On the Job

Demands and Supply

The job of planning meetings doesn’t change radically from year to year. For each event, rooms need booking, catering needs negotiating and last-minute additional attendees need vegetarian meals.

A meeting planner’s job can be found across all organizations, up and down the org chart. From administrative assistants, working at corporations, without the benefit of an actual meeting-planning department, to meeting planners who spend more than 80 percent of their day planning events, the job can hardly be lumped into a single, typical description. More than half of our respondents work for a corporation, just over one-third work at an organization that has a meeting-planning department, nearly a third of our respondents (30 percent) are meeting, event or conference planners. So the profession isn’t invisible, but it also isn’t exclusive; meetings remain solidly in the province of people with other jobs to do as well.

Salaries for meeting planning—at least when you look at the most common titles, such as administrative assistant / executive assistant, meeting / conference / event planner, and independent meeting planner—average in the $40,000 to $49,000-a-year range, as they did last year. Of all respondents, more than one-third fall into that salary range. Perhaps working as an independent meeting planner pays off; one-third of those who work in that arena earned salaries of $50,000-$59,000, compared to only one-fifth of those who work at corporations.

The Invisible Profession?

More young professionals and students may be entering meeting and event planning as a career than in years past, but those who work in the profession today designed their careers more by chance than choice. More than half of meeting planner respondents say they fell into the profession by way of other, related experience or when they learned about the hospitality industry; only 9 percent say that they got into meeting planning on purpose as their chosen career.

Not surprisingly, a connection could be made when you consider industry certifications, such as the certified meeting planner (CMP) or the certified special event planner (CSEP) designations. Only 7 percent of respondents say that they hold any certifications. As more professionals seek these certifications, it will only add to the growing professionalism and visibility of the event planning business. The data from our survey suggest that such visibility has yet to catch on in Minnesota.

Time to Plan

The amount of time a planner spends on specific meeting-planning tasks remains as varied as a planner’s job title. For some, particularly administrative assistants, planning events is only part of their job.

“I spend 35 to 40 percent of my time on meetings planning,” says Vicki Orwick, an administrative assistant in the engineering department at General Mills. “But most of that time is spent searching for rooms for meetings, whether it’s on-site or off.”

Other administrative assistants who work in the same department as Orwick report spending between 50 percent and 70 percent of their time planning events, but only at certain times of the year. It suggests that for many people working in the profession, planning meetings is a big responsibility often unaccompanied by the time to do it right.

“My biggest problem is time management, both for myself and where others are concerned,” says Connie Berget, who is also an administrative assistant in the engineering department at General Mills. “There’s so much involved in planning events, in finding new venues and doing site visits. It takes a lot of time and then I also have the rest of my job to do. And chasing after other people, getting them to make their deadlines — it’s all very time- and labor-intensive.”

That’s the nature of the job: knowing some or most of the big picture, but not always enough so you can get your part done right. Vicki Matrious is the marketing coordinator for Aveda, and she works out of the company’s headquarters in Blaine. Asked to describe the hardest part of her job, she doesn’t hesitate.

“Communication,” says Matrious. “To do an event effectively, you have to keep the end purpose in mind, and you can’t do that if you don’t know it — or if the people who want to have it don’t know it. People tell me to take care of one detail or another, and I need to see the big picture to do it as best I can. For example, if we’re having some type of event at Aveda and one of our sales reps is coming from San Francisco, I can arrange all of their travel for them — but only if I know
they’re coming.”

A Venue’s Market?

Finding the right venue and negotiating the right amenities remain a huge part of a planner’s responsibilities. Job success can often depend on what properties are willing to do and give as part of the deal.

David Peterson, who consults with and plans meetings for trade and professional associations, says that he’s noticed that venues are becoming more flexible. “It depends on the relationship and what you’re doing,” he says. “The flexibility won’t be there unless you know who to ask and what to ask for, and it also depends on whether they can expect future business from you. If you’re a one-shot deal, they’re likely to tell you, ‘This is what we can do for you,’ but if you might come back with more meetings throughout the year, they’ll probably be more flexible.”

As executive director of the American Council of Engineering Companies of Minnesota (ACEC), David Oxley holds about 50 meetings a year for ACEC. He has begun using hotels less than he once did, at least for his larger events. “For example, if we have an evening event for 300 people, often they won’t let us have the room until an hour before, which is not enough time to set up for an event of that size,” Oxley says. “Or they’ll give us more time, but they want an extra couple of thousand dollars for it. After 2001, I think the hotels were more willing to negotiate because they really wanted to get the business in there. But the market’s more in their favor now, because there haven’t been any new hotels built here in awhile, and they’re more in the driver’s seat.”

Oxley doesn’t worry, though, and believes that the industry will cycle like it always does. “You learn that hotels cycle, and that when the management changes, the new managers are often more amenable to a new arrangement,” he says.

The best advantage a planner has, in fact, is often the relationship he or she has with a venue over time. Many planners have to find a new venue each year for larger events, so as to avoid being repetitious, but it’s clear that more options are available to the planner who has cultivated a longer-term relationship with a hotel or other type of venue.

“I get that the ROI concept and the way a planner has to discuss events with C-level people means that planners really have to find a way to build in value,” says Devie Hagen, director of sales for Madden’s on Gull Lake in Brainerd. “It can’t just be rates and dates anymore; it has to be a real partnership [between planner and venue].”