Career Profile of a Canvasser
Job Descriptions December 3, 2012Canvassers inform the public about charitable causes, political efforts, goods and service by connecting with people in neighborhoods and shopping areas. They are characterized as an interviewer or salesperson depending on the work being performed and the organization they work at.
Job Profile of a Canvasser
Canvassers are employed by various government entities, political organizations, private companies and nonprofit groups in distributing information, soliciting donations, selling merchandise and collecting data. Canvassers require a combination of skills such as listening skills and the ability to provide great customer service; they must have the marketing expertise to help convince people to volunteer information, support a cause, or purchase a good or service.
Often, canvassers on the job get busy trying to establish contact with the public; they spend their time walking through shopping malls, school campuses or neighborhoods and try to establish connections with people who form the target market of the canvassers’ hiring organization.
Job Responsibilities of a Canvasser
A canvasser’s job responsibilities can vary depending on the need of a specific employer. However, every canvasser needs certain personality traits to perform their job efficiently. Specifically, they must be highly professional when they are engaging directly with the public. Some hiring organizations expects them to establish contacts on their own while others give canvassers a list of potential donors or customers. Some canvassers are expected to promote a cause or a product by employing informational materials devised to facilitate such promotion.
They spend the majority of their time on the door to door canvassing and in the process, have to stay on their feet for extended periods. Canvassers employed by political and nonprofit organizations are required to approach people for donations aimed at funding drives; alternatively, such canvassing could be aimed at attracting volunteers.
Market research organizations who hires canvasser expects them to preserve the integrity of the hiring organization by maintaining accurate records of the findings from their research.
They are required to be quite familiar with the cause or service represented by the organization that will make responding to inquiries more efficient. They must have the ability to support interviewees, donors or customers to complete questionnaires, forms or surveys.
Wage Potential of Canvassers
There is insufficient information available in the form of job statistics relating to canvassers. However, such information has been presented as a combination of statistics relating to interviewers and door-to-door workers (source: www.onetonline.org). In May 2010, a door-to-door sales worker earned an average wage of $10.67 an hour; interviewers earned $13.86 per hour on average (source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov)).
