Last week, during their daily peruse of LinkedIn, the In.Comms team stumbled across a post from a rather disgruntled comms professional, Janet Edgecombe:
“What on earth is going on with comms recruitment? I’m more of a lurker and occasional commenter. I’m seeing job notifications for head of internal comms roles. But when you read the job description it's internal, external, public affairs, channels, marketing, social media, events. Those are all different jobs. All for 50k a year. Since when did we go from 'comms is king' to comms is a sweep up of roles. Feels like we’ve gone back 25 years. Who is writing these job descriptions?”
We immediately ran to the comments, the majority of which were in full agreement that job descriptions for comms jobs are getting wildly out of hand.
“It seems they need a whole department but are willing to invest only one specialist's salary. How are they going to achieve all their business goals and objectives?” said Gvantsa Kikalisvhili, communication manager at Munich International Ladies Association.
Stefanie (Stevi) Antosh, chief of public affairs for the United States Air Force, responded with: “And yet expectations of the deliverables are what you’d get with a full team running that stack, not the diluted results you get when one person is doing it all. A single person can only do so much in a day.”
Jo L, marketing and communications manager at training provider Babington, responded: “It’s just unbelievable at the moment. Companies are seeking unicorns and low-balling salaries to boot. And I don’t know when it’s going to change.”
This sentiment was echoed by 99Writers, an organisation that optimises CVs based in New Jersey, NY. It replied: “Looks like companies want a Swiss Army knife, unicorn and superhero all rolled into one for the price of a butter knife. Next they’ll want someone who can also make coffee, fix the printer and predict the weather!”
Internal comms specialist and content writer Caroline Blum hit out directly at recruiters, saying: “The job specs are being written by those who know little about comms. And then they recruit accordingly.”
Several respondents placed the blame in the hands of AI. Michelle Archer, a corporate consultant and business coach, said: “AI is writing them. No wonder companies ‘can’t find’ good candidates. They are trying to fill four roles. It’s an impossible ask. Even if you are a bit of a unicorn, you still get passed.”
Ket Patel, founder of Change Reactions, simply wrote: “Human powered AI slop?”
They have their opinions and we have ours. But what do In.Comms readers think?
Do you agree that recruiters have fundamentally misunderstood the role of comms and are therefore writing job descriptions that ask too much of a singular person? Is AI totally to blame?
Or do you perhaps have a different view? Is there a very good reason for ads of this nature? Are you a recruiter who can see positives in this, perhaps?
We want to know what you think. Email us with a 250- to 300-word response to this topic for a chance to feature in an upcoming In.Comms Big Question piece.