For Charlotte Thuot Kucyi, accepting a new IR position in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic meant interviewing at a much quicker pace. Thuot Kucyi, who became Manager of Investor Relations at Tricon Residential in Toronto on September 21, says that the virtual interviews proceeded regardless of travel and other typical impediments, with an offer made only three weeks after the first of five meetings. “I got married on August 9,” she says, “and I was still able to continue the interview process from my honeymoon.”
For those at the more junior levels of Canadian IR, there is a surprisingly strong job market. In fact, CIRI’s job listings were up 300% from July to September 2020, relative to the same three months in 2019, according to Yvette Lokker, President and CEO at CIRI.
Lokker attributes the number of new job postings to a need for additional help with virtual meetings and increased marketing pressures. “There’s quite an uptick in the number of meetings companies are doing with investors and perhaps they simply need more support to do that,” she says. She is convinced that a desire for greater IR firepower is not exclusively driven by the pandemic, though. Ever since MiFID, she notes, “a number of issuers are refining how they do their targeting and marketing, and so they need to ramp up their departments.”
While hiring at the junior levels is brisk, the market for senior IROs is slower. Companies are cautious about bringing on expensive talent in an environment that has been rocked by a pandemic, the next chapter of which remains unclear.
All the same, for companies seeking seasoned, well-regarded IROs, the talent pool is enticing. Three of Canada’s best known IROs – Isabelle Adjahi, Lorne Gorber and Karen Keyes – recently left their former roles.
Gorber, who spent 15 years at Montreal-based CGI, most recently as Executive Vice President, Investor & Public Relations, points out that the virtual environment ushered in by the coronavirus has prompted a reconsideration of the senior IR role. That’s because at companies where IROs play a coordination role, he says, any individual can only cover so much ground and contributions are more limited. At companies in which IROs have regular exposure to the CEO over the coffee machine and can provide colour through that proximity, he notes that “the hallway conversations are more important than the formal channels.”
For the moment, however, those casual, face-to-face conversations have ground to a halt, along with the international travel and one-on-one meetings that have long defined the IR role.
A Pandemic-Driven Job Market
The virus has certainly changed some companies’ approach to recruiting, with fewer senior roles, altered timelines and more use of virtual interviews.
Keyes, who was Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, for Aimia Inc. in Toronto, notes: “You have to be realistic about the market at this moment. The incentive for people to move jobs right now at senior levels is not high and through the summer, companies had lots of challenging and time-sensitive issues to address, which clearly had to take priority.”
Sharon Mah-Gin, Client Partner at The Executive Search Alliance in Toronto, notes that a few rapidly growing companies have IR positions to fill, but more frequently, uncertainty has driven companies to hire IR contractors and even to cut IR positions. “For smaller companies, if they can get away with the CFO doing the role, they’ll do layoffs that way,” she says.
The pandemic is reshaping the IR job market in other ways, as well. When OpenText listed an IR analyst position in CIRI’s job postings, the listing allowed the position to be filled virtually. “This was new for us,” says Lokker. “We’ve been working in a virtual environment for six or seven months, and I think people are beginning to appreciate that you can do your job from wherever you are.”
Finally, competition for IR positions is stiffening as new applicants make their interest known.
IR jobs continue to attract applicants from other fields, including equity research. In addition, Mah-Gin has observed that Americans’ dissatisfaction with a controversial president and a mishandling of the coronavirus has meant hordes of jobseekers heading north. “We’ve been getting hit with so many resumes from the U.S.,” she says.
One additional challenge for Canadian IR jobseekers is a lack of recruiters dedicated exclusively to IR. Without specialized IR recruiters – as there are in London and the U.S. – Canadian IROs, says Lokker, find themselves building “connections with many different recruiters to become aware about more senior positions.”
Honing ESG and Other Skills
A background in sustainability or ESG, notes Lokker, has become part of the job description for an increasing number of IR positions.
Keyes views ESG disclosure and communication as central to where the market is going. “Things are still evolving,” she says, “but I think that being a successful IRO in the future is going to require knowledge of ESG and sustainability.”
Adjahi, who until the spring of 2020 was Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications at WSP in Montreal, shares Keyes’ vision. She notes that when she describes her expertise in communicating about sustainability and stakeholder engagement to prospective employers, she sees “their eyes get wide.”
According to Dustin Kolb, Executive Director at Russell Reynolds Associates in Calgary, expanding into ESG is an important way that the IR profession has upped its game.
“The ESG component is critical now to the IR function and it is a material component in terms of accessing capital,” emphasizes Kolb. “IR,” he adds, “is now a very meaty role.”
Networking Is Evolving, Too
“Networking is powerful in investor relations because it’s such a niche area and the departments are so small,” says Katrina Gorzheltson, who was hired as Director of Finance & Operations at Moskowitz Capital in Toronto, in August. She notes that a classmate from CIRI’s Certification Program suggested she combine her past experience as a chartered accountant with her desire to launch an IR career. Upon deciding to pursue this path, she was approached by a recruiter at Vlaad & Company, who presented the role at Moskowitz, which straddled both roles nicely.
Thuot Kucyi, who also enrolled in CIRI’s Certification Program, was in a previous role when an IR colleague saw the Tricon posting and urged her to apply. “Even with COVID, it’s important to keep networking,” she says. “If you keep up your connections, when things come up, you’re still top of mind.”
For Adjahi, her network of industry analysts has proven an outstanding source of job intelligence. “All my analysts know me, and they know which of the companies they’re covering would need an investor relations officer,” says Adjahi. “I was pleasantly surprised to have my analysts reaching out to me even months after I’d left. They were brainstorming with me and saying, ‘You know what? You should talk to this company.’”
Adjahi maintains that “one of the best ways for the market to know about your job search is to remain visible.” In addition to networking, she has gotten involved in “causes really dear to my heart,” such as the BlackNorth Initiative.
Although jobhunting during a pandemic can have its frustrations, one advantage is that “people are really responsive right now,” says Adjahi.
Mah-Gin agrees. She notes that while in pre-pandemic times, it might have taken three months to get on a CEO’s calendar, today that same CEO might schedule a virtual meeting within the week.
“Reach out to people. Just ask: ‘Can we do a virtual coffee for 20 or 30 minutes?’” advises Mah-Gin. “The one thing we all have now is time.”