How to Apply to Informa

Key Takeaways

Informa plc is a FTSE 100 information and events group (~£3.3B revenue, ~10,000 colleagues) organised around four very different divisions — Markets, Connect, Tech/TechTarget and Taylor & Francis — each with its own culture and hiring bar.
Applications go through SmartRecruiters at careers.smartrecruiters.com/InformaGroupPlc; clean single-column PDFs and keyword alignment with the posting are the two biggest parse-through wins.
The 2024 TechTarget acquisition reshaped Informa Tech into a Nasdaq-listed demand-generation and intent-data business, so technology-marketing candidates should study that combined entity carefully before interviewing.
Taylor & Francis roles carry extra weight on research-integrity, open-access strategy, and recent retraction controversies — candidates who can discuss these directly, without defensiveness, outperform those who avoid the topic.
Interviews are competency-based against Informa's GROW values (Grounded in trust, Results-focused, Opportunities for everyone, We are Informa); STAR-format answers with quantified outcomes are the expected style.
Events roles at Informa Markets and Informa Connect are cyclical and commercially intense — candidates who are energised by quota, show-day pressure and international travel thrive; those who are not will struggle.
Compensation is competitive but UK-modest by US-tech standards; bonus targets (STI) and, at senior grades, LTIP awards are the main variable upside, and both are discussable at offer stage.
Global mobility is real at Informa, but most roles are tied to a specific hub (London, New York, Boston, Dubai, Singapore, Shanghai) — clarify location, hybrid pattern and travel expectation before signing.

About Informa

Informa plc is a FTSE 100 constituent (LSE: INF) and one of the largest business-to-business information and events companies in the world. Headquartered at 240 Blackfriars Road in London and led by Group Chief Executive Stephen A. Carter CBE, Informa reported roughly £3.3 billion in annual revenue and employs approximately 10,000 colleagues across more than 30 countries. The Group is organised around four operating divisions that look quite different from the inside, even though they share a common corporate centre. Informa Markets is the exhibitions powerhouse behind more than 600 live and on-demand trade events every year, including Black Hat, RSA Conference, HIMSS, Cannabis Europa, CPHI Pharma, World of Concrete, MJBizCon and the ITU Telecoms franchise — collectively serving verticals from healthcare and pharmaceuticals to cybersecurity, finance, construction and cannabis. Informa Connect runs premium conferences, networking events and digital communities for financial services, biotech, life sciences and the professional-knowledge economy. Informa Tech focuses on the technology buyer's journey and, through the 2024 acquisition of TechTarget (a roughly $350 million deal that combined Informa Tech Digital Businesses with TechTarget to create a new Nasdaq-listed 'Informa TechTarget'), owns some of the largest intent-data and demand-generation platforms serving enterprise tech marketers. Taylor & Francis, the fourth division, is a 225-year-old academic publisher whose imprints include Routledge, CRC Press, Garland Science and the Journal franchise, publishing more than 2,700 peer-reviewed journals and roughly 8,000 books a year. For job seekers, the practical takeaway is that 'working at Informa' can mean radically different things — a sales floor selling exhibition booths in Shanghai, a commissioning editor working with academics in Abingdon, a data scientist building intent audiences in Newton MA, or a finance analyst in London producing investor disclosures for the FTSE 100 parent. The culture is unapologetically commercial, international, and built around a federated operating model where divisions and brands retain strong identities. Recent context matters: events have fully recovered from the COVID-19 shock that erased most of the 2020 revenue line, the TechTarget merger reshapes the technology data business, Taylor & Francis has navigated several high-profile article-retraction controversies that prompted public scrutiny of academic publishing's integrity processes, and large open-access and AI-licensing deals (including content-licensing arrangements with AI developers and research-data partnerships such as the Cancer Research UK IP engagements) are changing how the publishing business earns money. Informa is also a very visible ESG and governance issuer, with detailed FasterForward sustainability disclosures, UK Corporate Governance Code compliance, and a board structure that candidates in finance, legal, HR and communications should expect to be asked about. Knowing which division you are applying to — and how it actually makes money — is the single most important piece of preparation you can do before engaging a recruiter.

