Corporate Communications and Public Relations Work in the United States: Responsibilities, Outputs, and Decision Boundaries Across Companies, Government, and Nonprofits
The report and its rights-limited research archive are available at Zenodo DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22555365. Download the research report PDF.
Author: MTF Institute Research Team
Report date: 6 September 2026
Report number: MTF-CF-RR-2026-09-06-31
Research geography: United States
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22555365
Recommended citation: MTF Institute Research Team. (2026). Corporate Communications and Public Relations Work in the United States: Responsibilities, Outputs, and Decision Boundaries Across Companies, Government, and Nonprofits. MTF Institute Research Report MTF-CF-RR-2026-09-06-31. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22555365.
Abstract
This descriptive study examines what current United States employers ask corporate communications and public relations practitioners to do, which outputs they prepare, and where their decision authority stops. A retained screen ledger contains 120 candidates: 100 accepted current U.S. vacancies and 20 exclusions. The accepted purposive sample comprises 73 company/private roles, 15 nonprofit or association roles, and 12 government or public-higher-education roles. The five requested areas appeared as follows: messaging in 59 records, media requests or relations in 74, content calendars or editorial planning in 25, issues work in 41, and communication measurement in 47. Additional capabilities included stakeholder advice or coordination in 62 records, writing or editing in 60, digital or social work in 42, and approvals or governance in 24. These counts describe the accepted sample only. Multi-label codes overlap, and unstated responsibilities remain unknown.
Across the sample, communications work is best understood as a governed operating cycle: clarify a request; identify facts, owners, audiences, and constraints; establish messages; prepare and adapt content; coordinate media and channel work; detect and route issues; preserve approvals and corrections; and report evidence with limitations. The operating core is portable across companies, government bodies, and nonprofits, but its purpose and control environment change. Corporate roles can introduce legal, investor, employee, commercial-claim, and confidentiality interfaces. Government work can introduce accessibility, records, public accountability, political-neutrality, and emergency-information routes. Nonprofit work can introduce mission accuracy, beneficiary dignity, consent, donor privacy, fundraising, and political-activity limits. The report therefore distinguishes preparation and coordination from high-stakes authorization and translates the findings into a four-module professional-education design.
Keywords: corporate communications; public relations; media relations; public information; nonprofit communications; messaging; editorial calendar; issues management; communication measurement; United States
Executive summary
The evidence base passed independent review and evidence-manager acceptance for research drafting. The frozen corpus contains 100 unique current U.S. vacancies, linked to a 120-row retained screen ledger with 100 accepted and 20 excluded records. All vacancies were checked at date-only precision on 6 September 2026. The sample is purposive and operationally diverse, but it is neither a census nor a probability sample.
All three requested settings are represented: 73 company/private vacancies, 15 nonprofit or association vacancies, and 12 government or public-higher-education vacancies. Separate denominators are essential because the company group is much larger. The report never treats a percentage from one sector as a national prevalence estimate or as evidence that one sector is inherently more mature than another.
Messaging appeared in 59 of 100 accepted records. Within sectors, it appeared in 39 of 73 company records, 10 of 15 nonprofit records, and 10 of 12 government/public records. This supports instruction in message choices, narrative alignment, audience adaptation, talking points, and evidence-linked claims, while showing that generic content production should not automatically be coded as message strategy.
Media requests or media relations appeared in 74 records: 52 of 73 company, 12 of 15 nonprofit, and 10 of 12 government/public records. The code covers more than inbound inquiries. It can include proactive outreach, journalist relationships, interview coordination, spokesperson preparation, media materials, and monitoring. Learners need a disciplined request-and-response process, but they must not infer spokesperson authority or permission to release protected information.
Explicit content-calendar or editorial-planning work appeared in 25 records: 18 company, 4 nonprofit, and 3 government/public. The evidence makes calendar operations material but not universal. A course should therefore teach a governed calendar that connects purpose, audience, facts, owners, formats, dependencies, approvals, accessibility, status, publication evidence, and review dates, without presenting calendar ownership as a requirement in every communications job.
Issues work appeared in 41 records: 28 company, 9 nonprofit, and 4 government/public. The coded work includes emerging-risk monitoring, reputation assessment, reactive communication, corrections, escalation, and crisis preparation. It does not grant authority to command an emergency, determine liability, disclose investigative facts, issue medical or protective-action advice, or decide whether a regulated claim is lawful.
Measurement appeared in 47 records: 30 company, 11 nonprofit, and 6 government/public. Employer language included monitoring, coverage analysis, engagement, sentiment, objectives, KPIs, dashboards, reporting, and decision support. The finding supports an evidence-led curriculum, but it does not show that every employer uses the same definitions or that communications caused revenue, trust, donations, behavior, votes, service uptake, or another organizational outcome.
The additional capability counts reinforce the operating model. Stakeholder advice or coordination appeared in 62 records, writing or editing in 60, digital or social work in 42, and approvals or governance in 24. The separate approval count is especially important: a communicator may prepare and coordinate materials without owning the final decision. Silence in a vacancy cannot be interpreted as proof that no review exists.
Role-level coding identified 6 early-career roles, 40 specialist individual contributors, 32 managers, 15 directors, and 7 executive-leadership roles. Education was required in 57 records, preferred in 6, and not stated in 37. Experience was required in 95, preferred in 2, and not stated in 3. These distributions support a beginner-to-practitioner course focused on production, coordination, judgment, and escalation. They do not imply that a certificate replaces a degree, experience, clearance, portfolio, or employer-specific qualification.
The report recommends a four-module, twenty-lesson course built around original workplace artifacts: communication intake and message-evidence briefs; media-request, fact-sheet, and content-calendar controls; issue-signal, escalation, interim-update, and correction records; and objective, metric-definition, evidence-limitations, decision-note, and AI-review artifacts. Company, government, and nonprofit variants should appear throughout, not as an end-of-course add-on. High-stakes work must teach recognition, preservation, pause, and routing to authorized legal, investor, records, emergency, privacy, HR, accessibility, regulatory, fundraising, political, and AI-governance owners.
1. Introduction
Organizational communication is often described through isolated outputs: a press release, a post, a statement, an interview, or a report. The accepted vacancies point to a broader operational function. Practitioners receive requests, assemble facts, coordinate owners, prepare messages, move content through channels and approvals, support media response, monitor developments, and report what the available evidence can and cannot show. That function can be portable across sectors even though the governing purpose and authority are not.
This operational framing is distinct from generic PR theory, paid advertising, social-media growth, event logistics, market-research fieldwork, executive commercial leadership, and political campaigning. Social media is one channel in the role; events are communication moments rather than an event-operations responsibility; research informs audience understanding without turning the practitioner into a survey methodologist; and executive communication does not make an early-career practitioner the owner of consequential decisions.
The primary research question is: What responsibilities, outputs, decision boundaries, and progression signals appear in current U.S. corporate communications and public relations work, and what evidence supports an original beginner-to-practitioner professional course spanning corporate, public-sector, and nonprofit contexts?
The study asks how the five owner-specified focuses—messaging, media requests, content calendars, issues, and communication measurement—appear in employer language; what changes across companies, government, and nonprofits; which outputs are suitable for developing practitioners; what distinguishes senior roles; where generalists must stop and route work; and how a new course can remain distinct from adjacent MTF offerings.
All principal vacancy findings are U.S.-specific. Non-U.S. or global marketplace and professional-practice material is labelled context and never enters the vacancy denominator.
2. Occupational and professional context
2.1 Occupational context
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics describes public relations specialists as preparing information for media, responding to media requests, helping organizations communicate with the public, monitoring public response, and maintaining organizational identity. Its occupational profile spans education, government, health and social assistance, grantmaking and social-advocacy organizations, professional associations, and PR services. These national occupational facts establish relevance and breadth; they do not establish the frequency of a duty in the vacancy sample or prescribe one employer's workflow. (source: bls)
O*NET associates the occupation with titles such as communications specialist, corporate communications specialist, media relations specialist, public affairs specialist, and public information officer. Its task model includes media-request response or authorized-spokesperson identification, web and social updates, media materials, community relationships, management advice, representative coaching, and internal and external publications. (source: onet) O*NET is occupational context, not a live vacancy census. Where adapted, O*NET database material is credited to USDOL/ETA under CC BY 4.0; modifications are this report's synthesis, and no USDOL/ETA endorsement is implied. (source: onet-license)
2.2 Public-sector context
The federal GS-1035 public-affairs standard covers advice, planning, implementation, and evaluation of communication between agencies and affected publics. It identifies releases, fact sheets, inquiry responses, briefings, and news conferences, and distinguishes routine work from sensitive or controversial matters requiring coordination and higher review. (source: opm) The standard is federal and dates from 1981; it is useful for durable role boundaries but not evidence of current tools.
