By Mike King
PR agencies are often slated for not giving graduates a chance, but, frankly, most graduates don’t make things easy for themselves.
First off, let me say that when it comes to recruiting graduates our track record is exemplary. As an agency we’ve always put a lot of emphasis on staff development and training. Wherever we can we recruit junior staff, help them to develop and promote people from within. Over the years, this approach has held us in good stead. But it only works when we can find the right people - bright, enthusiastic candidates who genuinely find the work stimulating and interesting.
We’re growing, winning new clients and, as a result, we’re currently recruiting. But finding the right graduates is not as easy to find as you might think.
Of course, we need people with a decent academic background – at least a decent 2.1 and good A-level results – and a good enough understanding of tech PR to convince us that it is genuinely an area they would enjoy working in and would excel at. Sounds easy, after all there are record numbers of graduates looking for work. However, it is amazing how many candidates turn up for interviews with obviously no knowledge of (and therefore no real interest in) what we do.
I appreciate how difficult it is to get started on a PR career, sometimes we feel like one of a very small number of agencies prepared to train graduates, but candidates who have an ‘that’s a PR job, that’ll do’ approach to job hunting aren’t going to find employment.
Simple as it may sound, my tip to graduates looking to start a PR career is to do some research and decide what area of PR is best suited to you e.g. consumer, B2B, fashion, political, financial etc and then focus on that area. Come up with something tangible and convincing to demonstrate that it is right for you and use that to stand out from the other candidates. It’s got to beat randomly applying for PR jobs that you aren’t really interested in, simply wasting your time and getting nowhere.
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