Application Process

1
Identify the right division before you click apply
Identify the right division before you click apply. Informa Markets (exhibitions), Informa Connect (premium conferences), Informa Tech / Informa TechTarget (B2B technology data and marketing services) and Taylor & Francis (academic publishing) each have distinct recruiting teams, compensation philosophies and cultures. The role title and the 'Brands' or 'Business Group' custom field on the posting will tell you which one owns the req.
2
Start at careers
Start at careers.informa.com. The public domain redirects to the Informa-branded SmartRecruiters career site at careers.smartrecruiters.com/InformaGroupPlc, which is the canonical job board. You can also search by brand at careers.taylorandfrancis.com (routes to the same tenant) or look for TechTarget-specific postings if you are targeting the Informa TechTarget business.
3
Create a SmartRecruiters candidate profile
Create a SmartRecruiters candidate profile. You can apply with a resume upload, paste-in, or by connecting LinkedIn. Informa supports social sign-in, but uploading a clean PDF or DOCX you control is usually the safer choice because it avoids LinkedIn parsing artefacts.
4
Complete the application form carefully
Complete the application form carefully. Expect standard contact and work-authorisation questions plus division-specific screeners (right-to-work in the country of hire, notice period, salary expectations, and for regulated roles, any relevant licences or memberships). Informa includes voluntary diversity monitoring questions in many regions; answers are stored separately from the hiring record.
5
Submit, then watch for a recruiter screen within one to two weeks
Submit, then watch for a recruiter screen within one to two weeks. The first human conversation is almost always with a Talent Acquisition Partner or Talent Coordinator who will confirm motivations, compensation, location expectations and whether the role is hybrid or fully on-site (many London roles work a 3-day-in-office hybrid pattern at 240 Blackfriars).
6
Prepare for a competency-based hiring manager interview
Prepare for a competency-based hiring manager interview. Informa's values framework — summarised internally as GROW (Grounded in trust, Results-focused, Opportunities for everyone, and We are Informa) — is referenced in interview scorecards, so frame answers around trust, outcomes, inclusion and collective ownership.
7
Expect a skills assessment or panel stage
Expect a skills assessment or panel stage. Sales roles often include a mock pitch or territory plan; editorial roles at Taylor & Francis ask for a written exercise (a commissioning brief, a copyediting sample, or a journal-strategy memo); data and tech roles run live or take-home technical exercises; marketing roles may include a campaign plan for a named event brand.
8
Meet the broader team
Meet the broader team. Final rounds typically include two to three additional interviewers — a cross-functional stakeholder, a skip-level leader, and in many cases a peer who will honestly describe the day-to-day. For senior roles expect to meet a divisional MD or functional VP.
9
Complete pre-employment checks
Complete pre-employment checks. Informa runs standard right-to-work verification, reference checks and, depending on role and geography, criminal record, credit and sanctions screening. Finance, legal and senior commercial roles typically see the most thorough checks.
10
Receive and negotiate the offer
Receive and negotiate the offer. Offers are extended verbally by the recruiter, followed by a written contract. Base salary, bonus target (STI), and for senior grades long-term incentive plan (LTIP) eligibility are all discussable; UK offers include pension, private medical, life assurance and a flexible benefits pot. Commission-heavy sales offers will detail quota, accelerators and clawback.

Resume Tips for Informa

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Lead with the business you impacted, not the job title

Lead with the business you impacted, not the job title. 'Grew exhibitor revenue on a £14M healthcare event by 22% YoY' tells an Informa Markets hiring manager more than 'Senior Sales Manager'. Name the event brand if you can legally do so — recruiters recognise Arab Health, CPHI, Black Hat, SuperReturn, ITU Telecoms, World of Concrete and HIMSS immediately.

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Quantify at Informa's scale

Quantify at Informa's scale. Revenue figures, square-metre sold, delegate numbers, submission-to-acceptance ratios, journal impact-factor changes, Net Promoter Score (NPS), retention rate, pipeline coverage and demand-gen MQL volumes all land well. Vague claims of 'driving growth' look weak against candidates using hard numbers.

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Map your experience to the right division

Map your experience to the right division. For Informa Markets roles, emphasise exhibitions, conferences, sponsorship, venue operations and international travel. For Informa Connect, emphasise delegate acquisition, speaker sourcing and community building. For Informa Tech / TechTarget, emphasise intent data, demand generation, martech stack fluency (Salesforce, Marketo, 6sense, Demandbase) and B2B content production. For Taylor & Francis, emphasise academic publishing experience, editorial workflows, peer review, production, rights and licensing, and subject-matter depth.

recommended

Use ATS-friendly formatting

Use ATS-friendly formatting. SmartRecruiters parses cleanly but punishes exotic layouts. Stick to a single-column PDF or DOCX, standard fonts (Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, Georgia), reverse-chronological structure, and avoid text-in-images, complex tables, headers/footers and graphics. ResumeGeni's ATS-safe templates are built for exactly this pattern.