The U.S. Department of Justice provides a bounded operating example: its public-affairs office responds to queries, issues statements, arranges interviews, and coordinates component offices while protecting investigations, individual rights, and national security. (source: doj) This is one agency's model, not a government-wide authorization rule.
Federal plain-language, accessibility, records, and FOIA sources add distinct controls. Digital.gov emphasizes audience definition, understandable wording, task-oriented organization, and comprehension. (source: plain) Section508.gov describes accessibility checks for federal social content, including meaningful alternatives and captions. (source: 508) NARA explains that official social content may be a federal record, while DOJ FOIA guidance places release and exemption decisions within authorized records processes. (source: nara) (source: foia) These federal rules cannot be generalized to every company, nonprofit, state, or municipality.
2.3 Nonprofit and professional-practice context
National Council of Nonprofits guidance frames nonprofit communication around mission, audience, authentic human stories, clarity, consistency, and trust. (source: ncn) AFP guidance adds high-level signals concerning accurate fundraising communication, donor preferences, privacy, and confidentiality. (source: afp) These are professional contexts, not laws or vacancy prevalence evidence. Identifiable beneficiary, donor, volunteer, or employee stories require appropriate consent, privacy, dignity, and program-owner review.
PRSA's ethics resources support high-level themes of accuracy, disclosure, fair dealing, confidence protection, conflict management, correction, intellectual-property respect, and human accountability for AI-assisted work. (source: prsa) PRSA material is copyrighted and is cited only at a high level; its code, decision models, cases, worksheets, and graphics are not reproduced.
AMEC's international Barcelona Principles V4.0 provide comparative context for objective-led, stakeholder-focused, mixed-method, transparent and non-AVE evaluation. (source: amec) AMEC is not U.S. law and is not vacancy evidence. This report does not reproduce its principles, sequence, diagrams, taxonomy, or tools.
2.4 Learning-intent and MTF portfolio context
Dated marketplace signals support learning interest but not U.S. vacancy demand, paid conversion, completion, or revenue. On 6 September 2026, public listings showed substantial engagement with PR and communication learning on Coursera, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, and an active PRSA certificate offer. These figures are volatile, global or unspecified, and remain context only. (source: coursera) (source: mtf-udemy) (source: udemy-independent) (source: linkedin-learning) (source: prsa-certificate)
The public MTF catalogue review found no exact direct-program duplicate, but material adjacency exists. The Chief Commercial Officer certificate includes a PR and crisis-communication section; Social Media Management owns platform and channel-growth practice; AI Digital Marketing owns acquisition, SEO, advertising, conversion, and revenue measurement; Market Research owns sampling and primary study design; Event Planning owns logistics and live delivery; General Management owns leadership communication; and the existing MTF Udemy PR course creates a high collision risk for generic PR fundamentals. (source: mtf-programs) The proposed direct course must therefore be independently authored around a cross-sector communications operating system and distinct workplace artifacts.
3. Method
3.1 Research design and unit of analysis
This study uses point-in-time qualitative coding of current U.S. vacancies to identify responsibilities, outputs, qualifications, operating interfaces, and decision boundaries relevant to a cross-sector corporate communications and public relations course. The unit of analysis is one deduplicated vacancy. The accepted corpus includes corporate communications, public relations, media relations, internal communications, external communications, public information, public affairs, and closely related integrated-communications roles.
Vacancy evidence answers a bounded question: what did these employers state in these current public postings? It does not establish everything practitioners do, everything an employer expects, the size of an occupation, or the probability that a learner will be hired. Occupational and professional sources answer different contextual questions and remain outside vacancy denominators.
3.2 Search, screening, and disposition
Search families covered corporate communications, public relations, media relations, external communications, public information and public affairs, internal and employee communications, issues work, editorial calendars, measurement, and company, government, and nonprofit variants. Sources included employer career sites and ATS pages, public-sector recruitment systems, nonprofit marketplaces, and a limited number of substantive readable public job pages. Access restrictions were respected.
The retained ledger contains 120 candidates. One hundred met the eligibility criteria and twenty were excluded. An accepted record required a current public U.S. vacancy, an identifiable employer and role, a U.S. location or explicit U.S.-eligible arrangement, and substantive organizational communications or public-relations work. Exclusions covered closed, expired, generic, inaccessible, non-U.S., duplicate, insubstantial, or out-of-scope pages such as marketing-only acquisition roles, journalism, technical communications, event logistics, fundraising operations, political campaigning, and active emergency-command work.
| Disposition | Records | Share of retained screen |
|---|---|---|
| Accepted | 100 | 83.3% |
| Excluded | 20 | 16.7% |
| Total retained screen | 120 | 100.0% |
Canonicalization compared URLs and employer-title-location combinations, using a requisition or job identifier where present. The accepted set has 100 unique IDs and 100 unique canonical URLs. The ledger has 120 unique candidate IDs and 120 unique canonical URLs. No accepted duplicate remains. The ledger is deliberately limited to retained candidates and is not represented as a complete historical export of every transient search result encountered during discovery.
3.3 Explicit-only coding
The frozen v7 codebook applies an explicit-only rule. A responsibility, tool, qualification, work arrangement, behavior, or decision boundary is coded only when a retained source span states it. Employer sector, title prestige, topic proximity, assumed professional practice, and generic coordination are not substitutes. A role at a law firm is not coded legal/compliance unless a legal or compliance interface is stated. A government role is not coded records or political activity solely because the employer is public. A calendar does not automatically establish organization as a soft skill, and writing a press item does not automatically establish media-relationship ownership.
Nine responsibility domains were coded: messaging; media requests and relations; content-calendar and editorial planning; issues; measurement; stakeholder advice or coordination; writing and editing; digital and social; and approvals and governance. The same record can receive several codes, so totals overlap.
The corpus also retains sector detail, normalized role family, auditable role level, government level where applicable, work arrangement, tools, separate education and experience structures, and eight behavior-oriented soft-skill categories. Eleven boundary codes identify explicit legal/compliance, investor, records, accessibility, privacy, emergency/security, HR/employee, political, regulated-claim, fundraising/donor, and AI/human-review triggers. A boundary code indicates a route or constraint; it does not confer authority.
Each coded domain, tool, qualification, soft skill, and boundary is linked to a minimal source-specific paraphrase and a source-section locator. The accepted corpus contains 995 attached evidence items: 434 domain items, 118 tools, 207 soft skills, 36 boundaries, and 200 qualification items. The independent read-back found no missing or orphan evidence keys, blank locators, non-paraphrase items, duplicate evidence strings, or long copied vacancy text.
3.4 Evidence quality and acceptance
The corpus developed through successive independent challenge and repair cycles. The final v7 independent review mechanically recomputed the 100-record, 100-URL, 120-ledger-row and 995-evidence-item controls; re-read the bounded V010 qualification repair; and confirmed regression of the earlier repaired records and V031 exact-requisition provenance. It returned PASS and opened the research-drafting gate. Final acceptance rests on that cumulative versioned review chain and the evidence manager's separate recalculation of the headline counts, which recorded no unresolved findings.
The binding vacancy corpus is evidence/vacancy-corpus-specialist-v7.json, SHA-256 d6c238e5953d7a240d6eafcbb99a58355ed8a859f4bf7a30639e47674d3ff237. Its codebook, ledger, reconciliation, independent review, and manager acceptance are listed in Appendix B. The frozen evidence bytes were not altered after acceptance.
No formal inter-rater reliability coefficient was calculated. Independent reviews were bounded regression and source audits rather than a blinded duplicate coding of all 100 complete vacancy bodies. The quality claim is therefore specific: the frozen structure, arithmetic, evidence links, and reviewed semantic repairs passed the documented gates. It is not a claim that qualitative judgment has been eliminated.
3.5 Denominators, missingness, and interpretation
The all-sample denominator is 100. Within-sector denominators are 73 company/private, 15 nonprofit/association, and 12 government/public-higher-education. One nonprofit record changes that sector percentage by 6.7 points; one government/public record changes its percentage by 8.3 points. Sector percentages are therefore descriptive and should not be ranked as if they were precise population estimates.
Not stated means that the retained vacancy did not state the requirement. It does not mean that the employer lacks the practice, tool, review route, or preference. Vacancy pages can omit routine work, compress several responsibilities, use inconsistent titles, or change after retrieval. All retrieval fields use the honest date-only value 2026-09-06; no unsupported time-of-day precision is claimed.
