Ged Carroll

I want to work in PR…

Published: (Updated: ) in howto | 怎麼做 | 방법 | 実行する方法, marketing | 營銷 | 마케팅 | マーケティング by .

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I’ve had a number of messages on LinkedIn and emails over the past few months as graduates started to look for first jobs and start with ‘I want to work in PR’. So I figured it might be useful sharing the advice here. There are lots of obvious things you can do to make you more employable in terms of highlighting potential useful skills and getting the basics right – spelling and grammar being a major bugbear.

But beyond all that generic advice here are some things to think about that are PR-specific:

Don’t lose heart. I want to work in PR means commitment to beat out thousands of other talented smart graduates.

Let’s start off with the maths, the job market is basically a numbers game, I got my first agency role after sending out over 200 CVs/ job application forms. It is just a matter of being at the right place at the right time

When I started off, being a mature graduate, coming from an Irish working class household in the North West of England put me at a disadvantage. The clients and colleagues were all bothered about mojitos, wine and six nations rugby. The industry is still as white, middle class and English as it ever was. You have to be the change and that is really lonely. You’ll be on your own. Mentors can help, but you’ll be relying on your own resilience whether you’re:

Classism and age are the last acceptable prejudices, but the others will be signalled through micro-aggressions, gaslighting and omission. Your allies won’t always be allies, dragging you down will help them get a leg up.

So how can you tilt the odds in your favour?