Do you know where you’re going to? Public relations career advice
What was your route into public relations? In 1943, Averill Broughton (a public relations and advertising executive with his own firm) interviewed leading PR executives for his book, Careers in Public Relations: The new profession. He observed that these successful practitioners had:
“backed into the field, as it were, by accident, and sat down. Afterwards it [...]
Sex sells – faking it in public relations
Women are successful in public relations – UK data shows a 64:36 female:male gender split in an industry worth £7.5bn. In particular, young women are attracted to the occupation – dominating specialist degree courses (by 4:1 in my experience) and reflecting the largest demographic group in practice.
The secret of their success is often stated as [...]
Arthur Yann: public relations in a fishbowl
An in-depth interview with the gent practising PR for the world’s largest organization of public relations professionals.
There’s an irony that public relations as a discipline struggles to manage the industry’s reputation. Why do you think this is the case?
There’s some truth to the “shoemaker’s children” analogy, but the root causes go well beyond that.
For one [...]
PR – it’s a woman’s world
It is nearly 25 years since the publication of Cline’s ‘Velvet Ghetto’ study of women in public relations which responded to the increasing feminisation of the occupation. Undeniably today, the field is one dominated by women – indeed, based on my UK experience, 90% of the students on undergraduate PR degree courses and studying for [...]
Facing up to the PR talent challenge
One of the interesting outcomes of my position on the boundary of PR academia and practice is that I’m often asked for recommendations about finding PR talent.
This frequently applies to recruiting placement students (interns) or young graduate practitioners. However, at the PR career starting point, there are many who advocate a specialist degree is not [...]
Career-building blocks led Andrew Arnold to LEGO
“I saw the job posting for LEGO, which was one of the companies in the world where I most wanted to work.” Andrew Arnold
Backgrounder – Early career years: a degree in economics and many journalism hats
Andrew Arnold achieved a university degree in economics in 1987. Although most of his cohort graduates were being “pushed” [...]
Never kiss an alligator and other lessons from PR History
The history of public relations began with PT Barnum parading elephants through small town America in the 1800s – with the famed huckster the cause of the ongoing misunderstanding of the profession. That’s the simplistic narrative found in the majority of PR text-book
Mike Spear: Evolving from journalism to PR
Currently the director of corporate communication for Genome Alberta, in his earlier career incarnation Mike Spear was a producer and executive producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, focusing on news and current affairs.