3.6 Rights, privacy, and research ethics
The research retains ordinary source metadata, canonical links, codes, concise factual paraphrases, and narrow locators. It does not reproduce full vacancy bodies, application forms, contact details, benefits text, logos, screenshots, or protected templates. Public availability was not treated as permission to republish expressive material. O*NET attribution is preserved under its stated licence, while PRSA, AMEC, AFP, provider, and marketplace materials are cited and summarized only at a high level.
The analysis does not identify applicants or employees, submit forms, bypass access controls, or collect personal contact data. Course implications use fictional, sanitized, authorized, or independently created cases and artifacts. High-stakes examples are framed as recognition and routing exercises, not as legal, financial, medical, emergency, privacy, investor, accessibility-certification, fundraising, political, or records-release advice.
4. Sample profile
4.1 Sector composition
| Sector group | Records | Share of accepted sample |
|---|---|---|
| Company/private | 73 | 73.0% |
| Nonprofit/association | 15 | 15.0% |
| Government/public higher education | 12 | 12.0% |
| Total | 100 | 100.0% |
The detailed coding comprises 61 private-corporate, 7 private professional-services, and 5 private government-contractor records. The nonprofit group comprises 7 nonprofit higher-education, 3 general nonprofit, 3 nonprofit research, 1 nonprofit financial-cooperative, and 1 nonprofit healthcare/higher-education record. The public group contains 10 government and 2 government higher-education records. Sector classification describes the named employer's organizational form; it does not imply one governance model within each group.
The company majority improves visibility into corporate and professional-services work but limits balanced sector comparison. Nonprofit and public cells remain large enough to demonstrate cross-sector transfer, yet too small to support confident ranking. The appropriate conclusion is that the accepted U.S. sample contains all three requested settings and shows a portable operating core with different controls.
4.2 Role levels and families
| Role level | Records | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Early career | 6 | 6.0% |
| Specialist individual contributor | 40 | 40.0% |
| Manager | 32 | 32.0% |
| Director | 15 | 15.0% |
| Executive leadership | 7 | 7.0% |
Role level is an auditable analytical classification, not a promise about organizational hierarchy. A specialist or advisor without explicit people or function leadership remains an individual contributor even when the title includes senior. Manager, director, and executive categories reflect stated scope as well as titles. The sample therefore supports a progression from production and coordination toward portfolio direction, executive counsel, governance, and interpretation without assuming that every employer uses the same ladder.
Normalized families are integrated communications (33), public relations (18), corporate communications (16), external communications (13), media relations (10), internal or employee communications (4), public information or public affairs (4), and digital or social communications (2). These are crosswalks across employer terminology, not replacements for the original titles.
4.3 Qualifications
| Qualification field | Required | Preferred | Not stated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Education | 57 | 6 | 37 |
| Experience | 95 | 2 | 3 |
Education and experience were coded separately. Alternative routes were retained rather than collapsed. For example, one public-information role allowed bachelor-plus-four, associate-plus-six, or eight years without a degree. V010 preserved a minimum of at least fifteen years of relevant business experience after independent source read-back. These details matter for transparency but do not make the course a substitute for employer requirements.
4.4 Source families and work arrangements
| Source family | Records | Source family | Records |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employer Workday | 50 | Employer Greenhouse | 16 |
| Employer career site | 11 | Public-sector NEOGOV | 9 |
| Readable marketplace | 6 | Nonprofit marketplace | 3 |
| Employer Lever | 2 | Employer SmartRecruiters | 2 |
| Public-sector SmartRecruiters | 1 | Total | 100 |
Workday contributes half the accepted sample, and ATS readability therefore shapes coverage. The use of substantive readable marketplace pages was limited and required exact employer, role, location, and current-opening evidence. V031 retains a separate readable corroborating source for exact Booz Allen Hamilton requisition R0243219 in McLean; the similar Herndon requisition R0243216 was explicitly excluded from its evidence.
Work arrangements were remote in 8 records; hybrid in 5; hybrid with an explicit in-office requirement in 3; explicitly in-office in 2; remote or hybrid depending on location in 1; and arrangement-request-may-be-considered in 1. Fifty-eight listed a location without stating an arrangement, while 22 were multi-location or otherwise unspecified. A listed office address is not evidence of an in-office requirement.
Government-level coding is not applicable to 88 records. The 12 public records comprise 6 municipal, 4 state, and 2 public-higher-education roles. Federal occupational and public-affairs sources are contextual and are not counted as vacancies.
4.5 Responsibility profile
| Responsibility | Records | Share of accepted sample |
|---|---|---|
| Media requests/relations | 74 | 74.0% |
| Stakeholder advice/coordination | 62 | 62.0% |
| Writing/editing | 60 | 60.0% |
| Messaging | 59 | 59.0% |
| Measurement | 47 | 47.0% |
| Digital/social | 42 | 42.0% |
| Issues | 41 | 41.0% |
| Content calendar/editorial planning | 25 | 25.0% |
| Approvals/governance | 24 | 24.0% |
The codes overlap. A role that writes press materials, handles inquiries, coordinates review, and reports coverage may contribute to four or more rows. The ordering is descriptive of explicit vacancy text only and is not an occupational hierarchy.
5. The portable communications operating core
The evidence supports an original operating model that links ordinary communications tasks without implying that every employer follows one standardized workflow. The cycle is useful because the same request can move through several evidence-backed responsibilities. A media inquiry may require fact collection, message choices, writing, stakeholder coordination, approval, issue escalation, channel adaptation, and later measurement. A planned employee update may use the same disciplines without any press activity.
5.1 Receive and clarify the need
The practitioner begins by identifying the requesting party, communication purpose, intended audience, timing, deliverable, factual owner, and decision owner. Media work in 74 records and stakeholder advice or coordination in 62 show that communications is frequently relational and deadline-bound. The appropriate learner output is a concise intake brief or request log, not unverified copy produced before the request is understood.
Clarification also tests whether the request belongs in scope. A paid-acquisition brief, legal opinion, records-release decision, clinical claim, emergency command message, investor disclosure, fundraising solicitation, or partisan communication may require a different owner. Routing is part of competent communication work, not a failure to respond.
5.2 Establish facts, sources, ownership, and constraints
Before message development, the practitioner separates verified facts, attributed judgments, assumptions, unknowns, and decisions still pending. The fact base should record a source, date, owner, permitted use, and expiry or review point. Twenty-four records explicitly name approval or governance work, but the absence of this code in other records does not show that those organizations publish without review.
This stage is where privacy, records, legal, accessibility, investor, employee, emergency, regulated-claim, donor, political, and AI flags must be recognized. A generalist can document the flag, protect inputs, preserve the request, and route the question. The relevant specialist determines the substantive rule or authorization.
5.3 Understand stakeholders and audience needs
Stakeholder advice or coordination appears in 62 records. Employers name executives, employees, product and program teams, residents, communities, customers, reporters, agencies, vendors, donors, funders, boards, researchers, and subject-matter experts. The operational task is not merely to list groups. It is to identify what each group needs to know or do, what evidence they require, which misconceptions or risks matter, which channel is usable, and who can authorize the content.
Audience research in an ordinary communications assignment can draw on existing service data, questions, feedback, past performance, expert interviews, and approved qualitative evidence. It does not turn social comments into representative public opinion or authorize intrusive profiling. Primary research design and personal-data processing require appropriate expertise and governance.
5.4 Make and document message choices
Messaging appears in 59 records. The code requires an explicit responsibility for messages, narratives, talking points, positioning, storylines, voice, or claims; generic drafting alone is insufficient. A message-evidence brief should connect each proposed point to a source and audience need, distinguish a core statement from support, identify prohibited or unresolved claims, and name the required reviewer.
The message is not a slogan detached from evidence. It is a controlled choice about what to emphasize, how to sequence information, how to express uncertainty, and what action or understanding is appropriate. Company variants may need product and investor routes. Government variants may need program authority, accessibility, records, and political-neutrality checks. Nonprofit variants may need mission, beneficiary, donor, consent, and fundraising review.
5.5 Prepare content and operate channels
Writing or editing is explicit in 60 records, and digital or social work in 42. Outputs include releases, statements, Q&A, briefing notes, speeches, newsletters, intranet copy, articles, web pages, emails, social posts, fact sheets, advisories, reports, and executive materials. A channel-ready artifact adapts a verified fact base to audience, format, length, accessibility, timing, and response needs without changing the underlying claim.
Channel execution should preserve version, source, owner, approval, publication, correction, and retirement information. A fast channel does not lower the evidence threshold. Reposting, shortening, visualizing, or translating content can introduce new meaning and therefore needs an appropriate check.
