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• Channels and New Media
• Measuring Your Impact
• Professional Development
• Change Communication
• Manager and Leader Communication

Strategic Partners

10 November 2008

What recruiters want from comms candidates

Change experience, strategic writing skills and "punchiness" required.

by Annie Waite, Global Editor, the Internal Comms Hub.

"As a relatively new profession, it's not uncommon for an internal communication professional to have worked in a number of corporate functions before taking on internal communication as their main responsibility," says VMA Group’s Internal Communications Career Survey 2008-09.

“Particularly in internal comms, it’s not a bad thing to move around” said a VMA senior consultant Rebecca Tarry, drawing on the findings of the survey.

Earlier this year, the survey questioned more than 1,000 communications professionals across Europe on the current status of the internal communication (IC) market and found that the top 3 factors that encourage internal communicators to leave an organization are:

1. the opportunity to broaden their role scope;
2. the challenge of a new industry; and
3. the opportunity to work more closely with senior leaders.

Six attractive comms attributes
Divulging the full survey results at an event in London last week, a VMA Group associate director, Charlotte Butler (pictured, right) and Tarry listed the 6 following key attributes that IC candidates need to possess to increase their appeal to a potential employer:

1. Tenure and background: “You need to be able to demonstrate clearly the transferable skills you’ve gained from working within other functions,” said Tarry.
2. Relationship building: “Candidates need to have sales skills, the ability to present well, get in front of people to make connections and forge relationships,” said Butler, who also advised candidates to “pre-empt a potential move by getting this experience on your CV now.”
3. Gravitas: “You need to be able to demonstrate your credibility to ensure senior leaders become advocates of IC,” said Tarry, who pointed out that “punchiness” is also vital. "Punchiness is having the presence to make an impact quickly, the credibility to influence and the confidence to 'upset the apple cart' when appropriate," said Tarry. Punchiness is hard to measure at an interview situation, but increasingly IC is becoming a coaching role and communicators need to combine this with practical, technical skills, Tarry advised.

   Top 10 skill deficits as perceived by VMA's clients
   1. Measurement
   2. Coaching senior leaders
   3. Writing (specific corporate messaging)
   4. Strategy setting
   5. Internal communications theory
   6. Influencing
   7. Social media development
   8. Negotiating
   9. Writing (online)
   10. Tactical communication planning

4. Writing skills: Writing is rated as the third biggest skills deficit among internal communicators as perceived by clients (see box, right). Communicators should have the ability to articulate something in a way that shapes opinions, attitudes and ultimately behavior, rather than just the ability to string a sentence together without any typos or grammatical errors. “It’s also important to be accurate in emails about any jobs for which you’re applying – and that’s just for us and we’re only recruiters!” quipped Butler.
5. Change experience: “This is now seen as expected rather than a nice-to-have skill. You need to show that you can understand change at a strategic level and that you’ve been brought onboard in change plans early on,” advised Tarry.
6. Professional development: “You should be attending events like this and Melcrum’s conferences, networking and benchmarking yourselves. Start remembering the ‘buzzwords’, recognize and use the IC vernacular – this comes across well in interviews,” said Butler.
   

   Candidates need to have sales skills, the ability to present well, get in front of people to make connections and forge relationships.

Get gutsy: grab leaders’ attention
Ellie Wallace, head of IC at LloydsTSB UK spoke at the event about a useful test she uses when hiring IC employees. “I get people to write 500 words on something they’re passionate about, and ask ‘Can you grab my attention?’ – the idea being that if they can grab mine, then they can also grab my boss’s, and the attention of employees too,” Wallace said.

Referring back to point 3 above, Wallace prefers to term punchiness as “having guts”, noting a book which changed her attitude and behavior in the workplace: Why good girls don't get ahead - but gutsy girls do (Kate White).

Given that the function is still fairly new and remains a "small world", Wallace’s final piece of advice for communicators? "Don't piss anyone off!"

