Interview with a CSR Professional

For this blog post, I interviewed the Corporate Social Responsibility Communications Manager at Intel in Chandler, AZ. While looking to secure a full time job for the end of this year, I reached out to the CSR communications manager at Intel to find out about any openings. Although there were no openings, the conversation proved extremely helpful in learning about CSR at Intel and tips to become successful in the field more generally. 

Background
The main responsibilities of the CSR communications manager at Intel is to engage in sustainability reporting like the GRI, which I covered in an earlier post. Prior to working full-time at Intel, the CSR communications managers completed a Bachelor of Science, Conservation, and Resource Studies from the University of California Berkley. 

Advise
The main advise I was provided was to work on my soft-skills. Examples of such skills include communication, negotiation, and persuasion. While in the CSR field, there is a lot of coordination that happens between various departments. In order to coordinate well, communication skills is very important. Similarly, negotiation and persuasion skills are also equally important. CSR often involves implementing new programs that look beyond profit as the bottom line. However, to convince others of the importance of such a program does require some persuasion. 

New trends
A newer trend in organization is to have a very decentralized nature to CSR. While most companies will have small CSR departments that handle all aspects of the sustainability and social issues, various departments are now becoming involved in the same area. For example, supply chain could have one employee who's just is solely to look at supply chain from a sustainable perspective. Accordingly, it is important to develop knowledge on how various operations in a company are related to CSR.