Google Boosts Social Strategy With "Head of Social" Hire; Acquisitions To Be Expected
Google is looking to reshape and boost its social media strategy through the hire of a “Head of social”, GigaOm reported, citing a recruiting letter the website obtained.
In order to do so, Google has already mandated an executive recruitment firm and stated in the letter its intentions for this new role, admitting that “this is a new and very strategic position, as Google knows it is late on this front and is appropriately humble about it.”
“In Google’s view, conceptually, there are two ways to tackle social, each impacting who may be successful in this senior post: 1) building an innovative offering specifically in this area; or 2) developing the capability and integrating social into Google’s existing portfolio”, the search engine giant explains in the letter.
So far, Google has already tried to make forays into the social world but has met very little success, be it with Orkut or Google Buzz – we all know how Buzz was received and how privacy issues plagued its launch. Besides, Google maps and Google search, as well as Blogger and Gmail are peripheral tools that Google has rolled out without ever managing to set up house in social media per say.
Reading the job description, one cannot but wonder whether external growth – i.e. the acquisition of a third-party social site — is on the cards and if so, on what timeline. After all, the search engine is looking for a corporate development manager at its Mountain View headquarters and the definition of this role is to ‘identify and evaluate acquisition opportunities, drive team decisions, lead the execution of deals and help to manage the integration and performance of our acquisitions once the deals have been completed.”
It is not entirely clear either whether Google wants to fill the position internally or if it is firmly decided to hire from outside the hothouse.
So if you are looking for a job in social media, you might want to try this or look at Facebook who’s also recruiting for a number of positions, including the strongly awaited role of head of privacy for Northern and Southern Europe.
Good luck if you apply to any of those !