How to Hire a Communications Director: Guide

Most businesses appoint a Communications Director after an incident. A story they could not control, an internal announcement that went badly, an acquisition where nobody had thought about what employees would be told. The appointment is usually correct; the timing means it is made under pressure and often against the wrong specification.

This guide sets out what a Communications Director genuinely owns, how the role differs from marketing, when a business needs one, where the candidates come from and how to test the capability that matters most — which is rarely the one being interviewed for. It is written by Exec Capital, drawing on the Communications Director searches we run for listed, private equity-backed, regulated and owner-managed businesses, and it is meant to be used before the job description is written rather than after the shortlist arrives.

What a Communications Director owns

Five areas. Very few candidates are strong across all five, and knowing which two or three you need is the whole of a good brief.

External and media relations. Press, trade media, commentary, spokespeople and the relationships that determine whether a journalist calls you before publishing rather than afterwards. Slower to build than boards expect and immediately valuable when needed. In practice this also includes deciding who speaks for the business, preparing them properly and saying no to coverage that would not help.

Internal communications. Consistently the most underrated element and the one that most often causes the problem the appointment was made to solve. Restructures, acquisitions, leadership changes and difficult results all land internally first, and an organisation that hears things from the outside stops trusting the inside. Good internal communications is less about newsletters and intranets than about equipping line managers to explain decisions before the rumour does.

Crisis and issues management. Preparation more than reaction — scenario planning, holding statements, spokesperson training, escalation routes. The capability is judged entirely on the day it is needed, which is why it must be tested at interview rather than assumed. A business with no rehearsed escalation route is relying on whoever happens to pick up the phone.

Corporate reputation and public affairs. Positioning with regulators, government, industry bodies and the communities a business operates in. Weighting varies enormously — central for a regulated utility, marginal for a B2B software business. Where it matters, it is a long game of relationships and consultation responses rather than announcements.

Investor and financial communications. Results announcements, analyst relationships and market disclosure. For listed companies this is a specialist discipline with regulatory consequences, and boards should be aware that the governance framework treats reporting as a board responsibility — the UK Corporate Governance Code expects annual reporting to be fair, balanced and understandable, and the communications function supports that rather than owning it. Larger listed businesses often separate this into a dedicated role; where they do, it is worth reading our notes on Investor Relations Director recruitment alongside this guide, because the two hires interact closely.

Communications Director or Marketing Director?

These are different disciplines with different candidate markets, and conflating them is the most common structural error in these briefs.

A Marketing Director is accountable for demand — generating awareness and pipeline that converts to revenue. Success is measurable in leads, cost per acquisition and share.

A Communications Director is accountable for reputation and understanding — whether the right audiences hold an accurate view of the business. Success is harder to measure and usually visible only in its absence.

Some businesses combine them under a CMO or a Chief Communications Officer. That works where the audiences overlap heavily — consumer brands, for instance. It works poorly where the business faces regulators, unions or public scrutiny, because those require a different professional instinct from campaign management. A marketer is trained to amplify; a communications professional is often paid to judge when to stay quiet.

The practical test: if your main risk is not being known, that is marketing. If your main risk is being misunderstood, that is communications.

When a business needs one

The business has become externally visible. Scale, a consumer-facing proposition, a controversial sector or simply size brings scrutiny that agencies alone cannot manage, because agencies are not in the room when decisions are made.

A transaction or transition is coming. Acquisitions, a listing, a founder stepping back, a significant restructure. Each has a communications dimension that determines how much friction it generates. The cost of getting it wrong shows up in staff turnover, customer churn and, for listed businesses, the share price.

Internal trust has degraded. Employees hearing significant news through rumour or press is a structural failure, not a one-off. It is also the most common trigger and the least often stated in the brief.

Regulatory or public exposure has increased. New permissions, public-sector contracts, environmental or planning scrutiny, or a sector under political attention.

If none of these applies, a capable agency and a clear owner on the executive team may be enough for now. If two or more apply, the absence of senior in-house judgement is usually already costing the business something, even if nobody has put a number on it.

Where the candidates come from

Agency backgrounds. Directors from PR and corporate communications consultancies. Strong on media relations, campaign structure and crisis process, with breadth from working across clients. The gap is usually internal communications and the patience required to change an organisation from within rather than advise it from outside.

