This Is What It's Like Competing For An Influencer Job
I learned the hard way that social media is just a public pissing contest where skill means nothing compared to popularity.
Everyone has a different idea of what our ultimate dream job would be. If the opportunity ever arose to compete for it, we’d pounce without thinking twice, right?
In professional industries, it’s typical for the most skilled and most tenured candidate to be considered for the position. That’s pure logic.
A surgeon, for example, wouldn’t land a job based solely on how many ‘likes’ he has on Facebook. He’d be assessed on his education, skills, and ability to save lives. If you were a patient, you’d hope to hell this is true.
But in the social media world?
Logic takes a flying leap out the window. Skill and experience are replaced with popularity pretty much every single time.
I once participated in a country-wide competition for my absolute dream job. The opportunity would be life-changing for whoever landed it, but as I found out on the tail end of the race, it reeked of popularity bias.
The candidate who landed the position didn’t know the difference between there, their, and they’re. But damn, she looked good in a bikini.
It was like swallowing a burrito-sized pill and choking on it.
Was I bitter? Yup. I hate sounding like a crusty old cow, but I must admit, it stung like lemon juice in a paper cut with a dash of salt on top for good measure. But now, I’m too old mature and I no longer cling to events that don’t serve me.
The Dream Job
In 2014, during the peak years of my travel writing career, the island of Tobago launched a competition seeking a writer and adventurer to represent the destination.
The compensation for this gig would be $30,000 plus all expenses paid for a 60-day social media and blogging campaign. Go ahead and choke on that math for two months’ worth of work-cation. 😲
Mind blown.
The competition was open to Canadian travel bloggers, and the offer seemed far too good to be true. It felt like the position was created exclusively for me, given my background.
At the time, I had been independently representing another Caribbean island for many years. I knew everything there was to know about highlighting all aspects of tourism and adventure on a small island. For this reason, I figured I would have an edge.
The first leg of the race was to create a 30-second video outlining why you’d be the best candidate. Competitors were required to upload their videos to YouTube, complete the online application, and hope to be shortlisted as one of the top ten finalists.
The shortlist would be chosen by a panel of travel industry professionals, including the Tobago Tourist Board.
On the day they announced the finalists I nearly crapped my pants. An email notified me that I’d been selected. It was one of those moments where your body goes numb and rubbery for a minute.
Being short-listed out of hundreds of applicants was exhilarating and incredibly validating.
After being selected, the top ten then had to wait for news about the next leg of the race. We could only speculate about how the competition would proceed.
On the day our judges announced how the winner would be selected, my heart dropped straight to the bottom of my flip-flops.
The winner would be determined solely by votes 🙄
Not skill, not experience, not longevity in the game — just votes.
The reason I loathed the idea of a voting competition wasn’t because others may have a bigger following than I did. It was because I couldn’t believe a tourist board would wager $30,000 on a method that’s so easy to buy, beg, borrow, and steal.
Let’s face it. Anyone can purchase internet voting power. For example, back then, any schlepp with money could get onto Fiverr.com and find someone to vote thousands of times through different IP addresses.
I’m not saying that’s what finalists did, but the fact that it was possible cheapened the entire experience. I studied my fellow competitors, I knew we were all qualified to some extent. The competition should have put our SKILLS to the test, not our begging power.
A flooded Parrottee Beach on Jamaica’s south coast right after torrential rains. ©️K. Keller
I wasted no time soliciting votes from my thousands of followers and fans on my travel blog. Immediate friends and family voted daily and shared the shit out of my campaign all over social media.
People who knew me drove to several different locations with different IP addresses each day to cast more votes.
People who didn’t know me voted for me just because my contacts asked them to.
The only genuinely fun part about it was the media coverage I drummed up through my local news channel. I was the only finalist in my city, which made it a newsworthy item.
Overall, the entire experience felt fake, fabricated, and fraudulent.
I would have rather been judged on previous work, past writing, industry references, and testimonials. You know? Actual feedback on me as a person rather than my ability to beg.
Miles of abandoned beach on Jamaica’s south coast. ©️K. Keller
At the end of it all, I placed fourth out of 163 applicants country-wide, and although I felt extreme disappointment, I was very proud of how I competed.
We have no idea who was actually the most qualified for the job because we never got the opportunity to find out. Votes don’t speak of experience.
I think I cried the day the winner was announced. It was humiliating to have put so much pressure on my circle of voters, only to have it all be for nothing.
My journey with the contest didn’t stop there, though. I made a point of following the winner’s travels around Tobago to see what I had missed out on, and to see how she was doing with it.
I should never have bothered following her journey because parts of it were cringeworthy to my soul. She did a decent job on the assignments and definitely snorkelled more gracefully than I would have, but each time I saw a misused, misspelled, or misplaced word, I felt second-hand embarrassment that a tourist board was being represented that way. Especially with a $30,000 price tag.
I’m not perfect, not even close. But I have a kindred relationship with destination representation. Especially small destinations that rely on tourism for their economy.
The young woman who won the competition owned a gigantic, worldwide travel blog that specialized in nothing but collecting the most pins on the map. I felt like this gig was just a notch on her global belt.
From a tourist board perspective, I understand how they would want to choose a candidate who could gather a crowd and secure the most votes. Of course, they would see it as farther-reaching.
Whether the winner should have been me or not, I can’t say for certain. I just know that in the game of social media, popularity is always the clear winner. You need not worry about brushing up on your writing skills, especially if you look good in a bikini.
Be honest…do you think I sound like a poor loser? 😂😂 I’m a big girl, I can take the criticism!
Have you ever competed for a dream job? What was the job and how did it pan out? Did you handle your win or loss gracefully? LEAVE YOUR COMMENT BELOW!
