When I look at my PR journey for the last two decades, I’m grateful that I had mentors that exposed me to all aspects of the Public Relations (PR) Profession. For any young PR hopefuls out there, who would like to master this craft, it is important to be open to learning everything there is to learn and not be choosy.
Our profession entails the following: PR and Communication Strategy and Planning; Media Publicity and External Communication; Media Relations and Engagements; Internal Communication and Employee Engagements; Stakeholder Relations and Engagements; Leadership Profiling or Thought Leadership; Issue, Crisis and Reputation Management as well as Investor Relations for JSE-Listed companies (those listed in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange). I’ve been lucky enough to gain experience in all these principles of PR and this is also because I was open to learning – I was basically like a sponge in water.
During my career, I’ve always been more than happy to assist young PR professionals grow in this discipline and I’ve done this in different forms of on–the job practical training that included both mentorship and coaching. However, I came across a few youngsters who came with sad stories about not being able to obtain internships or experience from different companies and they told me how desperate they were. They even went as far as saying that they were willing to do any kind of job to gain the experience needed to graduate or progress in their careers. What I found disappointing is how they got complacent the minute they were given the opportunities. Don’t get me wrong, there’s definitely a few jewels in today’s youngsters, and they all start very well however the minute they get comfortable – their true colours start coming out. I’ve always advised youth that it’s important for them to have a solid foundation before their careers start flourishing and they start moving up.
Also, I’ve asked them to be patient with their process of learning – to take it one step at a time and master each skill before moving to the next challenge. This means starting at the very bottom and doing every task given with a smile. However, you’d see from their faces that they were bored when they were given PR administrative jobs because most of them want to jump straight to developing strategies before even knowing how to file or make a photocopy. I always like to make the example of a gentlemen who put a Twitter post about his daughter who had finished her masters after studying at University full-time and had never worked anywhere before but was looking for a job as a CEO of a company. This youngster felt that her Master’s degree gave her the license to move straight from varsity to being a CEO without doing the grafting that everyone else has done right at the bottom moving up slowly, but surely.
Because of the youth’s impatience in starting at the bottom and learning gradually, a lot of young PR professionals miss a great deal of crucial stages in their development and move up too quickly in their careers with a lot of holes in between. This is because a lot of them impatiently want to move up to management roles before mastering the basics. Also, what I picked up is that they chose roles that look easy and nice and did want to do anything that expects a lot of effort. The unfortunate thing is that PR is pure slavery, but we still do it because we love it. It is content and admin heavy and we work with volumes – those who are lazy do not survive. The ones that have been in the profession for long make it look easy to those watching from the outside until they start doing it themselves and realise that it’s not as easy as it looks.
My advise to youngsters who want to succeed in this profession is to have the willingness to do any task they are given no matter how small or tedious it may look because it’s grooming them for the future. In PR, it’s important to learn how to write because this makes it easy for one to come up with newsworthy angles for media. This also helps in media relations; doing everything will most definitely turn youngsters into all-rounders that will always have an upper hand to anyone they are competing with for future jobs. These days, both big companies and agencies unfortunately do not have the luxury or budgets to employ PR professionals who are just co-ordinators or client service agents.