5.6 Coordinate media work
Media activity appears in 74 records across all three sector groups. It includes responding to inquiries, pitching, maintaining journalist relationships, arranging interviews, preparing spokespeople, developing media materials, and monitoring coverage. The activity should be decomposed because an employee who drafts a release may not own reporter relationships, and a practitioner who logs an inquiry may not be an authorized spokesperson.
A media-request record should capture requester identity, outlet, question, deadline, intended use, contact route, factual owner, issue flags, authorized spokesperson, response status, and follow-up. A spokesperson preparation sheet should distinguish verified facts, approved messages, likely questions, bridging points, unknowns, prohibited areas, escalation triggers, and correction steps. No educational artifact should invite learners to fabricate quotes, promise coverage, misrepresent independence, or disclose protected information.
5.7 Detect, assess, route, and update issues
Issues work appears in 41 records. Ordinary issue handling involves sensing a signal, checking evidence, considering affected stakeholders, assessing urgency and uncertainty, determining the correct owner, preparing controlled language, and documenting the next update. It is different from declaring or commanding an emergency.
An issue signal register should record the observation, source, time, affected stakeholders, known and unknown facts, potential impact, urgency, assigned owners, route, and next review. An interim update brief can state what is known, what remains under verification, what action is underway, when the next update is expected, and who approved it. A correction log should preserve the original statement, evidence of error, affected channels, corrected wording, approval, distribution, and learning action.
5.8 Measure and learn
Measurement appears in 47 records. The observed work includes objectives, monitoring, coverage analysis, engagement, sentiment, dashboards, KPI reporting, and evidence use. Measurement begins with the decision the organization needs to make, not with the easiest available platform number.
The operating cycle ends by comparing evidence with the objective, documenting limitations and missingness, identifying alternative explanations, and deciding what to continue, change, test, stop, or investigate. That decision can produce a new intake, message revision, calendar change, issue route, or evidence need, so the cycle repeats.
6. Five focal responsibilities
6.1 Exact cross-sector results
| Focus | All n=100 | Company n=73 | Nonprofit n=15 | Government/public n=12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Messaging | 59 (59.0%) | 39 (53.4%) | 10 (66.7%) | 10 (83.3%) |
| Media requests/relations | 74 (74.0%) | 52 (71.2%) | 12 (80.0%) | 10 (83.3%) |
| Content calendar/editorial planning | 25 (25.0%) | 18 (24.7%) | 4 (26.7%) | 3 (25.0%) |
| Issues | 41 (41.0%) | 28 (38.4%) | 9 (60.0%) | 4 (33.3%) |
| Measurement | 47 (47.0%) | 30 (41.1%) | 11 (73.3%) | 6 (50.0%) |
Percentages use their displayed denominators. Small cells, purposive selection, and unequal sector sizes prohibit prevalence claims or causal interpretation. The table shows that every focus occurs in every sampled sector and that explicit calendar work is less common than media work in this corpus.
6.2 Messaging
Messaging connects organizational intent, audience need, evidence, and action. The 59 coded records include message architecture, narrative, positioning, talking points, executive voice, key messages, and audience adaptation. Ares Management V017, for example, states narrative and top-line corporate-messaging work; Amazon V059 converts complex technology into narratives; and University of Rochester V067 adapts audience-specific content to key messages and editorial standards.
The primary learner artifact should be a Message Evidence Brief. Its fields can include communication need, audience, desired understanding or action, verified fact, source, core message, supporting point, uncertainty, prohibited claim, tone, channel adaptation, approval owner, and review date. This is distinct from a reusable fact sheet: the brief records a message choice for a situation, while a fact sheet supplies approved source material that can support several channels.
Messaging authority remains bounded. A learner can propose wording and document evidence. Legal positions, investor disclosures, medical or safety instructions, employment decisions, records-release judgments, political statements, fundraising claims, and emergency commands require designated owners.
6.3 Media requests and relations
Media work is the most frequently coded domain at 74 records. Company examples span product, enterprise, policy, professional-services, investor, and executive communication. Government examples involve public-information requests, program updates, spokesperson coordination, and public accountability. Nonprofit examples connect research, mission, community, and institutional experts with media audiences.
Incoming requests need authentication, deadline capture, issue screening, and ownership. Proactive media work needs relevance, accuracy, relationship discipline, and a clear distinction between earned editorial coverage and paid or controlled placement. Spokesperson support requires a verified fact base, approved messages, likely questions, unknowns, and stop points. Monitoring can identify errors, emerging narratives, or follow-up needs, but it does not grant permission to surveil individuals or treat online discussion as representative opinion.
Useful outputs include a Media Request Intake and Response Log, Channel-Ready Fact Sheet, pitch note, interview briefing, Q&A, approved statement, media list maintained under policy, coverage log, and correction record. Learners should be assessed on authentication, evidence, routing, clarity, and records rather than on whether a journalist publishes a story.
6.4 Content calendars and editorial planning
Calendar or editorial-planning duties appear in 25 records, almost exactly one quarter of each sector group: 18 of 73 company, 4 of 15 nonprofit, and 3 of 12 government/public. The similarity is descriptive, not a population estimate. The code includes explicit calendars, cadences, pipelines, publication schedules, roadmaps, and planned story sequences.
A professional calendar is an operational control rather than an idea list. It should connect purpose, audience, factual source, message or fact-sheet reference, owner, channel, format, due date, dependency, accessibility need, review flag, approver, status, publication evidence, measure, and review or retirement date. To remain usable, the artifact should keep a small main view and route detailed evidence to linked records.
Calendars need change capacity. An issue, error, delayed fact, changed service, unavailable spokesperson, legal hold, accessibility defect, or emergency can pause or reorder scheduled content. The person maintaining the calendar can record and coordinate the change, but does not automatically own the high-stakes decision that caused it.
6.5 Issues and corrections
Issues work appears in 41 records across the three sectors. Examples include emerging narratives, reputation risks, reactive communications, sensitive matters, crisis preparedness, corrections, and escalation. A developing issue is not synonymous with a full crisis, and a routine inquiry is not automatically an issue. Triage should be proportional to evidence, potential harm, urgency, spread, affected stakeholders, and authority.
The primary artifact is an Issue Triage and Escalation Record supported by an Issue Signal Register. A useful record separates observation from interpretation, records sources and timestamps, names factual and decision owners, identifies privacy or legal flags, states what is unknown, and sets a next review. A holding or interim update should not speculate. It can explain the verification process and expected update time when that process language is authorized.
Correction is part of the operating system. When a published fact is wrong or materially incomplete, the practitioner should preserve the original, verify the correction, identify affected channels, route approval, publish through the appropriate method, and record what changed. The correct route varies by sector and by the type of information involved.
6.6 Communication measurement
Measurement appears in 47 records, with coverage and reporting responsibilities ranging from platform analytics to executive decision support. The count includes different levels of maturity and cannot show that all 47 employers use rigorous evaluation. It does show that measurement belongs in the course as an operating responsibility rather than an optional analytics appendix.
Learners should begin with an objective and decision question, define each measure, establish a baseline where available, state the source and population, document collection rules and time windows, record missingness and quality checks, and explain what the evidence can and cannot support. Quantitative and qualitative evidence can complement each other. Neither a dashboard nor a large number substitutes for a defensible interpretation.
7. Additional capabilities and cross-sector transfer
7.1 Exact additional-domain results
| Capability | All n=100 | Company n=73 | Nonprofit n=15 | Government/public n=12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stakeholder advice/coordination | 62 (62.0%) | 42 (57.5%) | 10 (66.7%) | 10 (83.3%) |
| Writing/editing | 60 (60.0%) | 41 (56.2%) | 9 (60.0%) | 10 (83.3%) |
| Digital/social | 42 (42.0%) | 26 (35.6%) | 7 (46.7%) | 9 (75.0%) |
| Approvals/governance | 24 (24.0%) | 13 (17.8%) | 4 (26.7%) | 7 (58.3%) |
These capabilities explain how the five focal responsibilities become operational. Advice and coordination connect communication to factual and decision owners. Writing creates the products. Digital and social work adapts them to channels. Approval and governance codes make explicit where review, standards, or release controls appear in the vacancy text.
7.2 Companies
Company roles combine brand, product, customer, employee, executive, analyst, investor, policy, and reputation needs. The sample includes technology, financial services, healthcare, legal and professional services, construction, entertainment, media, and other organizations. Similar outputs carry different risks: a paid endorsement or review may require specific disclosure and compliance review (source: ftc); an employee message may need HR review; a public-company update may implicate investor and disclosure controls (source: sec); a healthcare message may require privacy, clinical, and regulatory owners.
