Advice For The PR Grad
It’s obvious that we are living in troubled economic times, and new grads are facing a pretty tough job market. So we decided to reach out to PR professionals with the goal of collecting the very best advice they had to offer. The response was amazing – our inbox, and various other social media spaces, were flooded with responses from both seasoned PR vets and recent grads who have had success in their own job hunts.
We received so much advice it would be impossible to include it all in one place. Rather than making edits and leaving out huge amounts of truly valuable advice we’ve decided to do a week-long series “Advice For The PR Grad”.
So stay tuned – starting next week we’ll be presenting a huge amount of quality advice broken up into different areas of the job hunting process and the PR industry itself!
Here’s a preview…
“Lots of young people have come to me over the years about trying to get into public relations as they see it as a glamorous job. Invariably they tell me they love people or are good with people and so want to go into the field. Here’s what I tell them….if you want to go into PR because you love people…it’s the wrong job for you…it’s not about smoozing…it’s about strategic and creative thinking that often has to be out-of-the-box, the ability to conduct effective research and then analyze situations (seeing both sides of an issue), understanding the science of public opinion and psychology, and then effectively advising/convincing senior management on a course of action. At different times and in different situations, you have to be able to be both a leader and an effective team member, and you always have to be able to write and speak succinctly and convincingly. It’s amazing how many of these young people leave my office realizing it’s not the job for them…they want the glamour of their name in the paper or being on television…and none of the hard, hard work!” ~Lindsay Shearer, Director of Public Relations, CIGNA HealthCare
