I am currently looking to pivot away from my technical background into something more people-oriented like Community Management or online operations. For the past two years I have been heavily involved in moderating several medium-to-large subreddits. This was not just clicking a spam button occasionally. I was actively involved in drafting community guidelines and setting up automated moderation bots to catch bad actors and managing a team of about ten other mods across different time zones. We dealt with everything from massive coordinated spam attacks to sensitive user disputes and brand safety issues.
I have been an engineer for about seven years so my resume is very technical and full of BIM and Revit certifications. I am worried that if I put "Reddit Moderator" on my professional CV recruiters will just roll their eyes and think I spend all day in a basement fighting with strangers. On one hand the skills are definitely there. I know how to handle conflict I understand platform analytics and I have a proven track record of growing a digital community from scratch. I even developed a strategy to bypass bot filters and improve organic engagement which feels like it should be valuable to a tech company or a startup.
On the other hand Reddit still has a bit of a reputation problem in the corporate world. I am afraid that listing it might actually hurt my chances by making me look "unprofessional" or like I am prioritizing a hobby over a real job. I am thinking about phrasing it as "Digital Community Lead" or "Online Operations Consultant" instead of just saying I mod subreddits. Does anyone here have experience with this kind of transition? Is it better to hide the social media experience and just focus on the engineering leadership or is there a way to frame the mod work so it actually looks like a legitimate asset to a hiring manager?