Career Spotlight: Public Relations

Do you like interacting with people? Do you enjoy writing? Are you interested in working for a business, or maybe even a government body?

If you answered yes to these questions, you may want to consider a career in public relations, or PR. The overarching goal of a PR professional is to persuade an audience to hold a certain opinion about a given entity or organization.

While this might sound easy on the surface, there are many important tasks PR specialists must complete on a regular basis, and mishaps can be detrimental for the company or organization.

If a career in public relations sounds interesting to you, there are a few important things you need to know.

1. Job description: Public relations specialists build good relationships with the public.

If you’d like to become a public relations professional, you should be prepared to interact with the public, and the news media, on a regular basis.

As a PR specialist, you will be expected to prepare press releases, market your business or organization, plan and manage events, speak at public gatherings and press conferences and serve as a facilitator of most all communications within and outside of your company or organization.

In short, a PR professional must always consider what his or her targeted audience needs to hear to ensure it has a positive opinion about a given organization.

2. Qualifications: Earn your degree.

In order to ensure you have the best possible chance of getting a job in public relations, you’ll need to earn a college degree in public relations or a related program.

Oftentimes, public relations is considered a concentration within a wider degree program, such as mass communications. If your school doesn’t offer a program specifically for public relations, majoring in communications or marketing would give you much of the knowledge you’d likely need in the public relations world.

Taking a few journalism courses is also a good option for those interested in PR. Journalism courses will teach you how to write clearly and effectively, a skill that will serve you well in any PR position.

3. How can you set yourself apart? Get experience while in school.

Most all public relations positions require prospective applicants to have some amount of prior experience in the field. How should you get experience before you find your first real PR job? Complete at least one PR internship while earning your degree.

A PR internship will give you the experience you need to take on a PR job in the real-world, and it could even provide you with positive references as you embark on your post-graduation job search.

If you’re planning to enter the PR field someday, keeping all of these things in mind will help guide you on your road to success. For more career spotlights and other articles, check out my HonorSociety.org blog.