APPLY YOURSELF: Steps to Building A Career in Public Relations

I wrote this in 2015 about an intern we had named Katherine Sartain. I was happy to look her up and find her in a successful PR career in Denver!

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It's that time of year again -- when my company’s interns start looking for their first real job. And they start wondering if we’re hiring, and whether they can stay in their comfortable cocoon of the job they had in college. Katherine Sartain, one of our most astute ones, came to me today to discuss her future, and where she was headed. Rather than give her the usual lecture on how she should spread her wings, she came in resolutely prepared to start her career right, and honestly asked me how to build a career she could be proud of, not just how to get a full time job at the firm I founded, Covalent Logic.?

What followed was a dialogue about the potential paths to a lifelong career in Public Relations and the ways to get started on it. I’ll share our insights with you here. I say “our” insights because while I was certainly on my soapbox – teaching and preaching, it was Katherine’s astute questions that led me to develop this framework.?

To start with – there are three ways to get experience in your first job that will create the experiences on your resume and in your past that will serve you well in the future of the industry: Media, In-House and Agency. Each has its pros and cons and offers a different life, experience and exposure. The most important thing about this analysis is that I’m not covering what it takes to be a good PR person. No matter what you do, you have to learn to listen, write and to contextualize knowledge. But, all three of these choices will get you there.?

SIDE NOTE: Or you can choose to dedicate your entire soul to non-profit work or government. But, those aren’t “jobs,” in the classical sense, they are mission-work.? You have to be a believer in order to enter the convent of non-profit or monastery of government.?

MEDIA: Fish Wrap / Boob Tube / Radio Free Europe

In Media, you learn that the product and deadline are everything. Your goal isn’t to make friends, it’s to influence people. You get a wide range of experience, but the pay is low. You can pretty much guarantee that at some point in time over your first year, you’ll be given an opportunity because you are in the right place at the right time that will change your entire life. That right place is likely next to the police scanner and the right time is 2 in the morning. You’ll have no life, your life will belong to your comrades-in-arms, and the only way to win is to beat the other team.?

You get to be competitive, cool, make a name for yourself - even if it’s just that you’re the girl who always covers the suburban school board meeting. When you show up, people know who you are, and they send you emails cussing you out about your distorted words and liberal point of view, when you simply quoted their public statement. You learn to be tough and callous, but you also learn to have skin in the game. Your job is to be passionate about everything you do.?

If you’re built to be us vs. them and want to win, no matter the cost, some time spent in media will sharpen those skills. If you’ve never been yelled at, never had to run with something that was less than perfect just because the time had come, if you’ve never felt the high-five of a win over the other team, then you simply have to spend time in the media early in your career.?

In radio, you’ll learn how to think and speak on your feet, because regardless of your actual job, there will be a minute or two, when someone needs to go to the bathroom, and you need to push buttons and fill time. In TV, you’ll learn how to package concepts, because regardless of your actual job, when the trial of the century ends, you’ll see how your infographic, timeline, backgrounder, photo research, community reaction quotes or footage gets used to put together the “thing that’s going to win me an Emmy.” In the newspaper, you’ll learn how to be smarter than everyone else in the room, with or without whiskey in your system. You’ll learn how to argue about AP Style, and the intent of a quote, the minutia of details.?

All of these media experiences help you later in PR. They help you with contacts in the industry, because reporters are loathe to utterly destroy people they used to like without offering chance for a comment. But early life in media teaches you how to understand the motivations of the people you’ll rely on in the future to be the intermediaries for your message.?

IN-HOUSE DEPARTMENT: The Island of Misfit Toys

Whether you go to a large corporate communications department or you *are* the department, you will likely not be the king of your kingdom. In most companies, sales or operations drive the train of decision-making of the company and PR, Marketing and Communications are the caboose. Working every day with dozens or hundreds of people who don’t do what you do, don’t know what you know, will change the way you look at your skills and efforts.?

You are likely to have a better work-life balance, that is to say, you will have a life. You’ll be at the mercy of your accounting, engineering, and salesman colleagues, and they all have spouses and lives after 5:30. This means that when the reporter wants a quote at 7 pm at night, you’ll be trying desperately to reach your Executive Counsel, who’s likely at Bible Study or watching her son’s baseball game.?