The portable method is to verify the business fact, identify the audience and decision, prepare a source-linked message, adapt it to channels, route the appropriate review, and document release and learning. The company variant should never imply that communication owns commercial strategy, legal interpretation, security decisions, financial materiality, or regulatory approval.
7.3 Government and public bodies
Government communication supports public understanding, services, accountability, and coordination. The accepted public group includes municipal, state, and public-higher-education roles. Government-specific practice can involve program authority, official records, accessibility, public inquiry, interagency coordination, elected or appointed leaders, emergency information, and political-neutrality boundaries. Federal sources illustrate emergency-risk communication (source: cdc), political-activity limits for covered federal employees (source: osc), and restrictions on certain public communications funded by appropriations (source: gao); the precise rule depends on jurisdiction and cannot be generalized to every public body.
Media response and records release are related but not interchangeable. A communicator can log and authenticate a request, preserve potentially responsive material, gather approved facts, prepare a response, and route the matter. An authorized records or legal owner decides search sufficiency, exemptions, redactions, retention, and release. Federal OPM, FOIA, records, and accessibility sources provide federal context and cannot certify a state, municipality, university, or nonprofit process. (source: opm) (source: foia) (source: nara) (source: 508)
7.4 Nonprofits and associations
Nonprofit communications connect mission, services, research, members, communities, beneficiaries, donors, funders, boards, partners, and media. The operating tools remain familiar, but consent, dignity, donor preferences, program evidence, fundraising language, and political-activity limits may change the review path. A moving story is not automatically an authorized story.
Learners should practice minimizing personal detail, confirming that consent covers the intended channel and timing, preserving a withdrawal or escalation route, verifying mission and program claims, and involving program, privacy, safeguarding, fundraising, tax, or legal owners as required. The course must distinguish ordinary mission communication from charitable-solicitation compliance and partisan campaign activity; for example, the IRS describes political-campaign intervention restrictions for section 501(c)(3) organizations. (source: irs)
7.5 What transfers and what does not
The transferable core is disciplined preparation: intake, source checking, stakeholder understanding, message and content development, calendar and media coordination, issue logging, evidence reporting, approvals, corrections, and record preservation. Purpose and authority do not transfer automatically. A company approval matrix cannot be imported into government, a federal rule cannot be generalized to a municipality, and nonprofit donor guidance cannot be treated as universal privacy law.
Sector variants should therefore change the case facts, owners, constraints, and decision route while preserving the same learner method. This design lets learners see the role as universal without erasing institutional differences.
8. Career progression and capability
The sample contains 6 early-career, 40 specialist individual-contributor, 32 manager, 15 director, and 7 executive-leadership roles. It shows a continuum of scope, not a universal promotion ladder. Specialist work can still be complex and high trust; a senior title alone does not establish people or function leadership.
Developing practitioners can reasonably learn to clarify ordinary requests, map stakeholders, verify sources, prepare message-evidence briefs, write and edit channel-ready material, authenticate and log media inquiries, maintain governed calendars, identify issue signals, prepare controlled interim updates, define measures, report limitations, preserve versions and approvals, and use approved AI assistance with human checking.
Managers and directors more often integrate several workstreams, advise leaders, prioritize scarce attention, coordinate agencies or vendors, design governance, interpret evidence, and prepare for sensitive situations. Executive roles add enterprise narrative, organizational accountability, and senior stakeholder interfaces. Education should expose learners to these decisions without pretending that practice exercises grant organizational authority.
Education is required in 57 records, preferred in 6, and not stated in 37. Experience is required in 95, preferred in 2, and not stated in 3. Requirements range from early-career evidence to long senior experience. The course should help learners demonstrate artifacts and reasoning, but must not promise employment, promotion, salary, title, clearance, or equivalence to an employer's stated qualification.
Progression also means stronger restraint. Senior practice is not simply faster writing. It involves clearer distinctions between fact and inference, more reliable stakeholder coordination, earlier recognition of risk, better documentation of unknowns, stronger review design, more careful causal language, and a willingness to pause publication.
9. Decision boundaries and responsible practice
Boundary codes are conservative explicit signals, not estimates of how often the underlying obligation applies. The accepted corpus records legal/compliance in 7 vacancies; investor/MNPI in 3; records/FOIA in 1; accessibility in 6; privacy/confidentiality in 6; emergency/security in 7; HR/employee in 2; fundraising/donor sensitivity in 2; and AI/human review in 2. Political-activity/lobbying and regulated-claim codes are zero because no retained source span met the explicit-only threshold. Zero means not explicitly coded, not that those risks cannot arise.
| Trigger | Practitioner may prepare | Required stop-and-route owner |
|---|---|---|
| Legal, litigation, alleged wrongdoing | Preserve the request and sources; prepare copy only from approved facts | Legal/compliance and designated executive owner |
| Investor, earnings, securities, MNPI | Log and preserve; use an approved holding route | Investor relations, disclosure owner, and counsel |
| Emergency, health, safety, security | Maintain facts/unknowns; support an authorized spokesperson | Incident command, emergency/security, and technical authority |
| Records, FOIA, open records | Capture request, metadata, and potentially responsive records | Records/FOIA officer and legal/privacy owner |
| Accessibility | Apply approved creation checks and document them | Accessibility or channel owner for determination |
| Privacy and confidentiality | Minimize inputs, restrict access, and use authorized material | Privacy, legal, HR, program, or data owner |
| Political, campaign, lobbying | Preserve and pause; keep official channels neutral | Ethics, legal, tax, appropriations, or policy owner |
| Regulated claims | Map each claim to an approved source; do not improvise | Qualified subject-matter and compliance owners |
| Donor, beneficiary, fundraising | Protect dignity and preferences; verify consent and evidence | Program, privacy, fundraising, tax, or legal owners |
| AI-assisted work | Use approved tools and sanitized inputs; verify every output | AI-governance owner and final human approver |
9.1 A high-stakes pause test
Before proceeding, the practitioner should ask whether the request involves potential illegality, litigation, personal data, personnel action, investor information, clinical or safety advice, emergency instructions, classified or security information, records disclosure, political activity, fundraising, a regulated claim, or an AI tool handling restricted data. A positive or uncertain answer triggers preservation, minimum necessary handling, and routing.
Routing should be specific. “Ask Legal” is insufficient if the organization has an incident commander, disclosure committee, FOIA officer, privacy officer, HR partner, accessibility owner, clinical reviewer, safeguarding lead, fundraising counsel, or authorized spokesperson. The communications record should name the owner, question, material supplied, decision received, conditions, and next review.
9.2 AI assistance
AI can assist with brainstorming, restructuring, audience variants, question anticipation, calendar support, consistency checking, or a first-pass summary when the organization permits it. It must not publish autonomously, answer media without authorization, fabricate quotes or evidence, infer sensitive traits, impersonate people, treat synthetic audiences as research, or receive confidential, personal, donor, employee, beneficiary, investigative, security, clinical, or MNPI information through an unapproved tool.
Human review must verify every claim, name, number, source, quotation, link, tone choice, disclosure, accessibility feature, and approval condition. The record should preserve the task, input-safety decision, permitted tool, human changes, fact checks, reviewer, and final disposition. NIST and FTC materials provide U.S. governance and privacy context; they do not replace employer policy. (source: nist) (source: ftc-ai)
10. Measurement without overclaiming
Vacancy evidence and professional-practice guidance answer different questions. The 47 coded vacancies show that employers in this purposive sample stated monitoring, analytics, reporting, KPI, or learning responsibilities. Professional guidance offers principles for performing that work. Neither proves that a communication activity caused an organizational result.
An original four-layer MTF evidence ladder supports instruction:
- Work Completed: what was produced or delivered, such as a response logged, content published, briefing prepared, accessibility check completed, or correction issued.
- Audience Contact: observable opportunity for an intended audience to encounter the communication, with source, population, channel, duplication, and viewability limitations.
- Audience Response: evidence of attention, understanding, questions, engagement, attitude, intention, or behavior, using appropriate qualitative and quantitative methods.
- Organizational Relevance: a documented relationship between communication evidence and a service, decision, risk, mission, or outcome, with alternative explanations and causal restraint.
The layers prevent a common category error. A completed release is work, not reach. An impression is potential contact, not understanding. A click is a response signal, not automatically behavior change. A business outcome observed after a campaign is not proof that the campaign caused it.
Every metric needs a name, objective, operational definition, baseline where available, source, population, unit, inclusion and exclusion rule, collection frequency, time window, owner, quality check, missing-data treatment, segmentation rule, privacy control, limitation, and intended decision. Definition changes must be documented. Historical comparisons are not valid when the underlying population, platform, collection rule, or window changed materially.
