1. Volunteer for a charity that has fashion as a focus.
2. Find fashion work placements directly in your niche. For example, if you want to do PR for menswear brands, look for placements at menswear companies such as Moss Bros.
3. Do PR for your local charity fashion shop.
4. Find an e-commerce website and do freelance copywriting for them. Add this experience to show you have digital selling capabilities that can be transferred into fashion PR.
5. Cold-call fashion stylists and ask them if they need freelance PR to grow their brands.
6. Fashion retail is an area you can break into if you want. Look for retail PR work experience in high street companies such as Topshop and Oasis.
7. Know anyone who has a fashion blog? Offer to give them a Twitter campaign where you can increase the amount of followers they have. It’s a win-win situation for both of you: the blogger can breathe easy from the pressure of social media, and you get to put fashion social media experience on your CV.
8. Create a fashion festival where local designers in your town/city can show off their talents.
9. Secure one press mention for an unknown designer in an industry heavyweight like Vogue or Sunday Times Style Magazine.

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David Russell, a University of Nottingham graduate says: “I think LinkedIn is a good way of connecting to other professionals that you have worked with or done business with but Twitter is certainly more useful for wider PR purposes and for contacting people you do not have a prior connection with.”

Among graduates interested in working in PR, a trend has emerged on Twitter where graduates are creating accounts highlighting their desire to break into PR. Graduates who have done this include Sophie Coughlan and Alejandra Paz.

David, from Tunbridge Wells, says: “I started applying for jobs and work experience in PR in January 2009 but it is only in the last 3 months that I have been fully aware of how much I want to work in this industry. At the moment, I work as a press assistant in a music communications agency and spend a large part of my free time applying for jobs and researching potential employers.”

As graduates like David have set up Twitter accounts to promote their skills in PR, Twitter is no longer a buzz word in graduate recruiting or graduate careers. It has been integrated in how graduates lay down the bricks of their career paths.

Like journalism, PR agencies do take students and recent graduates for work experience placements. Most work placements in PR are unpaid. Keri Hudson, 20, from London has done work experience in PR before. Keri says: “I think when you do a substantial piece of work whilst on work experience, you should be paid for what you do. However if you’re just shadowing staff for a week, and getting bits of experience over a wide range of activities then you shouldn’t be paid, as you’re not really producing anything of value to the company.”

Establishing what produces revenue for a company is where the lines blur on wages in work experience. If a PR intern helps to write a proposal that lands an agency a massive retainer, but the intern remains unpaid, can that be seen as exploitation?

Determining what is fair

Michael White, a PR student from University of Gloucestershire argues that work experience interns should be paid after a certain time threshold. Michael, who is a Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) student representative says: “I have the firm view that if a company wishes for you to work with them for a year (an internship) then you should be paid. It seems completely unethical, perhaps even illegal, that you should work a 9 to 5 job without being paid.” Keri Hudson agrees: “It’s not fair for a company to offer a year’s unpaid internship, especially because of the amount of work the intern would do, and the living costs that they would come up against.”

The law

Alex Try, co-founder of Interns Anonymous, the campaign website, says: “If you work set hours, doing set tasks and are relied upon by your colleagues then you are legally defined as a ‘worker’ and should be paid National Minimum Wage. There is no legal definition of the term ‘intern’ in employment law.” The fact there is no legal definition means that industry leaders need to take the initiative to ensure that students and graduates are compensated financially in tandem with living costs.

The property market in London is one of the most expensive in the world, eclipsing centres like New York in the United States. If a student is expected to be working 40 hours a week in a placement with no pay, how can she or he afford a shared room in London, pay Oyster fares and eat with no money without calling the bank of mum and dad? The financial stress of working for no pay has created a new movement to improve the conditions for interns.

Explaining the concept behind Interns Anonymous, Alex says: “We graduated in the middle of a recession and saw entry level jobs drying up and being replaced by unpaid work”. Unpaid work in PR does include expenses, though these are generally for travel and food.

“You’ll gain experience!”

Another element of compensation used by some companies is the argument that a student is gaining experience. Michael White says: “I have heard various arguments defending unpaid internships, the worst of which is, “You get experience”. You can still get experience and be paid at the same time! I don’t know anybody in a full time job who has had the audacity to claim that they haven’t learnt anything over the years from being in their particular sector. It is illogical to think that there is a point in life when we no longer learn. I learn something new every day.”

