Apparently I'm unique. And not just because one of my feet is two shoe sizes bigger than the other. (Yes, really. Yes, I do have to buy two pairs. And yes, it is expensive.)
I'm unique because if ever someone asks people at an internal comms event to raise their hand if they actually started their career in internal comms, I'm inevitably the only person that puts their hand up. My CV looks quite beautifully planned, even if it's more by luck than judgement.
Mostly, people come from other places. HR, Marketing, PR, Engineering, Dentistry, you name it. Personally I don't think it matters where people start out. Internal comms is largely common sense. You can learn the technical skills and knowledge and build up the experience. What really counts is the right attitude.
I once practically begged a PR person to take a job in my team. She was obviously fantastic at building relationships, motivated, bright and positive ... but she wouldn't take the role because she was worried she didn't have enough experience in IC. I'd spent all day seeing experienced internal comms people and I wasn't about to recruit any of them. I was gutted that I lost her.
Actually, I think it's a very GOOD thing that people come from other places, because we can learn a lot from them.
- PR people are fantastic at messaging. They're trained to hone in on three messages and boil them down into something short and memorable. I think they're much sharper than IC people on that front.
- Marketers are great at segmentation. They think harder about knowing audiences and connecting emotionally with them, and they're often data junkies. Most IC people I know think of research and measurement as some kind of nasty-tasting medicine. They know they should do it, but they don't like it. Marketers know the power of data and use it well to make informed decisions.
- HR people - I suppose it depends which part of HR. I did a brief stint in learning & development. Just long enough to do my stage one IPD (as it was then), train as a career coach, become a pretty good competence-based assessor and get familiar with learning styles and planning and running training programmes. All of which have come in very handy.
- People with business-based backgrounds think like business people and talk business language. They have instant credibility with business leaders and they remind us what we're doing here. It's interesting when we have business people on black belt that are just moving into IC roles. They're the ones that can instantly answer the quiz questions about financials.
I'm generalising of course, but I do think we gain a lot from people joining the profession from such different backgrounds. There are not many cookie cutter IC managers. Everyone brings their own experience and their own perspective.
Where were you before you found IC? How do you think it's shaped your approach? What have you learned from people that have come via different routes?
Sue




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