Quantitative indicators can show volume, distribution, timing, or association. Qualitative evidence can explain questions, comprehension, objections, context, or unintended effects. Mixed evidence is useful when each source has a defined role. Social comments are not a representative survey; automated sentiment can misclassify irony, language, context, or stakeholder meaning; share of voice depends on source and query choices; and coverage volume does not measure accuracy or influence by itself.
Advertising-value-equivalent and earned-media-value proxies should not be presented as communication impact or ROI. Revenue, donation, trust, service use, behavior, or policy outcomes often have many causes. Reports should state plausible alternative explanations such as seasonality, operational changes, paid activity, media events, competitor behavior, distribution changes, measurement error, and external events.
Appropriate language includes observed, associated with, consistent with, or contributed to when the design supports it. Causal language requires a qualified design and specialist review. When the available evidence cannot answer the question, “insufficient evidence” is a valid professional conclusion.
11. Implications for professional education
The accepted evidence supports an operations-oriented professional certificate that treats communication as a cross-sector role rather than as generic publicity. The course should use a continuous fictional organization case with company, government, and nonprofit variants, while requiring learners to create original artifacts from sanitized information.
| Module | Evidence-led capability | Principal learner artifacts | Boundary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Role, stakeholders, messages, authority | Clarify needs, map audiences, verify facts, make message choices | Intake Brief; Stakeholder Map; Message Evidence Brief; approval route | No legal, investor, political, or regulated-claim authorization |
| 2. Media and content operations | Authenticate requests, prepare spokespeople, adapt approved facts, govern timing | Media Request Log; Spokesperson Sheet; Channel-Ready Fact Sheet; Content Calendar | No protected release or promise of coverage |
| 3. Issues, escalation, correction | Sense, verify, assess uncertainty, route, update, correct | Issue Signal Register; Triage Record; Interim Update Brief; Correction Log | No emergency command or liability decision |
| 4. Objectives, evidence, measurement, AI | Set objectives, define metrics, combine evidence, report limits, govern AI | Objective Card; Metric Sheet; Evidence Register; Decision Note; AI Review Record | No surveillance, fabricated evidence, or unsupported causality |
11.1 Artifact-centered learning
Artifacts make judgment visible. A completed template should show not only polished words but also evidence, uncertainty, ownership, approvals, boundaries, and reasoning. Blank templates, worked examples, critique prompts, quality checks, transfer questions, and revision tasks should accompany each primary artifact. The assessment should reward verifiability, clarity, accessibility, routing, and limitations.
The Message Evidence Brief and Channel-Ready Fact Sheet must remain distinct. The first records situation-specific message choices. The second is a reusable approved source of verified facts for several channels. The Interim Update Brief is similarly distinct from a crisis plan: it communicates verified status and next-update timing within an authorized route.
11.2 Cross-sector practice in every module
Company, government, and nonprofit variants should alter the stakeholders, purpose, evidence sources, approval owner, privacy and records conditions, and measures. Learners should not merely rewrite the same case with different organization names. A corporate product update, municipal service change, and nonprofit program announcement can use a common method while producing different stop points.
11.3 Progression and assessment boundaries
Early assessments can focus on fact/message separation, clean drafting, intake completeness, and correct routing. Later assessments can add competing stakeholders, conflicting deadlines, incomplete evidence, a media request, an emerging issue, a correction, and a measurement decision. The capstone can combine these into a Communications Response Pack for an ordinary developing issue.
No assessment should require a learner to decide legal compliance, securities materiality, records exemptions, medical accuracy, emergency protective action, political permissibility, or accessibility certification. Rubrics should score recognition and routing rather than pretending the learner has specialist authority.
11.4 Course claims
The certificate is non-degree professional education. It can claim to develop practice with the specified artifacts and reasoning. It cannot guarantee employment, promotion, salary, title, media coverage, reputation, trust, donations, revenue, service uptake, behavior, or social impact. It also cannot imply endorsement by employers, government agencies, professional associations, or source publishers.
12. Limitations and conclusion
This is a descriptive study of a purposive sample of 100 current U.S. vacancies selected from a 120-record retained screen. It is not a probability sample, census, labour-market share, hiring forecast, or employer consensus. Results describe coded vacancy language, not all work actually performed. Multi-label totals overlap, and unstated requirements remain unknown.
Source visibility creates coverage and survivorship bias. Employer ATS systems differ in readability and indexing; Workday contributes 50 accepted records. One employer family or role type can appear several times through distinct current requisitions. The company group has 73 records, compared with 15 nonprofit and 12 government/public, so comparisons must preserve denominators and avoid ranking small cells.
The screen ledger contains retained candidates rather than a complete historical discovery log. Exact query strings and time-of-day retrieval values were not preserved. Vacancy pages can change or close after 6 September 2026. Role family, role level, sector detail, and semantic codes use documented judgment. Independent audits and repairs reduced identified error, but no blinded full-corpus double coding or reliability coefficient was performed.
Boundary-code counts are intentionally conservative. They should not be used to infer that an obligation is absent from uncoded roles. Federal occupational, plain-language, accessibility, records, and FOIA sources establish federal context only. AMEC is international professional context, not U.S. law. PRSA, AFP, marketplace, and provider sources are separate contextual evidence and do not enter vacancy denominators.
Public availability does not remove copyright, trademark, privacy, confidentiality, publicity, records, or platform restrictions. This report uses source links, metadata, minimal factual paraphrase, and derived analysis. Future educational cases and artifacts must be original, fictional, sanitized, authorized, or appropriately licensed.
Within those limits, the evidence supports a coherent conclusion. Corporate communications and public relations form a portable organizational operating role across companies, government bodies, and nonprofits. The work joins media activity, message choice, writing, stakeholder coordination, selected calendar operations, issue handling, measurement, channel adaptation, and governed approval. Portability does not mean identical authority. The most defensible professional education teaches repeatable preparation and evidence habits alongside visible stop-and-route behavior.
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Apply the evidence from this report through MTF Institute's Professional Certificate in Corporate Communications and Public Relations. The programme turns the identified capabilities into structured theory, guided AI practice and reusable workplace artifacts.
References
- bls. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Public Relations Specialists.” Occupational Outlook Handbook. Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- onet. O*NET OnLine, U.S. Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration. “Public Relations Specialists 27-3031.00.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- onet-license. National Center for O*NET Development. “O*NET License Agreements.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- opm. U.S. Office of Personnel Management. “Position Classification Standard for Public Affairs Series, GS-1035.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- doj. U.S. Department of Justice. “About the Office of Public Affairs.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- plain. Digital.gov, U.S. General Services Administration. “Principles of Plain Language.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- 508. Section508.gov, U.S. General Services Administration. “Social Media Accessibility.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- nara. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. “Guidance on Managing Social Media Records, NARA Bulletin 2014-02.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- foia. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Information Policy. “Guidance for Agency FOIA Regulations.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- cdc. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication Manual.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- ncn. National Council of Nonprofits. “Telling Your Story: A Practical Guide for Nonprofits in the Digital Age.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- afp. Association of Fundraising Professionals. “AFP Code of Ethical Standards.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- prsa. Public Relations Society of America. “Code of Ethics and Ethics Resources.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- amec. International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication. “Barcelona Principles V4.0.” 2025. Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- coursera. Coursera. “Microsoft Public Relations Professional Certificate.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- prsa-certificate. Public Relations Society of America. “Media Relations Certificate Program.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- mtf-udemy. MTF Institute via Udemy. “Certificate in Public Relations and Communication Management.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- udemy-independent. Nia PR via Udemy. “Public Relations: PR School.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- linkedin-learning. LinkedIn Learning. “Public Relations Foundations.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- mtf-programs. MTF Institute. “Programs.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- ftc. U.S. Federal Trade Commission. “Endorsements, Influencers, and Reviews.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- sec. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “SEC Says Social Media OK for Company Announcements if Investors Are Alerted.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- irs. U.S. Internal Revenue Service. “Restriction of Political Campaign Intervention by Section 501(c)(3) Tax-Exempt Organizations.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- osc. U.S. Office of Special Counsel. “Hatch Act FAQs.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- gao. U.S. Government Accountability Office. “2024 Appropriations Law Forum Materials: Communications with the Public.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- nist. U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. “AI Risk Management Framework and Generative AI Profile.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
- ftc-ai. U.S. Federal Trade Commission. “AI Companies: Uphold Your Privacy and Confidentiality Commitments.” Accessed 6 September 2026. Source
Additional rights references: U.S. Copyright Office, “Copyright Law of the United States, 17 U.S.C. §105,” https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html; U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, “Trademark Basics,” https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/what-trademark. Both accessed 6 September 2026.
