Suitable skills for PR’s new world
December 11th, 2012 by Sophie Mackintosh
Guest blogger, Sophie Mackintosh, explores how the range of jobs she did post-university provided unexpectedly useful skills for when she finally entered the world of agency public relations
My route into PR wasn’t simple. Like most graduates nowadays, I suffered through unpaid internships supplemented by working in a coffee shop, working freelance at night, and temping as a PA. While this was frustrating at the time, now that I’m in my dream job I’m realising that without these experiences I might not have been prepared for the PR world at all.
From what I’ve heard from wiser (older) colleagues and others in the industry, PR is changing enormously. Gone are the days when the main skill required was being able to blag your way through a press release for a technical product you didn’t fully understand, or write shining copy in fifteen minutes flat. Nowadays, in such a huge and rapidly-growing industry, the most valuable skills you can have are flexibility and confidence. With journalists being bombarded with pitches on all sides, making them believe that your client is the one they should be writing about is a daunting task.
The fairly recent addition of social media to the B2B PR landscape means that the traditional PR role now includes coming up with Facebook page content, blog posts, and maybe even infographics to share on Pinterest. It’s a strange mix of the sophisticated and casual; increasingly scientific theories and formulas about ROI and influence sit side by side with contacting journalists through Twitter because they won’t answer your emails. As a result, the industry is becoming more integrated as agencies realise they have to move with the times and come up with more innovative solutions for clients. For some that means incorporating SEO, for others it’s specialising in social media or offering production services. And that means that those working in the industry have to quickly adapt to follow these developments. A PR professional’s role no longer fits into one pigeonhole.
This is where my patchwork, post-graduation career comes in handy. While my English degree is enormously valuable to me – writing is still crucial to PR, especially given that we now find ourselves writing copy for a widening variety of mediums – the commercial world is very different to university. A degree alone wouldn’t have prepared me for the realities of PR, but dealing with stroppy customers and organising the schedules of high-flying bosses became a crash-course in the essential people skills that I eventually used as my PR launch pad. Doing all the jobs I did taught me tenacity, how to turn my hand to anything and, of course, how to take a deep breath and make very important phone calls without dissolving into jelly.
The PR industry is evolving in step with the media and getting increasingly complicated. As such there is no one specific skill that will carry you through – or one specific trajectory to get you where you want to be. But for me, and for a lot of graduates, this can be a bonus. Suddenly all the jobs I’d been doing made sense. They gave me writing and editing experience, flawless organisational skills, and the capacity to placate customers distressed by the foam on their wet lattes, all without breaking a sweat. Whoever thought those skills would come in just as useful – if not more so – than my first-class degree and array of marketing internships?
Sophie Mackintosh works at B2B PR firm TopLine Communications, and you can find her on Twitter on @sophmackintosh
Tim Hudson Says:
I’m always reassured by how many other PR professionals, like myself, come from a dramatic arts background; applying their confidence and communication skills in a completely different context, to successful effect.
Anyone can can read about theory and learn how to use PR tools but it’s what you do with them, how you use them to the greater strategic good and how you build and maintain beneficial working relationships that makes effective PR. Whether you pick this added-value up on a course, in a coffee-shop, on the stage or under the pressures of high-level personal assisting, it makes little difference…although all of this is easier to explain in an interview than illustrate on a CV!
Heather Says:
Couldn’t agree more. Personality, organisational skills and ability to roll with the punches are up there with copywriting on the list of things that matter in PR.
Oh and thanks for pointing out that we’re older than you!
Dwayne Alicie Says:
Fantastic post, Sophie! And it is so true that people/customer service skills are incredibly important — just as vital as being able to write or formulate strategy. Also, I’m on a career trajectory similar to yours right now and it’s inspiring to hear about how you’ve integrated your experience to contribute to your success. Cheers!
James Cooper Says:
This is a really insightful article, we are always being told about the ‘new, new’ – in reality PR relies on some basic human skills centred around empathy, communication and understanding. The PR people who are the best have often had the benefit of a broad church of industry and business experience before coming into the industry. This is essential as PR is an outward looking profession, not an inward looking one, and those that have just done a media studies degree or similar may take longer to gain the same broad perspective others coming in to PR from other backgrounds and industries often have,