What skills are employers now looking for in communication professionals? I wanted to find out, so I analysed 948 communication job advertisements, says Hezron Ochiel, Deputy Corporate Communications Manager at Kenya Medical Training College, and Founder of Hezron Insights.
Writing remained the most common skill, appearing in 64.2% of the jobs. Leadership appeared in 46.3%, while strategy appeared in 40.4%
These findings confirm something communication professionals already know well. The ability to understand audiences, shape messages and communicate clearly still sits at the heart of the profession.
Then another pattern caught my attention.
Search appeared in 11.8% of jobs, while AI and automation appeared in 4.5% of jobs.
The advertisements were published in March and April 2024, when many organisations were still figuring out how generative AI would fit into professional roles. I see that AI figure as a useful baseline.
What would the same analysis show today?
Search Reveals an Interesting Divide
One of the strongest findings appeared when I compared communication roles.
Search-related skills appeared in about 25% of content and editorial jobs, compared with only 1.5% of PR and public affairs jobs.
That difference stood out to me because people often encounter an organisation through search long before they interact with its communication team.
What they find can shape how they understand and judge that organisation.
A PR professional does not need to become an SEO specialist. It helps, however, to understand how search and digital publishing affect visibility, as these systems can also shape reputation.
The Communication Professional is Becoming Broader
The findings point towards a more connected communication skillset.
Strong communication craft remains the foundation. Professionals also need enough understanding of digital systems to know how information is distributed, discovered and measured.
I describe this emerging profile as the Digital-Authority Professional.
This is a professional who understands communication and reputation while recognising how digital distribution, measurement and AI affect an organisation's visibility.
The idea is simple: understand how these technical areas connect with communication work and strengthen your overall effectiveness.
What Should Universities and Professionals Do?
Communication education should continue to strengthen writing, ethics, research and strategic thinking.
Students also need practical exposure to digital publishing, analytics, search and responsible AI use.
Professionals can take a similar approach by developing deep expertise in one area while learning enough about related disciplines to understand how they affect their work.
A PR professional, for example, may never manage search directly. Understanding what audiences find online can still help them see how reputation is being shaped beyond traditional PR channels.
Africa Needs its Own Evidence
The findings also expose an important African evidence gap.
The 948 jobs provide useful insights into employer expectations, but the dataset is heavily weighted towards the United States.
We therefore need stronger evidence from Africa before drawing conclusions about what communication professionals across the continent are being asked to know.
Are search, analytics and AI already appearing in African communication job descriptions? Are universities preparing graduates for these changes?
We do not yet have enough evidence to answer those questions confidently.
I have seen a similar gap elsewhere. In an exploratory test of ten public relations questions across three AI tools, no African PR source was visibly credited in the sampled responses.
That is why locally grounded evidence remains important.
Job advertisements offer one practical source because they show what organisations are actually asking communication professionals to do.
A future African Communication Skills Index could provide a systematic way of tracking the skills employers request across major African markets over time.
That evidence could help universities review curricula, employers identify capability gaps and professionals make better decisions about the skills they need to build.
The 948 jobs give us a useful starting point.
The next step is to build the African evidence we need to understand where communication work is heading and prepare our professionals before the market moves ahead of them.
For more information, visit www.hezroninsights.com. You can also follow Hezron Insights on Facebook, LinkedIn, or on X.
*Image courtesy of www.hezroninsights.com