Additional MTF portfolio references: MTF Institute, “Chief Commercial Officer Executive Certificate,” https://mtfinstitute.com/programs/chief-commercial-officer/; “Professional Certificate in Social Media Management & Marketing,” https://mtfinstitute.com/programs/social-media-management-marketing/; “AI Digital Marketing: SEO, Ads & Sales,” https://mtfinstitute.com/programs/ai-digital-marketing-seo-ads-sales/; “Professional Certificate in Market Research,” https://mtfinstitute.com/programs/market-research/; and “Professional Certificate in Event Planning and Coordination,” https://mtfinstitute.com/programs/event-planning-coordination/. All accessed or checked through current public catalogue/index evidence on 6 September 2026.
Appendix A. Search strategy and accepted source register
A.1 Search and source approach
Search families covered corporate communications, public relations, media relations, external communications, public information and public affairs, internal and employee communications, issues, editorial calendars, measurement, and sector variants. Sources included employer career sites, Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, SmartRecruiters, NEOGOV GovernmentJobs, nonprofit marketplaces, and substantive readable public pages. Canonicalization removed tracking parameters and compared employer, exact job identifier where present, title, location, and URL.
A.2 Accepted-vacancy register
The following 100 records form the frozen accepted v7 corpus. They were retrieved or verified on 6 September 2026. The register supplies canonical links and metadata; vacancy bodies are not reproduced.
| ID | Employer | Role | Location | Canonical source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| V001 | DLA Piper | Communications Specialist – Public Relations | Multiple U.S. offices | Source |
| V002 | Verkada | Communications Manager | San Mateo, CA | Source |
| V003 | TC Energy | Senior Advisor, Media Relations | Washington, DC (hybrid) | Source |
| V004 | PSECU | Manager, Public Relations and Communications | Harrisburg, PA | Source |
| V005 | Gensler | Public Relations Coordinator | Washington, DC | Source |
| V006 | GALE | Director, Corporate Communications | New York, NY | Source |
| V007 | GDIT | Senior External Communications Specialist | Falls Church, VA | Source |
| V008 | CoStar Group | Director, Public Relations & Corporate Communications | Arlington, VA | Source |
| V009 | Workiva | Vice President of PR & Corporate Communications | Remote, USA | Source |
| V010 | Dechert | Head of US Public Relations | United States | Source |
| V011 | Franklin Templeton | Public Relations Manager | New York, NY | Source |
| V012 | DPR Construction | External Communications Manager – Megaprojects | Multiple U.S. cities | Source |
| V013 | Logitech | Communications Specialist | San Jose, CA | Source |
| V014 | Ferrovial | Public Relations Manager | The Woodlands, TX | Source |
| V015 | SWBC | Corporate Communications & Public Relations Manager | San Antonio, TX | Source |
| V016 | Canary Technologies | Senior Communications Manager | New York, NY | Source |
| V017 | Ares Management | Vice President, External Communications (US) | New York, NY | Source |
| V018 | CNA | Digital Marketing & External Communications Manager | Chicago or USA | Source |
| V019 | Holland & Knight | Public Relations Manager | Multiple U.S. offices | Source |
| V020 | Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine | Public Relations Manager | Philadelphia, PA | Source |
| V021 | Boulder Care | Communications Manager | United States | Source |
| V022 | The Pokémon Company International | Director, Corporate Communications | Bellevue, WA | Source |
| V023 | Sony Music / The Orchard | Senior Coordinator, Corporate Communications & Publicity | New York, NY | Source |
| V024 | Divergent | Communications Manager | Torrance, CA | Source |
| V025 | Movement | Communications Coordinator | Indian Land, SC | Source |
| V026 | Amazon | Communications Business Analyst, Operations Internal Communications | Nashville, TN; Seattle, WA; Arlington, VA | Source |
| V027 | Autodesk | Corporate Communications Manager | Remote in eligible U.S. states | Source |
| V028 | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | Public Relations Manager | Spring, San Jose, Roseville or Frisco | Source |
| V029 | Mixpanel | Senior PR & Communications Manager | New York or San Francisco | Source |
| V030 | onX | Senior PR Manager | Multiple U.S. basecamps | Source |
| V031 | Booz Allen Hamilton | Strategic Communications Specialist, Senior | McLean, VA | Source |
| V032 | Later | Senior Manager, PR | Boston, New York or remote USA | Source |
| V033 | OneMain Financial | Head of Communications | United States | Source |
| V034 | Saint Louis University | Public Relations Specialist | St. Louis, MO | Source |
| V035 | National Center for Youth Law | Communications Manager | Remote, United States | Source |
| V036 | FICO | Media Relations Specialist, Corporate Communications | United States | Source |
| V037 | Kimberly-Clark | Senior Manager, External Affairs & Business Strategy Communications | United States | Source |
| V038 | Wikimedia Foundation | Principal, Executive Communications | Remote; eligible U.S. states listed | Source |
| V039 | Tapestry | Associate, External Communications | United States | Source |
| V040 | Asurion | Director, Corporate Communications | Nashville, TN | Source |
| V041 | Sony Pictures Entertainment | Director, Corporate Communications | Culver City, CA | Source |
| V042 | BD | Director, Corporate Communications | Franklin Lakes, NJ | Source |
| V043 | City of Baltimore | Creative Communications Specialist (NCS) – Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture | Baltimore City Hall, MD | Source |
| V044 | Happen Bank | Corporate Communications Specialist | San Francisco, CA | Source |
| V045 | Wheels | Director, Corporate Communications | Schaumburg, IL | Source |
| V046 | Restaurant Brands International | Senior Director, Corporate Communications | United States | Source |
| V047 | Pacific Institute | Senior Director, Marketing and Strategic Communications | Remote, United States | Source |
| V048 | Project Equity | Director of Communications & Public Relations | Remote, United States | Source |
| V049 | SOLV Energy | External Communications Specialist | San Diego, CA | Source |
| V050 | Amazon | Communications Specialist, Amazon Leo | Seattle, WA | Source |
| V051 | Paul Hastings | Specialist, Communications | New York, NY | Source |
| V052 | M Booth | Media Relations Strategist | New York, NY or eligible U.S. states | Source |
| V053 | Amazon | Public Relations Specialist, U.S. Field Communications | Remote, Ohio | Source |
| V054 | Amazon | Communications Principal, Policy Communications and External Affairs | Arlington, VA | Source |
| V055 | Amazon | Communications Specialist, Policy Communications and External Affairs | Seattle, WA | Source |
| V056 | Amazon | Communications Specialist, Policy Communications and External Affairs | Arlington, VA | Source |
| V057 | Amazon | Communications Specialist, Amazon Ads Comms | Seattle or New York | Source |
| V058 | Amazon Web Services | PR Manager, Foundational Services | Seattle, Arlington, New York or San Francisco | Source |
| V059 | Amazon | Communications Specialist, Policy Communications and External Affairs | Seattle or Arlington | Source |
| V060 | Amazon | Senior Communications Manager, Product, Amazon Leo | Seattle, WA | Source |
| V061 | Amazon | Communications Manager, Policy Communications and External Affairs | Seattle, Arlington or New York | Source |
| V062 | CardWorks | Senior Specialist, Corporate Communications | Woodbury, NY | Source |
| V063 | Tonix Pharmaceuticals | Senior Specialist, Corporate Communications | Berkeley Heights, NJ or New York, NY | Source |
| V064 | UL Research Institutes | Senior Communications Specialist | Evanston, IL | Source |
| V065 | Forcepoint | Media Relations Strategist | Austin, TX | Source |
| V066 | Redfin / Rocket | Communications Coordinator | Seattle, WA | Source |
| V067 | University of Rochester | Communications Specialist II | Rochester, NY | Source |
| V068 | Yahoo | Global Communications AI Adoption Lead | United States | Source |
| V069 | Veradigm | Manager, PR & Marketing Communications | Raleigh, NC | Source |
| V070 | Colby College | Assistant Director of Media Relations | Waterville, ME | Source |
| V071 | Cresta | Senior Communications Manager | San Francisco, CA (hybrid) | Source |
| V072 | Northrop Grumman | Media Relations Manager 2 | El Segundo CA; Melbourne FL; Falls Church VA | Source |
| V073 | DLR Group | Internal Communications Manager | Overland Park, KS (hybrid) | Source |
| V074 | Athene | External Communications Specialist | West Des Moines, IA | Source |
| V075 | Wellington Management | Media Relations Specialist | Boston or New York | Source |
