Coordinates national awards, industry rankings, surveys, conferences, and speaking engagements to strengthen HKS’s brand, reputation, business development, and talent attraction. Maintains calendars, submissions, deadlines, budgets, archives, tracking systems, and content assets. Partners with communications, PR, design, practice leadership, finance, HR, and business development teams to develop submissions, manage data, promote wins, and align visibility activities with brand standards and business priorities.
Overview:
Coordinates national award submissions, industry rankings and surveys, and conference participation that elevates the HKS brand. Partners closely with the Communications & PR team, Design Leadership, Practice Leadership and Business Development to help award and conference opportunities strengthen the firm's reputation, support business development, showcase design excellence and enhance talent attraction. Collaboration with multiple teams is essential using a wide range of developing professional skills. Eager to learn, highly organized and willing to contribute creatively to the team with attention to detail.Responsibilities:
Awards:
- Collaborates with the Design Leadership Team, Practice Leadership and Practice Marketing Directors to coordinate the planning and management of the annual awards calendar
- Supports firmwide awards tracking in Asana, monitoring entries, deadlines, costs, wins and losses across practices and sectors
- Optimizes submission timing to capture early-bird deadlines and improve cost efficiency
- Facilitates project selection, submission development and communication with award organizations
- Collaborates with Communications and PR teams to maximize the value of wins and support post-award recognition
- Helps to develop and improve systems and processes that increase submission quality and efficiency
- Maintains an organized archive of submissions, assets and jury feedback
Conferences:
- Maintains the annual calendar of priority conferences, speaking engagements and industry events with Communications, PR, Design Leadership and Practice Leadership
- Coordinates collection of conference presentations, photography, videos and other content assets for future marketing, communications, and business development efforts
- Tracks conference participation and outcomes to support annual planning and reporting
- Keeps visibility activities aligned with firm messaging, brand standards and business priorities
Industry Rankings & Surveys:
- Manages 10+ annual industry surveys and rankings, serving as the primary coordination point with Finance, HR and Design Leadership for data gathering
- Maintains submission schedules, historical data and tracking systems for consistency and accuracy
- Supports with Communications on narratives and supporting materials for survey submissions
- Tracks rankings each year and communicates results internally
- Identifies opportunities to maximize visibility through rankings, escalating to leadership as appropriate
Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Communications or related degree
- Typically with 1+ years of marketing experience
- Proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite and MS Office Suite
- Familiarity with Asana preferred
- Experience in public relations and corporate communications preferred
- Knowledge of branding principles and audience engagement strategies
- Strong writing skills with experience in graphically designed page layouts
- Strong attention to detail and commitment to excellence
- Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to interact with all levels of staff and clients; ability to forge trusting relationships within a diverse team
- Strong organizational skills and the ability to work on multiple projects at the same time
- Ability to communicate and present ideas in a clear, concise and professional manner both verbally and in writing
- Ability to problem solve and apply innovative solutions
- Ability to work and collaborate in a team environment, and ability to work independently and prioritize work
- Ability to effectively meet deadlines at expected quality
- Travel may be required
If you currently work for HKS, please submit your application via the Internal Careers Portal.
HKS is an EEO/AA Employer: M/F/Disabled/Veteran
HKS, Inc. Chicago, Illinois, USA Office
Chicago, United States, 0
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