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Mirror the posting's language

Mirror the posting's language. Informa job descriptions repeat phrases like 'colleague experience', 'commercial mindset', 'brand stewardship', 'portfolio management', 'P&L accountability', 'go-to-market', 'open research', 'peer review integrity', and 'subscription plus open-access'. Echoing those phrases (where honestly applicable) helps both the ATS and the human scorer.

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Show international fluency

Show international fluency. Informa is a genuinely global employer: London, New York, Boston, Dubai, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, São Paulo, Tokyo and Bangkok are all major hubs. If you have worked across regions, name the markets and the revenue sizes you managed. If you speak business-level languages other than English, list them with level (e.g. CEFR C1 Mandarin) near the top.

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Highlight cross-brand or matrix experience

Highlight cross-brand or matrix experience. Many senior Informa roles sit across multiple event brands, divisions, or geographies. Describing how you ran a shared service, reported into a matrix, or standardised a process across business units demonstrates you will survive the federated operating model.

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Be honest about publishing pressure at Taylor & Francis

Be honest about publishing pressure at Taylor & Francis. If you are moving from academia or from another scholarly publisher, address research-integrity and retraction processes directly — commissioning editors and publishers are measured partly on journal integrity, and the 2023-2025 retraction-controversy cycle has made this an interview topic rather than a taboo.

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Tailor a short summary at the top

Tailor a short summary at the top. Two or three lines that name the division, the function, and your standout metric turn a generic resume into a targeted application. Use ResumeGeni's role-tailoring workflow to produce a version per application rather than one generic resume for all of Informa.

ATS System: SmartRecruiters

Informa plc hires through SmartRecruiters, a cloud-native applicant tracking system widely used across European enterprise employers. The public career site lives at careers.smartrecruiters.com/InformaGroupPlc and is fed by the SmartRecruiters API. At the time of publication there were roughly 80 live public postings under the InformaGroupPlc tenant, covering all four divisions and multiple regions. SmartRecruiters parses resumes on upload and auto-fills structured fields (employment history, education, skills), so well-formatted files convert dramatically better than image-heavy or multi-column designs. Candidates get a single login to track applications across all Informa brands on the tenant, and the platform supports SSO with LinkedIn and Google.

Submit a clean single-column PDF or DOCX. SmartRecruiters' resume parser handles plain structures well but often drops content inside graphics, icons, tables and two-column layouts.
Check the autofilled fields before you submit. After upload, SmartRecruiters pre-populates work history and education — recruiters see this structured data first, so correct any parsing errors before clicking Submit.
Match keywords from the posting. SmartRecruiters tags postings with skills, functions, industries and custom fields (Brands, Business Group, Region). Using the same vocabulary on your resume and cover letter strengthens recall during structured searches.
Fill in the 'desired location' and 'work authorisation' fields accurately. Informa recruiters frequently filter on these; leaving them blank or overly broad can exclude you from shortlists you would otherwise qualify for.
Apply once per role — not multiple times from different devices. Duplicate applications appear as dedupe flags in the recruiter view and can complicate your file.
Use SmartRecruiters' candidate profile as a persistent CV. Updating it between applications keeps your record clean across all Informa roles on the same tenant.
Expect interview self-scheduling. SmartRecruiters Hire often sends calendar links so you can pick a slot directly, which usually speeds up the process — respond quickly.

Interview Culture

Informa's interview culture is recognisably British FTSE 100: structured, values-aware, and commercially serious.