| V076 | Fortune Media | Director, Public Relations | New York, NY | Source |
| V077 | Radiance Technologies | Digital Media Specialist | Huntsville, AL | Source |
| V078 | NBCUniversal | Communications Specialist | Stamford, CT | Source |
| V079 | Communications Manager | Sunnyvale, San Francisco or New York | Source | |
| V080 | City of New York | Senior Communications Manager | New York, NY | Source |
| V081 | Noblis | Communications Specialist | Washington, DC | Source |
| V082 | Immunome | Executive Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications | Bothell, WA | Source |
| V083 | Booz Allen Hamilton | Public Affairs Specialist, Mid | Washington, DC | Source |
| V084 | Anduril Industries | Communications Manager, Maneuver Dominance | Washington, DC | Source |
| V085 | Hippo Insurance | Senior Communications Manager | Austin, TX; Dallas, TX; Morristown, NJ; San Jose, CA (hybrid) | Source |
| V086 | Henry Ford Health + Michigan State University | Senior Communications Specialist | Detroit, MI | Source |
| V087 | National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine | Communications Specialist | Washington, DC | Source |
| V088 | Kennesaw State University | Marketing and Communications Specialist | Kennesaw, GA | Source |
| V089 | City of Florida City | Communications Manager | Florida City, FL | Source |
| V090 | Mississippi Development Authority | Communications Manager, Visit Mississippi | Hinds County, MS | Source |
| V091 | City of Houston Health Department | Public Information Officer | Houston, TX | Source |
| V092 | Washington State Health Care Authority | Public Information Officer | Olympia, WA | Source |
| V093 | City of Raleigh | Communications Manager | Raleigh, NC | Source |
| V094 | Aiken Technical College | Marketing & Communications Specialist | Aiken County, SC | Source |
| V095 | City of Seattle | Communication Specialist (Ord. Title: Strategic Advisor 2, General Govt) | Seattle, WA | Source |
| V096 | Carnegie Mellon University | Senior Director for Global Media Relations | Pittsburgh, PA | Source |
| V097 | State of Washington, Office of the Governor | Communications Consultant | Olympia, WA (hybrid) | Source |
| V098 | University of Southern California | Director, Media Relations | Los Angeles, CA | Source |
| V099 | Fairfield University | Associate Director, Media Relations | Fairfield, CT | Source |
| V100 | State of Michigan, Department of Health and Human Services | Associate Public Information Officer | Lansing, MI (remote/hybrid may be considered) | Source |
V031 provenance note. The canonical record is Booz Allen Hamilton requisition R0243219, Strategic Communications Specialist, Senior, McLean, Virginia. A readable exact-ID corroborating page reproduces the employer, exact R0243219 identifier, title, McLean duty text, and qualifications. It is retained for identity and source-text corroboration only. R0243216 is a different Herndon requisition and was not used for any V031 claim.
Appendix B. Frozen evidence and acceptance chain
| Artifact | SHA-256 | Status |
|---|---|---|
| vacancy-corpus-specialist-v7.json | d6c238e5953d7a240d6eafcbb99a58355ed8a859f4bf7a30639e47674d3ff237 | Accepted |
| vacancy-codebook-v7.md | 9b08bcd09e6c7f8e00416defe703835d2af29e73a4d456af3527c98d2aadc352 | Accepted |
| screen-ledger-v7.json | 14fb09f2b1e0bf06100dad4ecbddd53d830ade8914dbe68340ef1a7a4633a761 | Accepted |
| coder-reconciliation-v7.json | 61ffe83a0da02ed2dc8679f3ee68077a2992a5ca1d642d1a4d0561d54bbda2dd | Accepted |
| evidence-independent-review-v7.json | f1da4cd9972c2a675976536d9b01c4c7b0f8378baf60ee594781590979dde571 | Independent PASS |
| evidence-manager-acceptance-v7.json | 962b2b0f2df73b9cb80e5ca084d2305cdca97b2dc809ba25b71534e38797a598 | PASS; research gate open |
The independent review confirmed 100 records, 100 unique record IDs, 100 unique canonical URLs, 120 ledger rows, 100 accepted dispositions, 20 excluded dispositions, 995 attached evidence items, code-evidence parity, and unchanged aggregates after the bounded V010 correction. The manager separately recalculated the headline totals and accepted the frozen evidence for research drafting.
Appendix C. Inclusion, exclusion, and coding controls
Accepted records required a current U.S. vacancy and substantive organizational communications or public-relations work. Exclusions covered closed, expired, generic, inaccessible, non-U.S., duplicate, anonymous, insubstantial, or out-of-scope pages. The v7 ledger retains 100 accepted and 20 excluded records.
Codes are explicit-only and multi-label. Messaging needs a stated message, narrative, positioning, talking-point, voice, storyline, or claim choice; generic writing is a near miss. Calendar coding needs a stated calendar, cadence, pipeline, schedule, roadmap, or planned sequence; a single deadline is a near miss. Issues coding needs emerging risk, reputation, reactive response, correction, escalation, or preparedness; a publication “issue” is a near miss. Measurement needs an objective, analytic, monitoring, KPI, dashboard, report, or learning loop; generic success language is a near miss.
Tools are coded only when named or clearly described as a tool class. Education and experience are separate required, preferred, or not-stated structures, and alternative routes remain visible. Soft skills require behavioral wording. Boundary codes require an explicit interface and record a stop-and-route trigger rather than authority.
Appendix D. Detailed sample crosswalk
| Dimension | Category | Records |
|---|---|---|
| Sector detail | Private corporate | 61 |
| Sector detail | Private professional services | 7 |
| Sector detail | Private government contractor | 5 |
| Sector detail | Nonprofit higher education | 7 |
| Sector detail | Nonprofit | 3 |
| Sector detail | Nonprofit research | 3 |
| Sector detail | Nonprofit financial cooperative | 1 |
| Sector detail | Nonprofit healthcare/higher education | 1 |
| Sector detail | Government | 10 |
| Sector detail | Government higher education | 2 |
| Role family | Integrated communications | 33 |
| Role family | Public relations | 18 |
| Role family | Corporate communications | 16 |
| Role family | External communications | 13 |
| Role family | Media relations | 10 |
| Role family | Internal/employee communications | 4 |
| Role family | Public information/public affairs | 4 |
| Role family | Digital/social communications | 2 |
Appendix E. Geography-coherence matrix
| Material conclusion | Accepted U.S. sample basis | Permitted interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| All three sectors are represented | 73 company, 15 nonprofit, 12 government/public | The accepted U.S. sample contains all three sectors |
| Messaging recurs | 59/100; sector counts 39/73, 10/15, 10/12 | Messaging appeared in 59 accepted records |
| Media work spans sectors | 74/100; 52/73, 12/15, 10/12 | Media work appeared across all three sampled sectors |
| Calendar work is material but not universal | 25/100; 18/73, 4/15, 3/12 | Explicit calendar work appeared in one quarter of the sample |
| Issues work spans sectors | 41/100; 28/73, 9/15, 4/12 | Issues work appeared across all three sampled sectors |
| Measurement recurs | 47/100; 30/73, 11/15, 6/12 | Measurement appeared in 47 accepted records |
| Stakeholder coordination spans sectors | 62/100; 42/73, 10/15, 10/12 | Advice or coordination appeared across all three sampled sectors |
| Writing/editing recurs | 60/100; 41/73, 9/15, 10/12 | Writing or editing was explicit in 60 records |
| Governance is narrower but important | 24/100; 13/73, 4/15, 7/12 | Explicit approval or governance appeared in 24 records |
Every statement remains tied to the purposive U.S. vacancy sample. BLS and O*NET provide national occupational context, OPM and other federal sources provide federal context, nonprofit sources provide nonprofit practice context, and AMEC provides international comparative measurement context. These denominators and jurisdictions are not merged.
Appendix F. Rights and source-use statement
Vacancy evidence is limited to metadata, canonical URLs, short factual paraphrases, locators, and derived codes. Paraphrases are not quotations. No personal contact information or application data is included. O*NET use requires CC BY 4.0 attribution, a licence link, modification notice, and recognition that USDOL/ETA does not endorse this work. PRSA, AMEC, AFP, marketplace, and provider material is cited and paraphrased at a high level; their frameworks, curricula, code text, diagrams, worksheets, logos, screenshots, testimonials, and distinctive expression are not reproduced.
Government-hosted material is not assumed to be unrestricted when it can include seals, marks, photographs, video, contractor content, or third-party works. All educational cases, templates, data, and diagrams derived from this research should be independently authored, fictional, sanitized, authorized, or properly licensed, with no confidential or personal information.