Is the Comms Jobs Market Frozen…or Are You?

First of a three-part series combining the thinking of our career columnists: Angee Linsey, Lisa MacMillan and Louise Thompson:

The communications job market feels strange right now. Not dead — but not exactly alive either. If you’ve been searching for a senior role lately and finding the process oddly unresponsive, you’re not imagining it. But according to our columnists, the problem isn’t the market. It’s the story being told — by organizations and candidates alike.

Lisa MacMillan describes the current landscape as an identity crisis on both sides of the hiring table. Organizations are posting roles that don’t quite reflect the jobs they actually need done. Candidates are presenting versions of themselves calibrated to a world that has already shifted. The result is a standoff dressed up as a search. Everyone is waiting for certainty that isn’t coming.

What makes this moment particularly acute for communications professionals is that it coincides with something the profession has been slow to acknowledge: mid-career talent is being systematically overlooked. MacMillan’s research is quite pointed. The most experienced, versatile practitioners — those in their 40s and 50s with deep institutional knowledge and the scars to prove it — are falling through the gap between entry-level pipelines and senior leadership appointments. The spotlight lands on emerging talent or C-suite arrivals, rarely on the capable professionals doing the most consequential work in between.

Angee Linsey adds another layer: even when experienced communicators are in the market, they often undercut themselves. Not through lack of skill, but through a failure of narrative. The career story they tell is backward-looking, credential-heavy, and anchored in what they’ve delivered rather than who they are now and where they’re headed. Linsey’s framework is deceptively simple — a positioning statement needs three things: a clear declaration of who you are today, an honest account of your motivations, and a credible articulation of what you want next. Most candidates, she observes, can manage one of the three.

The mid-career derailers Linsey identifies compound the problem. Waiting to be noticed. Defining yourself too narrowly by function or sector. Chasing the title rather than demonstrating readiness for the level. These habits don’t just stall careers — they make experienced candidates invisible in a market already struggling to see them.

MacMillan frames this as a narrative problem as much as a structural one. The professionals most needed — those who can navigate complexity, lead through uncertainty, connect internal and external reputation — are the least likely to package themselves in ways that make that case clearly. Meanwhile, organizations continue to recruit for roles that will look different within twelve months of hire.

The practical implication is this: the communicators who will move well in this market are those who get ahead of the identity question rather than waiting for the market to resolve it for them. That means updating not just the CV but the mental model of what you bring and why it matters now — not in the role you held three years ago.

It also means being honest about the signals. Linsey’s article on losing leadership confidence is a useful diagnostic even for those between roles. The signs that trust is eroding — being cut out of key conversations, wins met with silence, feedback turning vague — don’t only happen inside organizations. They happen in hiring processes too. Candidates who learn to read those signals, and respond with clarity rather than defensiveness, give themselves a meaningful advantage.

The market will eventually move. The roles will get clearer. But the communicators who use this uncertain period to sharpen their story, broaden their skills, and resist the pull of narrow self-definition will be better positioned when it does. MacMillan’s advice is blunt: narrative clarity matters more right now than a perfect CV. The question isn’t whether you’re experienced enough. It’s whether you can articulate why your experience is exactly what this moment requires.

That’s a communications problem. Which means, of all people, you should be able to solve it.

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Angee Linsey, Lisa MacMillan, and Louise Thompson are Strategic Columnists.