In-house corporate affairs. Heads of Communications in larger organisations seeking broader scope. Strong on stakeholder management, board interaction and internal audiences. Test their appetite for a smaller function without the support structure they are used to.

Journalism. Former reporters and editors who moved across. Frequently the strongest at anticipating how a story will be received and at writing under pressure. The gap tends to be organisational — managing a function, budgets and long-term programmes.

Public affairs and policy. Government, regulator or trade body backgrounds. Essential where the business faces political or regulatory scrutiny; less relevant where it does not.

Professional standards for the discipline are maintained by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, whose chartered practitioner status is the recognised senior credential, and the PRCA represents the consultancy side. Neither membership is a substitute for judgement, but chartered status does tell you a candidate has submitted to peer assessment and a code of conduct, which is useful evidence in a discipline with no mandatory licence.

The strongest shortlists usually mix at least two of these backgrounds. A brief that only considers agency directors, or only former journalists, narrows the field before anyone has tested what the business actually needs. Our communications director recruitment work deliberately draws on all four pools for that reason.

Assessment: testing what actually matters

Communications candidates are, almost by definition, good at presenting themselves. A conventional competency interview rewards exactly the skill you can least rely on as evidence. The questions below are designed to get underneath the presentation.

“Tell me about the worst issue you have handled. What did the first two hours look like?”

Ask for the first two hours specifically. It forces detail — who they called, what they said publicly, what they refused to say, when the CEO was briefed. Detail is hard to invent, and this is the capability you are actually buying.

“Describe a time you advised a chief executive not to say something, and they said it anyway.”

The role has authority without hierarchy. What matters is how they handled being overruled, not whether they were right. Candidates with no such example have either never advised at that level or have learned not to push.

“How did you know whether internal communications was working?”

Look for measurement — pulse surveys, manager cascade completion, questions asked at all-hands. Answers about “keeping people informed” describe activity, not outcome.

“Write a holding statement for this scenario, in fifteen minutes.”

Give them a realistic scenario from your own sector at second interview. Writing quickly and accurately under time pressure is the core craft, and it is remarkable how much variation this exposes among candidates who interview equally well.

Two further points on process. First, involve the people the role will actually serve: the chief executive, the CFO if results communications sit in the remit, and the HR Director if internal communications carries significant weight. Second, take references on behaviour in difficult moments specifically. Boards tend to interview on external media — who a candidate knows, what coverage they secured — yet the appointments that earn their keep usually do so internally: the restructure that lands without losing the people you wanted to keep, the acquisition where the acquired team stays. None of that generates a cutting anybody can show you, so you have to ask about it directly.

Writing the brief

Weight the five areas. Say what proportion is internal, external, crisis, public affairs and investor relations. A candidate strong in public affairs and weak internally is the wrong appointment for a business whose problem is employee trust, and both of you would rather know now.

State the reporting line and the seat. To the CEO with executive team membership is the arrangement that makes the role effective. Reporting into marketing is common and workable for product-led businesses, but be honest about it in the brief. The value of a Communications Director is decided by whether they are in the room when a decision is taken or told about it afterwards; a business that appoints one and then excludes them from the executive discussion has bought an announcement service.

Describe the agency arrangement. Whether they inherit agencies, can change them, and who holds the budget. Candidates will ask, and vagueness here signals a role without authority.

Name the trigger honestly. If the appointment follows a specific incident, say so. Strong candidates want to know what they are walking into and are not deterred by difficulty — only by discovering it late.

Define the first-year outcomes. Two or three concrete results, such as a tested crisis plan, a working manager briefing cascade, or a stakeholder map with owners. Outcomes give the shortlist something specific to respond to and give the board a fair basis for judging the appointment twelve months in.

Cost, timeline and structure

Reward varies with sector exposure more than with company size. Regulated, listed and consumer-facing businesses pay a premium reflecting the scrutiny; B2B businesses with limited public profile sit lower. Where investor relations forms part of the remit, price against that market rather than general communications. For broader context on how director-level packages are structured, see our directors’ salary guide, and expect us to benchmark the specific brief rather than rely on a generic figure.

Plan for the full process rather than just the search. Agreeing the brief, running the search, two interview stages and an offer take time, and notice periods of three months are common at this level, with longer periods not unusual for candidates in listed businesses. Starting the search only once the need is acute is the main reason these appointments end up rushed.

