Status: Full Time, Employee
Location: Northbrook, IL 60062
Job Category: Editorial/Writing
Career Level:Experienced (Non-Manager)
Education Level: Bachelor's Degree

Job Description:

The Allstate Corporation is the nation's largest publicly held personal lines insurer. A Fortune 100 company, with $156 billion in assets, Allstate sells 13 major lines of insurance, including auto, property, life and commercial. Allstate also offers retirement and investment products and banking services. Allstate is widely known through the "You're In Good Hands With Allstate®" slogan. Allstate was founded in 1931 and became a publicly traded company in 1993.

The Corporate Relations department oversees external public relations and internal communications on behalf of The Allstate Corporation. Functions in the department include communication strategy, public social responsibility (including corporate positioning, community relations and corporate contributions), media relations, public affairs, issues management, crisis communications, reputation leadership, executive support, and employee and agency owner communications.

The issues management function guides the enterprise in identifying and preparing strategies for emerging threats to the company's reputation. The issues management function is primarily responsible for reputational threat identification and mitigation, crisis communications, catastrophe response media relations and public affairs.

SCOPE AND RESPONSIBILITY:
The Communication Manager reports directly to the Corporate Relations Manager, Issues Management and will serve as a key member of the Issues Management team at Allstate's corporate headquarters. The successful candidate will partner with Corporate Relations' peers and business unit experts to provide strategic communications counsel and support.

The individual will be responsible for:

Leading vulnerability assessments for emerging threats to the company's reputation and developing communication strategies and messaging.
Serving as a public spokesperson for the Corporation on highly sensitive and controversial issues.
Coordinating the company's media and communications response to catastrophes and maintain an up-to-date catastrophe communications manual.
Providing frontline staff support to the company's Crisis Management Steering Committee and maintaining a current crisis communications manual.
Working proactively to mitigate negative media stories and protect Allstate's reputation.
Providing support to the public affairs and government relations team to help achieve the Corporations public policy objectives.

QUALIFICATIONS:
The ideal candidate should be a skilled communications professional with at least 7 years of experience, including knowledge of the insurance industry, media relations, crisis communications and project management.

REQUIRED JOB SKILLS:

General Business Skills:
Strategic thinking and planning skills to develop short and long-range integrated strategies
Advanced media relations skills, including experience with hostile media interviews
Knowledge of the insurance industry
Knowledge of a corporate environment
Superior business writing skills and ability to develop strategically targeted messages
Excellent verbal and written skills, and the ability to grasp new concepts quickly
Counseling to help clients advance communication needs and priorities
Program development, integration and implementation success
Creative thinking to contribute new solutions to problems

This individual should also have solid strategic thinking and planning skills, problem-solving ability and be able to coordinate with diverse internal business partners. Finally, this individual must have exemplary communications skills, including developing communication strategies and messaging for reputational threats.

EDUCATION REQUIRED:
Bachelor's degree journalism, communications, public relations or related field. Masters degree in communications, public policy/ public administration or business preferred but not required.