You get a close-up view of what it’s like to move the needle of hard dollars and cents. You’ll see people get laid-off when you do your job poorly, and a branch open in a new town because some other department made it happen… when in both cases, you only found out about the issue before they wanted you to write a press release.?

There’s a funny thing that happens in a company – everyone thinks they can do your job. They all know how writing works and how to use their iPhone camera, and they’ve read the newspaper their whole lives. Surely, you’ll be interested in their edits to your perfectly grammatical words to change “more than 7 million” to “over 7 million,” so they can keep making their cheesy joke about over and under.?

When you’re in a company and not everyone writes well, you’ll learn to listen to people who think differently than you do, so that you can translate their thoughts into good writing. You’ll have a variety of experiences, and likely get to do things that aren’t in your wheelhouse. Oftentimes, the CEO will know who you are, and so will the receptionist. You’ll especially learn how to explain the difference between PR, Corporate Communications, Marketing and Advertising to people who have no idea what you do.

If you are in a large department, you’ll get the opportunity to see business acumen in operation. If you’re a one-man show, you’ll learn to be scrappy and figure it out – whatever “it” might be.? You might learn to work with an agency, to get the most out of limited financial resources. You can learn how to delegate and what to delegate, and how to supervise and approve someone else’s work.?

AGENCY: Everything’s different, nothing’s changed

Working at an agency may not be as glamorous as you imagine it to be, but at the end of a couple of years, you’ll be able to tell stories that make it sound like it is. There’s the opportunity to dig deep into real crisis and issues, as well as find ways to build excitement about the launch of new products and services. And if you’re a little schizophrenic, then agency life is perfect for you. You’ll be surrounded by people to model yourself after. There’s always an opportunity to find mentors – your boss, the owner, your clients, and your vendors. You’ll likely find some warnings, too – the man who’s been divorced four times, but is counting on wife number five to see him through his next heart attack, or the woman who drinks before she goes home.?

In agency life, everyone’s like you. They all love Mad Men, and have read “Eats, Shoots and Leaves.” They’ll all read the thing about the celebrity’s twitter account snafu and have an opinion on what he should have done to fix the problem. You can geek out about the misprinted press release that led to the retraction that led to the editorial letter that led to the blog post that led to the comment that led to the resignation of that official.?

At the same time, if you live looking for every opportunity to do more, there’s always more to be given to you. While your experience might be limited to stuffing envelopes for the first six weeks, your exposure to new and interesting things is off the charts. Even when you don’t get to work on the amazing projects or write the talking points yourself, if you pay attention, you can learn from the work going on around you. If you learn to share information and work for the team’s success, you’ll likely find yourself getting the cool clients and the best projects. As well as some of the worst ones. One of the tough lessons you’ll learn is that he who works hardest gets rewarded with more hard work. And a good trip or dinner out.?

Learn some etiquette. Know how to entertain. Know at least three appropriate jokes for any audience and you’ll find yourself where the action is – with the clients. And that gives you the opportunity to practice the agency’s bread-winning activity – making people happy. Really happy. Seeing the delight on the client’s face for the perfect execution of the perfect strategy is reserved for those who know how to entertain and serve.?

You’ll get a wide experience as a young person in an agency, which gives you the chance to practice whether you’re a writer, an account man, an events coordinator, a researcher, planner or pitcher. You’ll come to understand yourself as your work gets criticized and rejected, and you realize there’s a separation between your worth as a person and the worth of your work. Or you’ll become that woman who drinks before she goes home.?

Every agency is different. Some are family-oriented (meaning if your last name isn’t on the door, you’ll never be a vice-president) and some are eat-what-you-kill (a loose consortium of independent practitioners who don’t want to make their own coffee). Finding the right agency is harder than picking the right college – what they show you on the tour is rarely what life will actually be like. Feel free to try agencies out (they’re testing you, too). But always do good work, be professional and give two weeks’ notice. Eventually, you’ll run into everyone again in PR – it’s a small world and it’s a smaller industry.?

SPIN THE BOTTLE: Make a choice, and don’t stick with it

So, all of this is a long-winded way to say that how you start your career doesn’t have to be the way you end it. All of these parts of the industry will inform your work if you change your path. And don’t be afraid to change your mind.?

Also, if you happen not to be in the c/o ‘2015, and are looking for a great woman for her first assignment in Media, Corporate Division or Agency in a city located in North America, I’ve got a great one for you at: www.dhirubhai.net/in/katherinesartain/?