What it takes to work in public relations: a recruiter’s perspective
By Craig on Mar 4, 2010 in Blog guests & critiques, interviews, Careers in public relations, Public relations | View Comments
In this, the first of a series of posts on aspects of working in public relations, two of Australia’s leading PR recruiters are interviewed. In future posts, an experienced agency head, an in-house communicator and a young practitioner at the beginning of her career will provide their perspectives on what it takes to excel in PR.
If social media is one of the ‘must-have’ skills of a contemporary public relations professional, doesn’t that mean the professional should be a credible ‘player’ in social media themselves? After all, isn’t the best example of competency actually walking the talk?
Perhaps not, at least not yet, according to two of the leading public relations recruiters in Australia, Richard Whitington and Di Treble from Talent2. It is not often you get senior, industry-leading recruiters talking about their craft and the principles and approaches that underpin their methodologies, so this interview with them both provides timely insights.
These insights are relevant not just to whether PR pros should be going gangbusters in social media to help them develop their career, but highlight some basic principles underpinning career development in public relations.
Note that all the comments in quotation marks that follow are the combined response of Richard and Di to my questions.
What it takes to work in public relations
What characteristics does it take to work in PR?
- “A genuine interest in current events and trends (even if it’s just in your area of specialty) and the media (in all its forms) and how it is evolving
- An enquiring mind and, for the most part, an ability to put yourself in your audience’s shoes;
- An ability to simplify the complicated, quickly
- Integrity and trustworthiness – without personal credibility, you’re worthless (as in any other calling)
- Strong project management and high level organisational skills
- Excellent written skills (including grammar and punctuation!)
- An ability to deal confidently with senior people including clients, stakeholders and the media
- To create exciting campaigns that are interesting to the media and the target audience.”
Qualities required to be an excellent PR professional
What are employers looking for when hiring public relations professionals? What are the key technical skills (e.g. media relations) that experience is most highly valued in and what strategic mindsets are coveted?
“All of the above. Strategy is an overused and misused word. Strategy should be no more complicated than understanding big picture objectives and operating in the context of those, from a communications perspective, as well as in terms of budgeting and time management.”
What skills, attributes, knowledge, attitude are needed for working in-house, compared to the PR agency environment, and vice versa?
“In-house is likely to demand a more ‘corporate’ mindset and involve higher level stakeholder management (sometimes in an environment where the communications function is not understood/appreciated).
“Agency is likely to be more ‘commercial’ and generally requires a greater ability to multi-task and adapt quickly to varied personalities (internally and externally) and cultures; and to be able to switch from one industry to another.
“Both require the confidence to counsel people who are more senior than you.”
Social/online media and getting ahead in PR
What role does a PR professional’s presence in social media have in getting them a job? For instance, how important is it to have a good profile on LinkedIn? What value to a PR career is there is being engaged on Twitter? Does it give those who are more engaged an advantage?
“Clearly, there can be no harm in having a ‘profile’, provided it’s in the appropriate circumstances and you’re keeping good company. At the risk of sounding overly conservative, there are risks in social media.
“Good PR (even for yourself) involves risk management. Once you lose control of ‘the company you keep’ (beware of guilt by association) and who manages the faithful and accurate distribution of your views and information, you’re in potentially dangerous territory.
“There’s a distinction to be made between recruitment consultants and in-house recruiters. The latter may tend to scan social media for leads and insights, which is fine.
“We at Talent2 use sources like LinkedIn that can provide some detail about people, but it is just one slice of the full picture we are forming. Obviously, we also rely on the CV a candidate sends us, our telephone screening of them, our interviews and discussions with them, our market knowledge and expertise, consulting trusted sources and the formal, on-the record reference checks we conduct, to build a complete profile. We also check the academic and professional qualifications of all candidates we place.”
Once a person has posted information on the internet, is it ethically fine for employers or recruitment agencies to check it out? How has the notion of privacy changed in the internet age, as to what it is permissible for employers/recruiters to examine as part of a candidate checking methodology?
“If it’s in the public domain, it’s fair game, particularly if the individual concerned is responsible for the information being there.
“To answer this question completely, we need to understand the difference between ‘search’ and ‘executive selection’.
“The latter involves processing ad response, as well as database and market search. During the initial screening process of ad response, recruiters tend not to look at anything beyond the CVs in front of them, relying on their market knowledge and understanding of the client’s brief, to make some initial judgements.
“Once we’ve selected candidates to interview for a role we might look online to further check out a candidate. We might also do it after the interview, perhaps prompted by what we’ve discovered in the discussion with the candidate. It tends to be in relation to candidates who may have been associated with high profile events or people, where the role may involve government relations, or perhaps investor relations.
“The ‘search’ methodology can involve gathering information from a very broad range of sources before actually approaching a candidate. At Talent2, we still tend to gather information from trusted sources – people we know – rather than go to sites or sources whose veracity we can’t rely on.
“We would be most unlikely, for instance, to discuss with a client (employer) something we’d unearthed on the web about a candidate we might be interested in approaching, without first investigating the reliability of what we’ve found online – by interviewing the person and making up our own mind. Apart from anything else, the client could have made that enquiry themselves, so we’re not adding much value if we simply quote slabs from social media or other web sources.”
Since the emergence of social media, have expectations of public relations employers changed? How? Is it expected of every PR practitioner to have had some experience in social media, even if only on a personal level?
“Social media is a much hyped trend right now and who could argue against a communications professional having a big interest in it? Let’s see how it evolves and whether it stands the test of credibility. As a mandatory qualification for winning a role – no, only rarely, so far.”
What do you think about what Richard and Di have said? Do you agree that it isn’t that important for a PR professional to be credible and active in social media to position themselves favourably for roles? What do you think about the point about ‘risk management’ and ‘guilt by association’? And what about the issue that everything you put online is out in the public domain and is therefore fair game? Are you concerned that your private ‘play’ is inappropriately mixed up with your public ‘professional’ face to the world? What can you do about it?
PS. I’d welcome you joining networks with me through my LinkedIn profile. Send me an invite!
