One trend I’ve seen over the last year is that the increasing corporate buy-in to analyst relations means that hiring managers are increasingly looking for people to understand AR — even in roles that are not specific AR jobs.
In particular, product managers and solution specialists, who often interact with analysts, are increasingly finding AR to be an explict part of the roles being filled. Right now, for example, that is the case with a supply chain role at Oracle, PM jobs at Adobe, Compellent, DigitalGlobe and SuccessFactors, marketing programs vacancies at EMC and iUpload — and even for a consumer-savvy marketing SVP vacancy at a global leader in infrastructure software.
Of course there’s also strong demand for AR skills for traditional communication roles: Dell, EDS, Iron Mountain and Symantec need AR managers; Return Path need an AR-savvy corp comms head. One Bay Area software firm needs an Executive Communications Director to serve as the speechwriter for their executives: AR pops up in that role too.
This broader demand is useful in two ways: it ensures that the rest of the business better understands the role of AR, and it reduces AR’s tendency to be a career silo, by making it easier for people to move in and out of that function.
