Job Security for Communications Professionals

Hard on the heels of my last post about the job security communications professionals enjoy (as the executives we support struggle to rectify their poor reputation as communicators) comes a report from Ragan Communications asking what will happen to internal communications staff in a recession.

Author Michael Sebastian quotes authorities who claim

Communications efforts … are among the first areas targeted for cuts when companies retrench.

In 2001…Edelman fired 100 people; Temerlin Consulting lost 200 and more than 3,500 employees of Interpublic Group lost their jobs.

On the other hand, every risk is also an opportunity, and when the times are tough, the tough start communicating. The report focuses on Internal Communications (employee-to-employee) but the lessons apply to all of us – external, internal and public relations:

Show business savvy, think strategically, not just tactically.
Get political. Have a few crucial conversations with executives (in other words, take advantage of your ringside seat in the C-Suite, exploit the access non-communications staff can only dream of).
Be a communications superstar with more than one arrow to your bow: write speeches, communicate to employees and contribute to meetings. Say to your superiors, “How can I be of use here?”
Don’t whine. If you’re seen as a complainer, you might be one of the first ones out the door. And definitely don’t carry a sense of entitlement—that too will send you packing.

This is all great advice. I’d add that a continuing back-beat of any communications professionals career should be to keep one eye outside the enterprise. Be ready to launch yourself into the marketplace at a moments notice. It’s only going to make you more entrepreneurial and inherently more valuable to your current employers – as long as they see fit to keep you around, that is.

Job Security for Communications Professionals – Revisited

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