YOUR FIRST ROLE IN PR – TEN TIPS

Every week, I get dozens of speculative job applications from people looking to get into PR.

First things first, make sure you personalise your emails, show you’ve taken some time to find out who you’re addressing and don’t just copy and paste.

If I had a ￡ for every email I get with multiple fonts and text sizes, I’d be able to retire.

Be aware of the salary levels too – expecting north of ￡60k for an entry-level role when you have no experience isn’t going to get you very far.

Understanding what PR is and what a role entails is also something so many have failed to grasp.

So in a bid to help the next generation coming through, here are some tips on how to make your first role a great success.

1. Be a good writer – PR requires so many different styles of writing and you need to be able to produce tight, engaging and interesting copy, sometimes with a quick turnaround. Great writing is an art that requires constant refinement.
2. Show that you have a deep interest in PR, not just that you think it means free tickets, merchandise or mixing with celebrities and consuming online content. Join the CIPR; follow influential PR figures on socials and subscribe to newsletters; write a blog about PR and communications; perhaps even offer some free support to local businesses to try out what you learn through reading up on the profession.
3. Prepare for sales – whether that is selling yourself, your ideas or your clients’ services, PR requires charm, persistence and understanding what to sell, to who and why. A great friend of mine, who edits a kids’ magazine, often gets sent pitches about driving experiences or safaris which have no relevance to his publication audience. Making sure you pitch to the right people at the right time is fundamental. No one would claim it is easy.
4. Be organised. The days when I used a trusty Filofax are long gone and it’s now easy to keep everything in the cloud so you can always locate that file, contact, cutting or report that you need unexpectedly with ease. PR consultants have to juggle a lot of balls – and none of us would dare claim that we don’t drop one or two once in a while. But there are so many online tools to help you keep on top of organisation and the most important things that there should be no reason to let things slip.
5. Be prepared for a lot of admin. As a journalist, creating preparatory documents and research and analysis wasn’t always part of my role, but it’s fundamental in PR. A great chunk of your time will be in meetings or doing desk research so if that’s your idea of hell, PR probably isn’t for you.
6. Be prepared to get your hands dirty. PR professionals need to thrive at adaptation. The role is so varied that you could be sitting in a meeting with a high net-worth individual one day and then the next, planting pegs in cold, muddy ground for a client banner at an event or carrying bags laden with promotional or merchandising materials.
7. Live and breathe your clients – that doesn't mean working 24/7 and adopting an ‘always-on’ approach. But the news cycle is now ongoing and breaking stories that may be relevant to your clients can drop on the weekend, late at night or a bank holiday – especially in sport which I work in, but across multiple disciplines. I really believe that you should be consuming news and content all the time anyway, and just keeping an eye out for stories or angles that clients may be interested in for one reason or another is what sets the good from the great.
8. Accuracy matters. If you are prone to spelling errors, or typos, use spelling platforms or colleagues to double-check everything. Sometimes mistakes happen, sometimes software lets you down. But if I had a point for every time someone put an apostrophe in the wrong place or spelt definitely incorrectly, I’d have a beach house in the Caribbean.
9. Show resilience. When I started in journalism and then when I moved into PR, I made mistakes. It’s inevitable. You have to accept that there is a lot to learn. You may need to spend longer doing tasks at the outset, correcting errors or just taking your time, than further down the line. If you’re not prepared to put the time in to learn and hone your skills, or accept that mistakes will be highlighted so that you can learn, whatever profession you follow, you’ll struggle. No one expects you to be perfect, but if you’re being told to correct the same mistake half a dozen times, it doesn’t breed confidence in your colleagues or yourself. You have to be resilient, have something of a thick skin and be determined.
10. PR is constantly evolving, and so must you. While many fundamentals endure, your skills must grow. Twenty years ago there was no social media of importance, while today, Tik Tok’s emergence or artificial intelligence is inevitably going to have an impact. One of the things I love about PR is the fact that we are always challenged, always tested and that requires learning fast. Continuous Professional Development (see CIPR) provides the structure and resources to learn and develop.