The company uses a competency- and values-based framework aligned to its GROW principles (Grounded in trust, Results-focused, Opportunities for everyone, and We are Informa), and trained interviewers score against that framework rather than relying on gut feel. Expect three to four rounds for most professional roles: a recruiter screen, a hiring-manager interview, a skills or panel stage, and a final with a senior leader or cross-functional stakeholder. Executive and senior director roles can involve more stages, psychometric assessment through providers such as SHL, and presentation exercises. Questions lean competency-based ('Tell me about a time when…') with STAR-format answers expected, and Taylor & Francis editorial interviews in particular often include a take-home writing or strategy task. Sales interviews at Informa Markets and Informa Connect tend to be transparent about the commercial pressure — quotas, win-rate expectations, and the cyclicality of the events calendar are discussed openly because candidates who are not energised by that pace tend to leave within 12 months. Informa Tech and Informa TechTarget interviews, especially post-acquisition, carry a clear demand-generation and intent-data flavour: expect to discuss ABM programmes, buyer-journey funnels, and pipeline economics. Panels are common and diverse by design; Informa tracks colleague experience indicators and the company's public diversity data is referenced by many interviewers. The tone is professional-warm rather than aggressive, and there is very little of the theatre you sometimes see in US tech hiring — no pressure brainteasers, no adversarial questioning. That said, the company is direct: if your numbers do not hold up under follow-up, or if your answer to 'why Informa' is a generic one, you will not advance. Come ready to talk specifically about the division you are joining, why its model appeals to you, and what you would do in the first 90 days.

What Informa Looks For

Commercial mindset. Whether the role is editorial, operational, marketing or technology, Informa expects colleagues to understand the P&L they sit in and to speak in terms of revenue, margin, retention and investment return.
Brand stewardship. Many Informa jobs involve carrying a brand (Black Hat, CPHI, Routledge, TechTarget) that is older, larger and more valuable than any single role-holder. Candidates who demonstrate respect for that legacy while still pushing the brand forward stand out.
Portfolio and matrix experience. The company runs a federated operating model with shared services on top; success requires the ability to navigate matrix reporting, partner with shared functions, and influence without line authority.
International literacy. With hubs across EMEA, North America, Asia-Pacific and Latin America, Informa values colleagues who have worked across borders, time zones and cultures, and who can adapt communication style accordingly.
Integrity and governance instinct. As a FTSE 100 issuer, Informa cares about controls, compliance, data protection and — especially at Taylor & Francis — research-integrity processes. Evidence of careful decision-making under regulatory or reputational risk is an asset.
Digital and data fluency. Exhibitions, conferences and publishing are all being rewired by data, AI and digital platforms. Candidates who can connect traditional business models to digital transformation and intent-data thinking get serious attention.
Grounded in trust. The first pillar of GROW shows up in interviews as a bias toward candidates who give credit generously, describe failure candidly, and behave consistently across audiences.
Results-focused delivery. Informa is a performance culture; hiring managers probe for specific outcomes you owned and delivered, not just activities you participated in.
Inclusion and colleague experience orientation. The company's 'Opportunities for everyone' pillar and colleague-experience metrics mean people leaders are assessed on how they develop, promote and retain diverse teams.
Curiosity about the business model. The strongest candidates ask sharp questions about how the event, journal, community or product actually earns money, and how the role moves that model forward.

Frequently Asked Questions

What ATS does Informa plc use and where do I actually apply?

Informa uses SmartRecruiters for all four divisions. The public URL careers.informa.com redirects to the Informa-branded SmartRecruiters career site at careers.smartrecruiters.com/InformaGroupPlc, which is the canonical job board for Informa Markets, Informa Connect, Informa Tech and Taylor & Francis. You create one SmartRecruiters candidate profile and use it to track all applications across the group.

Is Informa the same company as Taylor & Francis and TechTarget?

Yes, with nuance. Taylor & Francis is a wholly-owned division of Informa plc and its roles are hired on the same InformaGroupPlc SmartRecruiters tenant. TechTarget was acquired by Informa in 2024 in a roughly $350 million deal that combined it with Informa Tech Digital Businesses to form Informa TechTarget, a new Nasdaq-listed company majority-owned by Informa. Some TechTarget roles still recruit under their own brand while others appear on the Informa tenant, so check both sources if you are targeting that business.

How competitive is it to get hired at Informa?

Informa is a desirable FTSE 100 employer and sales, marketing and editorial roles in the London HQ and New York hub attract strong applicant pools. That said, with about 10,000 colleagues across 30+ countries and a broad mix of exhibition, conference, editorial, technology and corporate roles, there is a steady pipeline of openings — far more than pure-tech or pure-publishing peers. Candidates who tailor their application to the specific division and quantify their commercial impact advance faster than generalists.

How long does the Informa interview process take?

Most professional hires complete the process in three to six weeks from application to offer. A typical path is: recruiter screen within 1-2 weeks of applying, hiring manager interview the following week, panel or skills assessment 1-2 weeks after that, and a final leader interview shortly after. Senior commercial and leadership hires can take 6-10 weeks and may involve psychometric testing and board-level sign-off.