How IC's role is changing
Gabriel Winn, head of internal communications at British Gas explained how he thinks the role of IC is changing within business. He picked up on the response to the question asked within VMA's survey: “Do you think internal communication as a job title adequately reflects what you do?”.

Only 46% said yes, and 54% said no. “IC has become less the poor relation to PR and the future for IC is bright,” said Winn.

Jaqueline Cameron, independent internal communication consultant, advised the audience to ensure their company's leaders were visible and available to answer employee queries. For those with CEOs who are just too busy for regular employee interactions, she suggested you boost your leader's visibility "by building the floorwalk into your town-hall meetings."

Cameron also noted that employees can make a massive difference to an organization if they rate or slate their company to friends and family – an organization’s potential customers. She posed the question “When every employee is a potential sales and marketing manager for your company, how can you not prioritize your employees?”

CEOs becoming key IC advocates
Communicators were asked within the survey how internal communications is viewed by senior leaders. A detailed breakdown of the responses reveals:

• Senior management were 'key advocates' of internal communications (20%).
• Senior leaders are "actively on board" with internal communication (39%).
• The senior executive "understood the importance of internal communication but weren't key advocates" (29%).
• Senior leaders don't understand the importance of the function (11%).
• Senior leaders are actively disengaged with the importance of internal communication (1%).

So, in total, 88% of internal communication professionals are working with senior leaders who, if not key advocates for internal communication, are certainly involved with, and appreciative of, the function's importance.

Becoming victims of our own success
Bill Quirke (pictured, below left), the Hub’s communication strategy expert explained why the 88% figure should actually worry communication professionals. “There’s good news and bad news,” Quirke said.

With senior leaders increasingly aware of the importance of communication “there’s never been a better time to be in IC – that’s the good news,” Quirke said. And the bad news? “Executives may not think that we’re doing it well. So, we’re a victim of our own success,” he warns.

It seems the survey respondents agreed with Quirke to a certain extent – note the latter of the top 3 challenges to be faced by the internal comms industry in the coming year:

1. shrinking budgets;
2. quickly evolving technology; and
3. maintaining credibility with the leadership team.

Quirke also believes that "90% of our time goes into low-value communication – drafting the thousandth version of the CEO’s Christmas letter when your organization’s actually desperate for a change in culture” – certainly something communicators should think about next month when the CEO comes knocking.

Benchmark your communication salary
The Hub reported earlier this year on the interim findings of this VMA research, which provided a salary breakdown across the different roles in IC.

The survey suggests that in the UK, heads of internal communication top the salary ranking with an average basic salary of £78K. Next is IC business partners with an average basic of £60K.

Senior internal communication managers can command an average basic salary of £55K, while the average basic salary for an IC manager came in at £45K.

Entry-level IC roles averaged at £30K basic salary (see Figure 1, below).

Figure 1. 2008 average IC salaries in £

In the full research just released, VMA reveals the highest-paid sectors for IC roles:
Most common job titles in communication roles
• Head of internal communication.
• Internal communication manager.
• Plus, a significant number of internal communication business partners – this trend perhaps reflects a growing need for strategic networkers within large businesses whose main responsibility is to ensure consistent messaging from a central function into individual business units or project teams.

1. Financial services
2. Energy
3. Healthcare
4. Pharmaceuticals
5. Professional services
6. IT
7. Telecoms
8. Retail
9. Utilities
10. Public sector

See sidebox, right, for the most common job titles found in communication functions.

Have your say
Do you agree with Quirke that "we’re a victim of our own success"? Or perhaps you're in an organization where senior leaders are actively disengaged with the importance of internal communication? Do you view such disengagement as a challenge, or as a signal it's time to find a new job? Share your thoughts with us on the survey results.

 

Recommended resources:
How does your internal communication salary match up?

Melcrum report: How to review communication for cost and efficiency
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