With so much change in the current corporate communications environment there’s little wonder by so many have taken interest in their teams’ skill development. The skills that historically made communicators successful (e.g., purposeful writing, creation of engaging content) are no longer sufficient to meet the dynamic needs of their businesses.

As it stands nearly 2000 individual communicators have taken CEC’s skills assessment to diagnose their strengths and weaknesses, as well as to see how they stack up against other CEC communication teams.

We at the CEC have been able to confirm something that we’ve long suspected — business partnership skills such as business acumen and critical thinking tend to be some of the biggest development opportunity area for communications, while traditional competencies tend to be strong.

This gap in business understanding has not gone unrecognized by Communications leaders.  During a recent CEC Annual Executive Retreat meeting, I was able to speak to a couple dozen Heads of Communication about these trends and the consensus was that their teams needed to look outside the classic communication talent pools (journalism and communications schools) to find the next generation of communicators.  These leaders talked about the need to find people with an expertise in business and interest in communication.

These conversations got me thinking about how we at CEC could support Comms teams in finding and assessing promising candidates.  How can you determine if these candidates have the requisite interest in and understanding of business?  An initial idea is to create an interview guide for Hiring the Modern Communicator.  So, that’s where you, our CEC members come in.

Has your team changes the way you seek out and screen applicants?  Do you have ideas on the way to look for good business AND communication thinkers?  If so, I’d love to hear from you.  Please send me an e-mail at jschott@executiveboard.com.