via Poynter:
After guiding Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and more since 2008 at the Cincinnati Enquirer, TBD (where we worked together) and The Huffington Post, Mandy Jenkins is moving on.
Congrats and that’s impressive. Why move on?
Mandy Jenkins: It’s just a time to move on. I’ve been doing this for a while and it’s increasingly becoming a young person’s job. I want to move past that. My goals, in the end, are much loftier than working in social media.
What’s next?
Poynter asks: But it sounds like it isn’t going to be “social media editor” type title?
Mandy Jenkins:Social media and community engagement will obviously be a big part of that
Alright. Changing roles but doing nearly the exact same thing. At least you’re bringing a lot of experience from the well respected Huffington Post group:
Poynter asks: You’ve been at HuffPost about 10 months, how has that been and what did you learn?
I’m not even going to read her answer because all I can think of is that she just finished setting up her email and Twitter accounts and then started looking for work someplace else.
This is not against Mandy or HuffPo. I see this every day in our industry. When are the Millennials going to start holding jobs longer than 6 months? Mandy has worked for a lot of companies in the last 8 years but her resume reads like every other Gen-Yer I come in contact with. I left two jobs earlier than I wanted to so I’m guilty of this too but giving someone an interview and asking serious questions like, “What did you learn in your 10 month stint?” is a complete joke. We should stop glorifying these short term job choices.
I respect someone more who stuck with a c-level company for 3-5 years than someone who got hired at Facebook and left 6 months later.
Also, if you call social media a young person’s job but you start at Huffington Post at age 30 doing social media, I think that’s a bit misleading. You define young person as college aged but, for you, that was 8 years ago. 30 is young but not by the definition exhibited in this article. Your definition of young sounds like 26. Starting a social media job at 30, by your definition is an old person job.
I’m pulling at straws now but the general complaint here is that for me to respect someone, they need to actually do something and doing something takes longer than 10 months.