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Facebook recently announced that it will be adding some 10,000 safety and security workers who, among other responsibilities, will be watching out for objectionable online content. While the new employees may need some technical knowledge to do content review and other security functions, experts say there are also important non-technical skills that will be useful for work in these roles.

The new positions come as there is increased pressure on Facebook and other social media companies to self-monitor content and watch out for violent videos, objectionable ads (which may relate to politics or violence), and other problematic content, like that related to Russia's alleged interference in the U.S. 2016 presidential election.

As of now, Facebook and similar companies are reviewing content through largely self-regulation rather than U.S. government mandates—so it follows that those filling these new positions will likely need “general analytical skills,” Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, told Legaltech News.

“If the solution focuses on self-regulation rather than government mandates, then general analytical skills will remain most important,” he explained. “There are enough Americans with such general skills to meet the need.”

Levey confirmed that some degree of technical skills will be necessary for most of the additional staff positions. But “arguably,” he said, the “most important skills concern the ability to intelligently, analytically, and objectively assess the content of advertisements and related items on the company's site.”

“Particularly important for the new staff, given the political nature of most of the content in question, will be the ability to put one's opinions, feelings and ideology aside when assessing the veracity, intent, and source of the content,” he added.

Moreover, he called knowledge of hacking techniques “useful,” but not the most important skills for the positions.

Levey noted that Facebook will be adding the additional staff for, among other reasons, monitoring any fake social media accounts by foreign actors to interfere in American politics.

“The problem faced by Facebook and Twitter was primarily the use of fake accounts rather than any sort of traditional hacking by Russians or other foreign actors,” Levey said. “The former is also a more challenging problem in that it cannot be easily detected even after the fact. Thus, while knowledge of hacking techniques and related cybersecurity skills would be useful, they are not the most relevant hiring criteria for most of the additional staff.”

In his opinion, the new staff does not need “an extensive compliance/legal background at this point.” However, he added, “if the Honest Ads Act or similar legislation is enacted, along with a thicket of FEC [Federal Election Commission] regulations interpreting the legislation, then a compliance/legal background will become more important.”

Overall, Facebook has made security a priority for the company, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a recent post that “protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits… [and] it means strengthening all of our systems to prevent abuse and harmful content.”

“We're doing a lot here with investments in people and technology,” Zuckerberg added. “Some of this is focused on finding bad actors and bad behavior. Some is focused on removing false news, hate speech, bullying, and other problematic content that we don't want in our community. We already have about 10,000 people working on safety and security, and we're planning to double that to 20,000 in the next year to better enforce our Community Standards and review ads. In many places, we're doubling or more our engineering efforts focused on security. We're also building new AI [artificial intelligence] to detect bad content and bad actors—just like we've done with terrorist propaganda.”

The additional 10,000 people will be a mix of full-time employees and contingent workers, according to a company spokesperson. Among the 10,000 people will be 1,000 added to the company's global ads review teams over the next year, and Facebook also wants to invest more “in machine learning to better understand when to flag and take down ads,” according to a Facebook post from Joel Kaplan, Facebook's vice president of global public policy.

Moreover, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed that many of the new employees are likely to work on cybersecurity.

Yet, if Facebook and similar companies want new employees to have cybersecurity-specific skills, “then there is somewhat of a shortage of people with the necessary skills, particularly if employers want people with a specific cybersecurity background or education rather than just more general computer-related technical training,” Levey said.

“However, this may be a temporary shortage, given that the number of people seeking degrees or training in cybersecurity is rapidly growing now that it has become a hot field,” he added.

In fact, in a recent Tripwire survey on cybersecurity staffing more generally, it was revealed that 79 percent of respondents said the need for technical skills among security staff has increased over the past two years. Among the specific technical skills highlighted were network monitoring, IT fundamentals and vulnerability management.

On the other hand, participants in the same survey also said that “soft skills” are important when hiring for their security teams. Some 72 percent of participants said the need for soft skills has increased in the last two years. The survey showed that 21 percent said soft skills are more important than technical skills when hiring staff. These soft skills included analytical thinking, good communications, troubleshooter, strong integrity and ethical behavior, and ability to work under pressure.

“One in five respondents said their organizations have already hired professionals with expertise not related to security over the past few years; about the same proportion of respondents (17 percent) expect to continue that practice through 2019,” Tripwire spokesman Raymond Lapena told Legaltech News. “With that in mind, the skillset for tomorrow's security team may look quite different than today.”

It is not surprising then that Leslie Sekerka, who teaches business ethics and is director of the Ethics in Action Center at Menlo College, located near Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, pointed out to Legaltech News that it is “essential” to prepare students in college with a “liberal arts education” before they focus on a specific field.

“It's not just training them in technology,” she said, when asked about the skills required to do content review for a social media company. “You need people with a broad background.”