TikTok looks to fill key jobs in South Africa

By Agencies

• TikTok South Africa is currently hiring a Community Manager, a Communication Specialist and a Client Solution Manager in the country.
• The TikTok offices in Johannesburg is the company’s only physical African presence, the positions will also oversee operations in other African regions.
• Only one of the positions is asking for academic qualifications, with experience with social media, communications and TikTok itself more of a requirement.

Apart from reports that it may soon open an office in Kenya, the only physical African presence of social media powerhouse TikTok is in Johannesburg, South Africa. TikTok is once again looking to fill a few key positions in its South African team, including jobs for a Community Manager, a Communication Specialist and a Client Solutions Manager.

Among the latest jobs posted by the company, the Community Manager position, will oversee the TikTok community of users across the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region according to its job advertisement found on LinkedIn.

“The SSA Community Team are seeking a talented and enthusiastic Community Manager to join our team,” the company wrote.

“As a Community Manager, you will play a vital role in building and maintaining a positive impact on the content performance of our creator community. You will be responsible for managing a portfolio of creators developing strategies, and organizing regular activities that foster engagement and strengthen our relationships with our creators,” it explained.

The position will also work with other TikTok offices worldwide, including in Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul and Tokyo. The Community Manager position will manage a portfolio of creators, upcoming and established, to drive engagement and strengthen the company’s relationship with said creators.

They will also be expected to run events and build programmes to increase content performance, serve as a contact person for creators in order to help them with questions and queries about TikTok and its creator-specific programmes and plan and execute diversity and inclusion projects within the SSA community.

TikTok isn’t asking for any academic qualifications for this position, instead, it is focused on experience, especially in terms of content creation, social media strategy, public relations and media experience and a deep knowledge of the inner workings of TikTok as an app and a company.

The other two positions are a bit older, with the Client Solutions manager job posted only four days ago. This job entails the establishment and maintenance of long-term relationships with clients, such as businesses that may want to work with TikTok for advertising, for example.

It seeks experience in account management, and with working with advertisers, as well as the ability to analyse data and identify insights in the performance of ad campaigns. Whoever grabs this job will sometimes have to travel across South Africa and even internationally on behalf of TikTok.

Finally, the Communications Specialist spot has been open since last week and has the most applicants. This position will oversee South Africa and the entire Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) which includes Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Botswana, Tanzania, Angola, Lesotho, Eswatini and Malawi.

“Communications Specialist” is another way to say PR manager and the blurb explaining the post follows suit.

“For this role, you should have a proven ability to easily distill and communicate complex issues on a short deadline. The ideal candidate has excellent media relations skills, the ability to analyze opportunities and risks associated with media inquiries, and the strategic judgment to respond accordingly,” it reads.

Unlike the Community Manager spot, the job requires a relevant bachelor’s degree in communications, marketing, journalism or related, and at least five years experience in public relations or communications, such as work in a comms agency or similar.

To check out any of the three positions currently open, click here.

TikTok South Africa seems to be opening more positions by the week at this rate, so keep an eye out if anything catches your attention in the next few days. On LinkedIn alone, TikTok has over 4 200 jobs open across its global operations most of which were opened within the last two weeks.

According to Layoffs.FYI, TikTok owner ByteDance has laid off more than 5 000 employees in the last year, and it recently announced layoffs occurring in the TikTok gaming division. Despite this, it seems the social media giant is still looking to strengthen its position in international marketplaces, including South Africa.