Students and graduates doing work placements should be paid according to their circumstances. It should not be about ‘cool perks’ or the experience, it should be about acknowledging the rights of human beings to be rewarded financially for their work. The International Labour Organisation, a United Nations agency, defends the rights of people to work under healthy labour standards. The internship debate is really about labour standards, and in an industry such as PR that generates millions of pounds, can’t more than £50 quid be spared per week for interns?

1. “Think about what you want to get out of it, write a list of all the skills you want to develop and any particular tasks that you want to do.”
2. “Once you have got all you want from the experience, leave. You have no obligation to stay. Don’t become a slave.”
3. “If you are just looking for administrative experience then you are probably better off temping- your bank balance and your self esteem will suffer less.”
4. “Consider alternatives such as volunteering, which is more flexible and allows you to do paid work as well. And consider setting something up on your own: a blog, a clubnight, a temporary art gallery and be creative!”

1) Thought

“You need practical, pragmatic thinking. This is the ability to quickly understand a situation or issue and respond to it, underpinned by some business know-how.”

–Rosie Fyles, Upstairs Communications

2) Liaise

“Internal communicators should be in liaison with every part of an organisation, not just HR. Some companies operate using a business partner approach, with internal communicators working alongside various departments offering advice and creating communications campaigns to support their projects.”

–Rachel Allen, Head of Communications at London Overground Rail Operations Ltd

3) Adaptability

“The ability to adapt one’s style to be relevant to the audience, and the medium.”

–Eddie Bensilum, Director at Regester Larkin

4) Be Social

“Understanding how social media works and your ability to deliver value through it is an asset.”

–Aniisu Verghese, internal communications expert

5) Pen and Paper

“Good writing skills, style and substance, will always be an advantage.”

–Rosie Fyles

6) Be a people person

“Talking with people of all ages, backgrounds and rank, to find ways of having effective conversations to allow you to write a story and devise a comms plan.”

–Rachel Allen

7) Leadership

“Leadership traits are indeed an asset especially since most leaders look to the internal communicator to own and drive a lot more than is expected of their immediate span of control.”

–Aniisu Verghese

1) Embrace Twitter
“Although statistics have shown that Twitter is more heavily used by older. PR practitioners, recent graduates should familiarise themselves with it. It can be a very strong tool as part of their arsenal for employers or clients.”

2) Participate Now
“I have seen Twitter used very successfully by restaurant and retail establishments, as well as large namebrand companies to engage in conversations with their customers and to promote specials and events. The conversation about your company or client will go on whether or not you participate in Twitter, so you might as well listen in and then head off any negative conversation as soon as you can.”

3) Strike a Balance
“It’s important on Twitter to keep a good ratio between connecting and promoting. A good rule of thumb might be to have only one promotional tweet for every 7-10 tweets, for example.”

4) Start Talking
“The focus really should be on initiating conversations. That is how you build followers on twitter. @dunkindonuts is an example of a good ratio. They will promote specials and contests, but they also re-tweet comments from some of their followers about favourite doughnut.”

5) To Facebook or throw the book at Facebook?

“I’m a bit ambivalent about Facebook as a component for social media PR for companies. For individuals, I think it is a terrific way to connect. The problem with Facebook is that the fan pages have become so prolific that many users are tuning out. I have seen some organisations like Foodiesareus use them successfully and engage with their fans, but many of the pages are too promotional.”

“I am still in the process of working on the fan page for my book, Press Releases are not a PR Strategy, to establish it as a discussion forum rather than a static ad. In a lot of ways, I see a blog/website as being a better place for interactive discussions than Facebook. Twitter can link back to the blog/website, although no doubt some companies integrate all three successfully.”

6) Pick a few tools
“If I were a recent PR graduate, I would focus on these three:

• LinkedIn – for professional contacts
• Facebook – for personal contacts
• Twitter – to listen in on conversations and engage conversations, and link followers back to a blog/website

7) Location, Location, Location
“I would keep a close eye on developments in the mobile social media tools, such as Foursquare or Gowalla. These applications were popular at the recent SXSW event in Austin, and there has been a lot of discussion around the pros and cons of location-based social media.”