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July 20, 2005 "Even though we've seen a rise in search assignments, the element of urgency is, for the most part, missing," says Dennis Spring, president of New York search firm Spring Associates Inc.
Demand has improved noticeably among financial-services firms, and searches for employers in health care also are increasingly common. By contrast, recruiting has tempered at telecommunications and industrial companies, as well as the agencies that serve them, recruiters report. "There are just fewer companies in these areas due to global competition," says Mr. Spring. Recruiters are seeing dramatic increases in demand at all levels: manager, director, vice president, chief communications officer and others, says Smooch Reynolds, chief executive officer of The Repovich-Reynolds Group, a Pasadena, Calif., search firm that specializes in public-relations and advertising recruiting. "Companies are rebounding very nicely from the recession," she says. Compared to this time last year, her firm's annual revenues are up by about 60%, she says. Despite the jump in openings, job hunters are far from supplanting employers' firm position in the driver's seat. The increase in opportunities is enticing many professionals who stayed put in jobs when business was shaky to step back into the employment market, says Mr. Spring. It's also luring back professionals who had left the industry, as well as layoff victims. "The competition among job seekers for the new positions has never been stiffer," he says. Recent compensation trends reflect this dynamic. Annual salaries for corporate and agency executives grew on average by 5.3% and 3.6%, respectively, in 2004 from 2003, according to a recent survey from Spring Associates. Mr. Spring says he expects salaries to increase at about the same rate in 2005. "Salaries increase noticeably when jobs need to be filled quickly, which is not the case now," he says. While top-notch traditional PR skills remain critical, employers also are looking for candidates with new-media savvy, says David Moyer, president of Moyer, Sherwood Associates Inc., a retained search firm in New York. Senior PR executives need to be familiar with a range of communications vehicles, adept at spotting new ones as they evolve, and skilled in creating strategies for dealing with them, he explains. Candidates with expertise in Web blogs, online journals known as blogs, for example, have an edge, says Lisa Hempel, chief executive officer of Sparks PR, a San Francisco agency specializing in technology and consumer PR. "Blogging is an area starting to affect media and PR, and anyone who's got a little bit of a handle on that world can bring something very beneficial to an agency," she says. She recruited Candace Locklear, 37, as a director in May, in part, she says, for her experience in blogs and other new media. "Candace came with blogger relationships and a natural interest in cracking the code of the blogosphere," she says. Ms. Locklear was a senior PR manager at Openwave Systems Inc., a wireless-software company in Redwood City, Calif., when she learned about the job opening at Sparks PR through a friend. That was a year ago. She spoke informally with Sparks executives in the months that followed. When her boss and several other employees resigned after Openwave realigned its business strategy, she says, she agreed to interview at Sparks. By changing employers, her salary grew by about 10%, she says. Sparks PR recruited four other senior executives earlier this year, reports Ms. Hempel. The 24-person agency expects to hire four-to-six additional senior staffers by the end of 2005, nearly tripling its annual hiring activity from 2004, she adds. According to Ms. Reynolds, candidates with financial acumen continue to be in high demand. Due to the tighter financial-reporting regulations required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, "companies are more cautious about the way they communicate financial news to Wall Street and other constituencies," she explains. Not enough candidates have strong financial backgrounds, because "historically, the communications profession has been more connected to journalism and the nonanalytical side of business," she says. Ms. Reynolds is helping a Midwest health-care company with $4 billion in annual sales recruit a senior director of corporate and financial communications, a newly created position. The ideal candidate will demonstrate financial acumen and have a master's degree in business administration, she says. The job, which opened in March, pays about $150,000 in annual base salary, plus a performance-based bonus, she says. Several candidates have been identified and the company is close to making a decision, she adds. Companies are being more selective during the hiring process, says Mr. Spring. The raft of corporate scandals, he says, has heightened their awareness of the image they project and the role that PR plays as the voice of the corporation. "Having the ideal background and the right chemistry isn't going to be enough anymore. You must demonstrate that your personal and business values match the company's values," he says. Recruiters say search assignments are taking longer to complete, about 90 days or more compared to last year's average of 30 to 60 days. "Companies are being much more careful about whom they hire -- interviewing multiple candidates, who are then interviewed by multiple staff members, and doing reference checks on potential candidates, sometimes even before interviewing them," says Mr. Spring. Text 100 Public Relations, a PR agency in the technology sector based in San Francisco, hired Nicole Kenyon as director of global marketing communications in March after five interviews with about a dozen senior executives. The recruiting process lasted more than two months, she reports. Ms. Kenyon, 32, was a marketing manager at Porter Novelli, an international PR agency, when she learned about the job from a Text 100 recruiter she met at an industry conference in November. "Nicole represented a mix of practical experience and ambition to grow in her career, along with a passion for life, not just work," says Bob Winslow, president, North America, for Text 100. Mr. Winslow says about 75 professionals were hired at Text 100's more than 25 offices world-wide in 2004, an increase in hiring of 17% compared to 2003. The agency expects to grow at about the same rate in 2005, making its total employee count about 475, he adds. Ms. Kenyon says she wasn't looking for a new position, but liked that the opportunity involved travel, and, by switching jobs, her salary increased significantly.
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