Does Informa pay well compared to other FTSE 100 employers?

Informa's base pay is broadly in line with FTSE 100 information and media peers — competitive in London and New York, generally stronger than trade-press or academic-publisher benchmarks and weaker than pure-play big tech. Commercial roles in Informa Markets and Informa Connect have meaningful variable pay (uncapped commission or STI) tied to revenue and retention. Senior grades receive LTIP awards aligned to group performance. Benefits (pension, private medical, life assurance, flex pot, generous holiday) are a real part of the package and should be factored into any offer comparison.

Is Informa a good place to work for career growth?

For colleagues willing to move across brands, divisions and geographies it can be excellent — internal moves are actively encouraged and the federated model creates a wide surface area of opportunities. Expect to be measured on results; high performers are promoted and given larger portfolios. Colleagues who stay in one narrow brand for a very long time sometimes report growth plateaus, which is why the strongest internal careers combine deep expertise in one vertical with lateral moves into new divisions or markets.

Does Informa support remote or hybrid work?

Yes, with variation by division and role. Corporate and central-function roles at 240 Blackfriars Road in London, as well as major hubs in New York, Boston, Dubai and Singapore, typically follow a hybrid pattern of around three days in the office. Exhibition operations, venue and on-the-ground event roles require significant in-person and travel time and are rarely remote. Technology and editorial roles can be more flexible. Always clarify the specific hybrid expectation before accepting an offer.

How should I handle questions about recent Taylor & Francis retraction controversies in an editorial interview?

Address them directly and professionally. Large scholarly publishers including Taylor & Francis have navigated several public article-retraction and research-integrity episodes in recent years, and interviewers expect candidates to understand the landscape. Demonstrate familiarity with COPE guidance, peer-review integrity processes, and the tension between open-access growth and quality safeguards. Candidates who can talk calmly about how they would strengthen editorial controls — rather than pretending the issue does not exist — score significantly better.

What is the GROW framework and how do I use it in interviews?

GROW is Informa's internal values framework: Grounded in trust, Results-focused, Opportunities for everyone, and We are Informa (collective ownership of the group). Interviewers are trained to probe for behavioural evidence against each pillar, so prepare two or three STAR-format stories per pillar — for example, a time you rebuilt trust after a mistake (Grounded in trust), a high-accountability outcome you delivered (Results-focused), an inclusion or development action you took for a team member (Opportunities for everyone), and a cross-functional or cross-brand collaboration (We are Informa).

Does Informa hire graduates and interns?

Yes. Informa runs graduate programmes and internships across Markets, Connect, Tech and Taylor & Francis, typically advertised on the SmartRecruiters tenant and through university careers services. Early-careers roles appear most reliably for editorial, marketing, data, finance and sales graduate tracks; availability and branding vary by country. Apply early in the cycle, use the same SmartRecruiters tenant, and tailor your application to a specific division rather than submitting a generic 'any role' CV.

How cyclical is the events business and should I worry about layoffs?

Events is inherently cyclical — revenue is concentrated around show dates and specific seasons — and the 2020-2021 COVID-19 shutdown caused a severe, industry-wide disruption that prompted restructuring across event employers including Informa. Since then the business has recovered strongly and Informa has expanded headcount, particularly through the TechTarget combination. That said, show-portfolio reviews happen routinely and roles occasionally change. A frank conversation with your hiring manager about the portfolio's growth trajectory is reasonable and expected in commercial interviews.

Does Informa sponsor work visas?

Informa sponsors visas for roles where no suitable domestic candidate is available, most commonly in the UK under Skilled Worker sponsorship and in the US under H-1B for specialty roles. Sponsorship is role-by-role and not guaranteed; the recruiter will confirm early in the screen. If you need sponsorship, declare it on the application form rather than waiting — it is a standard filter and trying to hide it wastes everyone's time.

How to Apply to Informa

Key Takeaways

About Informa

Application Process

Resume Tips for Informa

Lead with the business you impacted, not the job title

Quantify at Informa's scale

Map your experience to the right division

Use ATS-friendly formatting

Mirror the posting's language

Show international fluency

Highlight cross-brand or matrix experience

Be honest about publishing pressure at Taylor & Francis

Tailor a short summary at the top

ATS System: SmartRecruiters

Interview Culture

What Informa Looks For

Frequently Asked Questions

Open Positions

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