Not every business needs the role full-time. Where the requirement is episodic — a transaction, a listing, a specific programme — an interim appointment covers it without a permanent commitment. A fractional arrangement suits businesses that need senior counsel a few days a month alongside an agency for delivery, and it can be a sensible way to test the shape of the role before committing to a permanent hire.

Listed and regulated businesses: the disclosure dimension

In a listed company, communications is not only a reputational matter. Under Article 17 of UK MAR, an issuer must disclose inside information to the public as soon as possible, and may delay disclosure only where the strict conditions for delay are met. A careless briefing to a journalist, an early internal announcement or a leak during a transaction can therefore become a regulatory issue as well as a story. The FCA’s market abuse pages set out the regulator’s approach and its expectations of issuers.

That changes the profile you need. A Communications Director in a listed business must be comfortable working alongside the company secretary, the CFO, the company’s brokers and its lawyers; must understand insider lists and how announcements are released through a regulatory information service; and must be disciplined about who knows what, and when. Candidates who have only worked in private companies can learn this, but it should be tested at interview rather than assumed.

Businesses authorised by the FCA face a related discipline: financial promotions and customer communications are regulated, and outcomes under the Consumer Duty depend partly on whether customers understand what they are told. In those firms the Communications Director needs a good working relationship with compliance, and the brief should say so.

The first six months

Most of the value of a new Communications Director is created, or lost, in the first six months. A sensible plan covers three things in order.

• Listen before broadcasting. Meet the executive team, the main agency, key journalists and a cross-section of staff before changing anything visible. The temptation to launch a new narrative in month one is strong and usually premature.
• Fix the crisis basics. An escalation route, a holding statement library, trained spokespeople and a clear rule on who can speak to media. These are unglamorous and they are what the board will be relying on if something goes wrong in month three.
• Agree how success will be judged. A short set of measures for internal and external audiences, reviewed with the chief executive each quarter. Without this the role drifts towards activity reporting.

The chief executive’s part in this matters as much as the appointee’s. Invite them to the executive meetings where decisions are shaped, not just the ones where they are announced, and the role will do what it was hired to do.

Four mistakes to avoid

Hiring for media contacts. Relationships transfer less well than candidates imply, and a contact book is a depreciating asset. Judgement does not depreciate.

Appointing during the crisis. Use an interim or an agency to handle the immediate issue and run the permanent search properly afterwards. Appointments made in week one of a crisis are made against the wrong specification.

Excluding them from the executive team. Covered under the reporting line above, and the single most consequential structural decision in this appointment. Settle it before you make the offer, because it is very difficult to change later.

Conflating the role with marketing. Different disciplines, different candidate markets. Combine them deliberately if you choose to, but do not do it by accident in a job title.

Frequently asked questions

What does a Communications Director do?

They own how the business is understood by its audiences — media and external relations, internal communications, crisis and issues management, corporate reputation and public affairs, and in listed companies financial communications. The weighting between those varies substantially by sector.

What is the difference between a Communications Director and a Marketing Director?

Marketing is accountable for demand — awareness and pipeline that converts to revenue. Communications is accountable for reputation and accurate understanding. If your risk is not being known, that is marketing. If your risk is being misunderstood, that is communications.

Should a Communications Director report to the CEO?

Ideally yes, with a seat on the executive team. The value of the role depends on being present when decisions are made rather than being told afterwards. Reporting into marketing is workable in product-led businesses but limits the role’s reach.

Can we use an agency instead?

Agencies deliver campaigns and provide surge capacity well. What they cannot do is sit in the executive discussion, know the business from inside or manage internal communications credibly. Most businesses end up with both — an in-house director and agency support.

How do you test crisis capability at interview?

Ask for the first two hours of the worst issue they have handled, in detail. Then set a realistic scenario from your own sector and ask for a holding statement in fifteen minutes. Writing quickly and accurately under pressure is the core craft and it is difficult to fake.

Can a Communications Director be hired on an interim or fractional basis?

Yes. Interim appointments suit a defined event such as a transaction, listing or live issue, and fractional arrangements suit businesses that need senior judgement a few days a month alongside agency delivery. Both can convert to a permanent appointment later.