CWC: Building Connections in Comms

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Q: How did you start Comms Jobs?

I started comms jobs at the end of 2021 when there was a reorg at the company I was working for and unfortunately, a lot of my colleagues were laid off. And I guess I was in the lucky group that was not laid off. But the impact of that whole situation along with the survivor guilt was so real. So in talking to folks who had lost their job at that time, I was like, what can I do for you? A lot of them had been with that company for 15-20 years. Some of them that was the only company they worked for throughout their whole career. So what they told me was that they had no network beyond the company and didn't know where to start.

I could relate to this as when I moved to the US in 2016 I had to rebuild my network from scratch as well. Even if I wanted to direct some people to folks that I worked with in Chile, a lot of them didn't even speak English. I attended every single Happy Hour, dinner, and whatever I could find in the area to start meeting people and connecting with folks on LinkedIn. That's why I'm forever grateful for LinkedIn because it allowed me to reach out to these people and start conversations. I was very intentional about building my network and curating it to focus on comms.

So what was happening was that a lot of these people that I had connected with, or I started following in 2016 they were posting jobs, saying, like, Hey, I'm hiring. Hey, my company's hiring, or, Hey, there's this role in my team. And I said, look, I'm seeing all this, I'm gonna start reposting them under #commsjobs, so follow that, and then, you know, you can see what I'm seeing without the need for you to be connected with those people, right? And that's how it started.

It kind of sparked this whole thing, people started engaging in conversations, and they started tagging and then people started messaging me asking me to post jobs. And now the hashtag has, I think, around 3000 followers. And then my followership also increased significantly. What I always said was my main goal was for people to start their applications with a human connection. Because what happens? And there's a lot of talks about how broken the talent acquisition business is, or the process more than the business, but the process of applying is just so broken, and you're throwing all your hopes and expectations into this void that no one's seen, no one replies, no one's answering. When you start from a human connection, and you reach out and you actually know that there's someone real behind an opening, it just changes the interaction, changes the the odds, and, and I love to see that I was right with that.

Just this morning I got a message this morning, saying thank you for posting that, because I was able to connect with the hiring manager, I was able to connect with the recruiter, I was able to connect with someone in the team who referred me, and that changed everything. It's very lonely out there and I feel like creating this, this community has helped people to see that they're not alone, that there's a lot of people in the same boat, and open the doors for reaching out and asking for help when it's needed, and it's a beautiful thing.

Q: How has it impacted your own connections and network?

Well, we're going to the very basics of human needs, which is the need for connection, for community and that's what keeps me doing what I'm doing. People ask me all the time if I'm monetizing this and I'm not. I just do it on my own with whatever downtime I have. The value I get out of it is all the connections and people. Some of them have become genuine friends - I've made real friends out of this, which is super important to me.

Q: What do you think about the job market today?

There are a lot of new barriers job seekers face I think. As you know Indeed and LinkedIn are the big platforms that people go and try to use as job boards, right? But not every job is listed on these platforms, because you have to pay for those and it's expensive, right? Yeah, and not every company has the budget to do that, so there are a lot of people who are advertising jobs that are only posted on the company's website and it's not advertising on LinkedIn. So besides, you know, breaking those barriers for job seekers, I'm also giving visibility for companies that don't play in the same field as the big companies.

And also, you know, for teams that are working in smaller companies, it opens their eyes to way more candidates, you know, and people that are coming from other areas and sometimes, as a candidate, you see possibilities in places that you never thought about. There is so much crossover with marketing and comms also that, I think that's that's huge as well, for people to see that there are possibilities. Maybe they had started their career in marketing, but they're going to make more of a transition to comms.

As for the future, I just want to see the community keep growing, and again, I think it already bigger than me. I opted to use the hashtag because I wanted it to be shared. I wanted it to be something that anybody could use and follow and not really engage in any commitments with anyone, right? Yeah, and I feel like that started to happen and I hope that that continues growing this community where there's some tacit agreement across comms professionals, where they have a job opening, and they share it under this hashtag, so a lot of people can see it.

The other thing I want to do in the future is keep bringing more people together to connect with each other in real life. I feel like now that there's this virtual community where we know that there's interest, and we know that there's this hunger for connecting with each other to take it to that level and continue to create gatherings would be amazing. We have already hosted several in-person events with more on the horizon.

?I'm happy that it's helping people. That's the most important thing.

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What gets you out of bed every day, within your job and within your life, what's motivating you to do what you do?

What motivates me is to help people out. I like to think about myself as a people person and that's really what motivates me every day in the work that I do as a communicator because I believe that the work that we do as communicators, even in corporate communications, is to connect people. That's the basis of it all. And so to carry that through my job and outside of it is really great.

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Tell me a bit about your experience with executive comms?

So I've had executive comms experience in different parts of my career. When I started I wasn't explicitly doing exec comms, but looking back, I definitely was doing forms of it. I was supporting the general manager of a project and would go and talk to communities around that project to convince them that we were there to do good, right? So I was writing speeches and writing presentations, I was doing social listening and understanding what communities were saying about certain things, and then helping this spokesperson for the company go and talk to those people. Then I went into HR communications and would support as we communicated different benefits and talent acquisition strategies and prepare leaders to discuss this. And again, it wasn't called executive comms, but it certainly was.

In more recent years, I got to the point where I started supporting C-suite executives, and I feel like that's when it starts getting its name like, you know, before that, you do executive comms for people that maybe are lower in the level or the organization, but when you get to a point where you start to support C-suite, then it's called executive comms, right? But honestly, what you do is really the role of a generalist. We're like that communications business partner. Why? Because when you're supporting someone in the C-suite, you're doing internal comms, functional comms, fielding PR requests, and really anything that is targeted to that executive, you have to deal with it.

It requires the background of a generalist because you need to understand external, social media, and speech writing - you need to know how the communication channels that you have in the organization will play into things. So it's, it's very broad. So that is one take. The other take is that, again, could sound a little cliche, but I feel like as AI and technology is becoming more mainstream and and embedded in everything companies do there's this need for organizations to look and act more human.

I believe it's going to be the currency in the future. How human you are? And I feel, because of that there's been an uptick in this role of executive comms, because there's an understanding that a lot of leaders in organizations are not able to, or don't have all the skill set, to make the most of their human image, and they need support in executing that in a better way. And I think there's way more understanding and appreciation for the work we do now more than ever. I feel like we're starting to see what happens when that our role is not there.

QUICKFIRE

Coffee, cocktail, or mocktail?

Coffee, always iced with almond milk. Sometimes I add a bit of sweetener.

Favorite publication to read??

I enjoy the Happy Monday Club newsletter for its positivity and human touch. I also like the Big Yellow newsletter by Comms Creatives for its humor.

One word your family and friends would use to describe you?

Friends would describe me as a “super-connector,” and my family would say I’m “dedicated.”

Favorite season?

Fall. I love the beautiful colors and the mild temperatures, especially after experiencing the distinct seasons in the US.

Oxford comma: yes or no?

100% yes! I will defend the Oxford comma passionately.

Underrated comms job skill?

Being nice to work with. Kindness and mindfulness about others’ lives outside of work are crucial.

Will AI take your job someday?

No. AI will automate tasks we don’t want to do, allowing us to focus on more important aspects of our work. We need to view jobs as a set of tasks rather than titles.