Corp Comms and PR people pls come in

[jaydon84]

Hi folks, I'm new here

Just wanted to find out what the market is paying for Corp Comms and PR positions these days.


I didn't make it to the course I wanted in local Uni so I went to MDIS to do a Business Management degree. Got a 2nd upper.

I joined the workforce at age 25 after graduation.

I'm currently 30 and I'm now in my second job working as a Corp Comms Exec in a non-profit organisation for the past 2.5 years. I do not have prior experience in Corp Comms and PR industry, so I learnt everything from scratch on the job. I'm currently drawing $2.8K per mth.

Wondering if I'm being paid OK or is the market paying more these days?

Please feel free to share.

Cheers.

yup, sounds about right

[jaydon84]

Hmm, are there no corp comms and PR people on this forum?

Hi all,

I am currently sourcing for a Corporate Communication Manager for a FMCG company. The incumbent must have a minimum of 6 years of relevant experience working for a company in the FMCG sector in a same capacity. Please do not hesitate to drop me an email at [email protected] if you are interested in the position. All applications will be kept highly confidential.

Thanks and Regards.

[spindr]

I'll check in. I've 10 yrs of experience in PR/advertising/comms, currently doing in-house comms in the healthcare industry. My monthly salary is $4.3K. I'm not sure whether I'm under/over/fairly paid, but since I got a 20 per cent increment when I moved to my current position, I'm not complaining.

I would like some advice/insights on corpcomms job in various sectors, namely in GLCs, and private sector. Would also want to hear about Investor Relations jobs.

Can forum users here share how corpcomms work is like in GLCs like Changi Airport, Singtel, Ascendas, and MNCs; and whether my background/experience below would be useful?
How is the pay like? Job scope?

As for Investor relations job, would they want someone like me with corpcomms background looking for a career switch? How different is investor relations from the usual corpcomms work? What would the pay be like? Is it extremely demanding, in the sense that public listed companies would always push for their IR officers to promote and say positive things abt the company; and then when share price drop are these IR guys at risk of losing jobs?

some background :
I graduated with a comms degree from local uni. I have been working in the corpcomms dept of a major Stat board for 3 years plus now. I handle mostly media relations work (press release, announcements, media events, day to day media queries and forum letters etc). I am comfortable with the fast pace environment. There is always lots to do and we need to prioritise our work. I do not fancy moving to corpcomms in Ministries as I've seen for myself how they work.

[killuagon]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I would like some advice/insights on corpcomms job in various sectors, namely in GLCs, and private sector. Would also want to hear about Investor Relations jobs.

Can forum users here share how corpcomms work is like in GLCs like Changi Airport, Singtel, Ascendas, and MNCs; and whether my background/experience below would be useful?
How is the pay like? Job scope?

As for Investor relations job, would they want someone like me with corpcomms background looking for a career switch? How different is investor relations from the usual corpcomms work? What would the pay be like? Is it extremely demanding, in the sense that public listed companies would always push for their IR officers to promote and say positive things abt the company; and then when share price drop are these IR guys at risk of losing jobs?

some background :
I graduated with a comms degree from local uni. I have been working in the corpcomms dept of a major Stat board for 3 years plus now. I handle mostly media relations work (press release, announcements, media events, day to day media queries and forum letters etc). I am comfortable with the fast pace environment. There is always lots to do and we need to prioritise our work. I do not fancy moving to corpcomms in Ministries as I've seen for myself how they work.

I think not so much about risking the lost of jobs. At the end of the day, share price is not something the IR people can control. So it's not fair to tag it to their KPI.

In addition, the IR folks must know the operation's business, financials at the back of their hands. Especially when you are dealing with huge MNCs that are listed. There will be tens of banks covering your company so when they ask you about the financial statements, you need to be able to answer.

Finance background will thus be necessary.

Originally Posted by killuagon

I think not so much about risking the lost of jobs. At the end of the day, share price is not something the IR people can control. So it's not fair to tag it to their KPI.

In addition, the IR folks must know the operation's business, financials at the back of their hands. Especially when you are dealing with huge MNCs that are listed. There will be tens of banks covering your company so when they ask you about the financial statements, you need to be able to answer.

Finance background will thus be necessary.

I was working in the IR department in one of the big listed blue chip Singapore company and I disagree that much financial knowledge is needed in this job. IR department is more about organizing functions like analyst briefing, site visits, agm, investor roadshows etc. They also do things like handling press releases, collating power point presentation slides and manning investor relations helpdesk.

In terms of handling investors, your main job is to answer standard queries like rights issue procedures, dividend payments, action deadlines etc. For more technical questions on business matters, the job is more about forwarding the queries to the right person in finance to do the answering. Most IR people are marketing and PR background and have little or no knowledge in finance or investment operations of the business.

If let’s say an investor ask you about the the basis to determining the impairment of goodwill, IR is neither authorised or expected to answer straight. You just need to forward to Finance and then cut & paste the answer and reply the investor. Similarly if someone ask about potential competitive erosion from new innovations, you forward them to the marketing or corp planning side and ask them to give you template answer.

When dealing with institutional investors in a formal setting, there will always be representatives from Finace or Business heads on hand to answer the in depth questions. IR only needs to memorise a few basic things like profit / revenue and margin numbers and some key customers and comeptitors. Nothing too specific.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I was working in the IR department in one of the big listed blue chip Singapore company and I disagree that much financial knowledge is needed in this job. IR department is more about organizing functions like analyst briefing, site visits, agm, investor roadshows etc. They also do things like handling press releases, collating power point presentation slides and manning investor relations helpdesk.

In terms of handling investors, your main job is to answer standard queries like rights issue procedures, dividend payments, action deadlines etc. For more technical questions on business matters, the job is more about forwarding the queries to the right person in finance to do the answering. Most IR people are marketing and PR background and have little or no knowledge in finance or investment operations of the business.

If let’s say an investor ask you about the the basis to determining the impairment of goodwill, IR is neither authorised or expected to answer straight. You just need to forward to Finance and then cut & paste the answer and reply the investor. Similarly if someone ask about potential competitive erosion from new innovations, you forward them to the marketing or corp planning side and ask them to give you template answer.

When dealing with institutional investors in a formal setting, there will always be representatives from Finace or Business heads on hand to answer the in depth questions. IR only needs to memorise a few basic things like profit / revenue and margin numbers and some key customers and comeptitors. Nothing too specific.

I agree. In fact, I'm not surprised that most of the IR people don't really know their Finance. However, in my company, we are expected to know our financials because we communicate a lot with the equity research analysts. Perhaps, that's why they like to consult us so much because few firms' IR know anything about financials. So the bank analysts can't be bothered with asking them the questions too.

Having said that, I think it's helpful to pick up finance because it's a very important skill and it helps you gel your operation knowledge to the financials. It will close the loop and makes things alot more easier to explain.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I agree. In fact, I'm not surprised that most of the IR people don't really know their Finance. However, in my company, we are expected to know our financials because we communicate a lot with the equity research analysts. Perhaps, that's why they like to consult us so much because few firms' IR know anything about financials. So the bank analysts can't be bothered with asking them the questions too.

Having said that, I think it's helpful to pick up finance because it's a very important skill and it helps you gel your operation knowledge to the financials. It will close the loop and makes things alot more easier to explain.

I think your exp is not the normal kind, if only more IR people are like you. I dealt with a lot of IR managers as a shareholder and most of them just read off standard answers from the FAQ script, you ask them a bit more they will taichi by saying will get back later. Very obvious they have no financial background at all. During 1 of the AGM I chat with the IR specialist and was quite surprise when she said she just recently transfered from HR event management side.