Strictly Internal | Issue #17

45+ new jobs at Amazon, AmEx, Capital One, IBM and more. Plus: A subscriber shares tips after 26 job interviews

Author

Kevin Blasko
August 29, 2024

Welcome to Strictly Internal #17! 45+ new internal comms jobs for you, plus a handful of great transformation / change comms roles. From Amazon to Crocs, to top banks and the world’s first fusion power plant (Helion), a wide range of companies in the US, the UK and Canada are looking to hire internal comms experts like you. Good luck!

🌟 Special feature today: Subscriber Sarah Harvey shares top tips for securing a new internal comms role. Sarah just landed a new job (congrats Sarah!)…but not before she conducted 26 interviews and applied to 600+ roles. Check out her advice 👇!

Plus: a new study linking psychological safety interventions in the workplace to increased revenue and a look at the role of employee magazines in the internal comms toolkit.

Let’s go…

New internal comms roles

Subscriber stories

Subscriber Stories

Sarah Harvey: How I landed a new internal comms job

I recently started a new job, but before that, I interviewed with 26 companies, applied for over 600 roles, and had my hopes dashed more times than I can count. I believe in redeeming situations, so let me share with you the few lessons I learned. They aren't the “standard” advice (frankly, some may be controversial), but hopefully, these points will help someone else find their next internal comms job.

1. Go local. Remote positions have hundreds to thousands of other applicants, and spoiler alert: There are a lot of great internal communicators out on the market right now. Every interview for a remote position came down to splitting hairs. In one case, a company dropped me from consideration because of my past experience using Google Workspace versus Microsoft 365. Local companies have more flexibility when hiring and room to let you grow after getting familiar with the company.

2. Use AI to your advantage. Have a great resume that's short enough to give to hiring managers AND have a resume you leverage AI to customize to get through an ATS. I provided a bot with the job description and asked it to make it into experience points. Then, I put that in a relevant experience section of my resume and edited it for accuracy. You still have to back up what is in that resume, but this helps your qualified resume to hit the right keywords. This almost doubled my interview requests.

3. Don't limit your applications to your network. I have a wonderful network…fabulous, widespread — but it didn't help me land a job. It kills me to write that, but most of the time, I didn't even have HR reach out for a pre-screen. Focus more on getting through that ATS and those in-office or hybrid roles.

Sarah Harvey is the Communications Manager at a local (to her) media and real estate company. Reach out and connect with her! (Her views are her own)

New transformation & change comms roles

New insights

  • “Organizational performance can be improved by viewing psychological safety as a trainable skill that individuals develop with practice,” say the authors of this article in the MIT Sloan Management Review. The researchers highlight a Nordic financial firm that achieved a 25% revenue bump due to psychological safety interventions. Internal comms has an important role to play in improving psychological safety in an organization…this one is worth a read!

  • “Is the staff magazine making a comeback?” asks internal comms expert Jenni Field in this very good blog post, where she shares a variety of perspectives and some recent polling data. I think the main takeaway here is don’t confuse tactics with strategy…if you have a compelling business case for an employee magazine, you should go for it! (just like you would with any channel)

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