who, but you probably sit on this brand every morning), Honest Co, Hershey, Yelp… just to name a few.

We’re a pretty down-to-earth bunch, so if you’re interested in applying, in lieu of an elaborate cover letter, you can email me at Lauren@theshelf.com, and include bullet points with the info requested in the next section…

• The job you are applying for.
• A link to your Linkedin profile.
• What job site sent you our way.
• Your location.
• Your phone number.
• A rundown on how experienced you are with the influencer marketing space… Have you worked with them? Have you done client work in the influencer space? Stuff like that.
• A summary of why you feel like you’d be good for this role.
• A note about your agency experience, if you have any (and why #agencylife is for you). Or, if you don’t have agency experience, why you thrive in this sort of fast-paced environment.
• Please let me know what sort of salary you have in mind. I’d hate to waste your time if you’re wanting a salary that’s beyond the realm of possibility for us.
• Some links to influencers who you think are weird and wonderful.

Tips on how to get your application noticed (assuming that’s what you’re shooting for):

• Applications that are submitted using a job site (instead of being emailed to the above email address) will not be considered.
• Please don’t have typos. (#FunLittleTip: Install Grammarly. It’s a game-changer.)
• It would be great if you could try to sound cool. We write in a colloquial, one-with-the-people-while-still-being-basically-grammatically-correct style. And while this style of writing is not a requirement, keep in mind that we receive a decent number of applicants every day, and 90% of those applications are boring AF. The ones that have a fun “voice” and quirky writing style immediately stand out. In a good way.
• Lastly, put yourself in the shoes of the person in charge of interviewing… What do you think that person would want to hear? Talk about that stuff and leave off anything that isn’t super relevant.

Generally speaking, a lot of you will probably find this job post in line with your skill set, and I bet a lot of you probably have the skills necessary to perform the requirements of this role. But… the characteristics that define what it’s like to actually work with you are also very important to us. Think of these requirements more in terms of culture-fit requirements:

🕺 Our company has a very fast-paced environment. It might feel disorganized from time to time because we’re also a small company. We need each employee to be the type of person who can go with the flow. Who can adjust quickly. Who is able to embrace chaos with open arms when it decides to waltz through the door.

🏎 Due to the aforementioned fast-paced environment, you should be the type of person who is able to execute quickly… within time constraints. WHILE still maintaining quality. We don’t ask for the impossible. But what we don’t want to see are projects that are slapped together and riddled with issues when we’re in a time crunch. Instead, we’d like to see people make adjustments and figure out how to make it work. We’re looking for resourceful people who approach projects with that there’s-more-than-one-way-to-skin-a-cat attitude.

📈 I’ve never interviewed anyone who has said that they have bad work ethic… but there’s a big difference between people who show up and do what gets assigned to them, and those who take initiative… Those people who take pride in their projects and who go above and beyond because they have that drive for personal achievement and growth. We don’t want to micro-manage. We want to work with self-motivated people who are neurotic about quality.

✅ People who don’t proofread drive me nuts!

👿 While I feel like I shouldn’t have to mention this, we’ve worked with people in the past who ran around like a bunch of crazed loose cannons… yelling at coworkers, constantly complaining, deploying the cold-shoulder on a regular basis… passive aggressive. So if you’re not a nice person… that won’t really work for us. We really need everyone to exude positivity.

👂 You need to be receptive to feedback. This is a quality that we find candidates have trouble self-assessing. But try hard, because we give feedback when needed. We’re too small of a company to just let people do whatever they want to do. (Side-note… no one loves feedback. That’s fine. I don’t either really. But will you take it nicely? Will you incorporate it? Are you going to be passive aggressive while doing it? Have you ever been told not to “cut off your nose to spite your face”? These are questions you should ask yourself).

😺 Influencer marketing is constantly changing, so we’re looking for people who are curious and eager to learn. Let’s say, for example, a client mentions in passing how they’re doing whitelisting on Instagram (and we’ll assume you don’t know what that means). Are you going to just nod your head and say you understand it when you don’t? Or, are you going to jot down a note, do some research, and become a whitelisting expert for the next client conversation? Because we need the latter.

👩🏽‍💻 If you’re working remotely, you need to actually be working. No one likes a freeloader.

👆🏾 Are you ambitious? It’s not a requirement, but if you are… there’s lots of room for career growth. Plus, we like to hire our managers from within the team, so there is a very clear path to the next level (if that’s of interest to you).

Here at The Shelf, we truly believe it’s our differences that have allowed us to come together and form such a cohesive and all-encompassing whole. Our mission as a company is to help our clients stand out amongst the crowd… to be different and impactful. And since we’re a team made up of diverse people with all different backgrounds and experiences, we’re able to do this naturally. 🙋🏽‍♂️🙋🙋🏾‍♀️🙋🏼‍♂️🙋🏼‍♀️🙋🏾‍♂️🙋🏽‍♀️🙋🏾

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, status as a veteran, and basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class.

I could honestly go on and on (because I’m long-winded, in case you couldn’t tell that by now), but I’m going to stop here. The point is, you gotta have the chops AND play well with others. And if you’re giddy already, feeling like this job description is just so dead-on-b*lls accurate for you, perfect! We can’t wait to hear from you.

If you’re lacking a skill or two but still feel pumped, feel free to mention it in your cover letter. We’re a small company who’s big into personal growth and supporting up-and-coming go-getters!

Oh, and one last thing… Please add the word Toggle to your subject line when applying so that I know you read this entire post.