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Does gender play a role in choosing better internal communicators?

heatheryoung Comments(9)

 Happy New Year to all my readers and friends!

 

Windmills

I was amused by a strange call today from a consultant. The consultant hired by a global multinational bank to select an internal communication professional was looking for a ‘male’ candidate and asked me if I was interested!

 

What took me even more by surprise was the inability of the consultant to provide a rational reason why a man was preferred over a woman apart from a very weak ‘the client wants it so’.

 

When I tried to probe further the consultant wasn’t able to defend the case and asked me to help her find a suitable candidate if I was not keen!

 

This episode highlights three clear gaps in India when it comes to identifying potential candidates for such a critical role within an organization.

 

One, the understanding of the domain and what internal communicators are capable of.

 

The second – a more serious issue of following a rigid methodology for selecting suitable candidates for such roles.  The current practice is to randomly call those who have uploaded their profiles on job sites or seek candidates via referrals. It reflects poorly of the state of recruitment marketing by firms looking for internal communication professionals.

 

The third – the most offending – a misconception that men can do a better job in this role than women.

 

Recruitment agencies should work as consultants in guiding organizations on potential skills sets for such roles, benchmark against how multinationals select candidates, coach potential candidates on the job’s expectations.

 

I also believe that human resources professionals and internal communicators have a role to play in educating consultants and providing guidance on selection. It is no wonder that there are mismatches when it comes to professionals joining the industry.

 

I am interested in your take. Post your thoughts here.

 

 

 

heatheryoung

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9 thoughts on “Does gender play a role in choosing better internal communicators?”

  1. Clearly such a specification would be illegal in Europe – and it wouldn’t get you very far at all anyway!

    I heard a recruiter in the UK comment once that something like 90% of internal comms people are women. However unscientific, this seems to be reflected in the gender split on the courses I run – frequently out of 20 delegates there will only be one man.

    There does seem to be a gender dimension – but I’m not sure where the causal factors are…

    Liam

  2. I would add something to Liam’s comment. Yes, that would be illegal but that doesn’t matter. Here in Hungary it is not a surprise if the recruiter ask the girl candidate about the family planning (i.e. child…). Don’t get me wrong here. That is illegal here also.

    By the way my personal experience is also the same related to the PR field. I study for my second degree (PR) and I have 27 women and only 4 men classmates.

    But back to our topic. If you are interested in my story – how I landed in my current job (internal communicator) here you can read it:

    http://behindthefence.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/tale/

    My point of view is that the gender doesn’t matter. The most important are the people skills and the willing to learn continuously (i.e. life long learning if you wish).

    Csaba

  3. I was always an advocate of providing equal opportunity to both the genders. In fact I personally feel that two candidates of different genders when found equal in all respects, the female is preferable. I HAD VARIOUS OCCATIONS WERE I HAVE DONE IT AND FOUND IT CORRECT.
    More than the gender, the grooming factor ,the institutional background, trainability etc makes the difference. evry thing being equal , the feminine gender is the one who will perform a shade better than the male.

  4. If at all gender counts, it is in those cultures where women are conditioned and thereby hindered by cultural values that restrict free and direct communication with male colleagues and seniors as also making eye contact with them. In such cases, an initial orientation training involving tips on professional internal communication for work purposes for both the women as well as the male employees would help. But in general, today it is accepted that women in fact are better communicators, and employees are more forth coming in expressing views on issues with them.

  5. As a recruiter I would not give preference to one gender over another but would rather look for strong communication abilities and more importantly attitude. In my opinion, it does not matter if the person is male or female but rather the person’s outlook and approach to an assignment.

  6. Anisu, we men should be pleased that someone is actually saying they want men in a communications post.

    Most companies prefer women for reasons that are not always logical. I remember when a big chip manufacturer (whose name I won’t mention, but it begins with the letter that comes after “h”) was recruiting a marcom manager some years ago, the HR agency actually told the men that enquired that the company was looking for a woman. Peter will vouch for this.

    Anyway, if you ask me, this is a fallout from the PR agencies who really believe that women can charm their press notes into the publications. Clearly, a lot of managers in these firms are under the same mistaken impression. The fact that companies prefer one sex over the other simply reflects the sleazy thinking of the people who are hiring.

    At the end of the day, both men and women can do the job equally well. As a former journalist, I can tell you that it did not make a difference who brought in the press release: man, woman or monkey.

    Deviah

  7. Deviah, thanks for making me laugh on the first day back on the job in ’09!

    Certainly, bias against gender is unacceptable. At the risk of making generalisations – while we do tend to see more women in comms jobs, the same can be said for HR. I wonder if HR professionals face the same kind of discrimination, or if they actually perpetrate it?

    Happy New Year!

  9. I will agree with Madhavi about more women opting for HR as a career. This got reiterated when I was a visiting faculty at a management institute and was teaching an Organization Development course. Out of a batch of 46 students, I had only 8 male students. On asking questions, the standard response that I had is that sales, marketing/finance are tough jobs…so guys are better at handling them. HR is relatively easy and is best handled by women as they are good at dealing with people.

    This was something that was noticed earlier in the outsourcing industry too…customer service jobs went predominantly to women while technical helpdesk jobs, men were preferred. Luckily, this does not seem to happen now!

    Honestly, gender should not really make a difference….but like Deviah says, it’s in the mind of the recruiter.

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