Like many school kids before me, I had it drummed into my head that if I wanted a good job when I grew up I would need a degree. So off I went to spend three years and roughly £40,000 of student loans to get my 2:1 in PR and communications, and it never crossed my mind for a second that I wouldn’t be able to get a job in PR when I left. However, that’s exactly what’s happened since I graduated in July. “But have you really been trying?” I hear you ask. Well, yes, yes I have.
I live in Newcastle, which according to PR people, is one of the best places for PR outside London. A Google search reveals that the city houses a large number of PR and marketing agencies. So I diligently copied down the email addresses of these and sent out about thirty speculative CV’s. I heard back from three of these. Three rejections out of thirty emails.
My next step was job sites; however when you put PR or marketing into many of these websites all you get are sales jobs such as door to door window sales, or call centres. Even when you do stumble across an entry level PR job, the specifications ask for at least two years client facing experience. How exactly is someone who’s spent the last three years studying full time, supposed to have two years experience? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done work experience, but with a full time degree there’s no way a graduate could have two years worth.
The problem is that while the economy is emerging from financial recession, there is still an element of uncertainty about the PR industry. Agencies are reluctant to recruit until things become more solid. So instead of offering PR assistant jobs aimed at helping graduates get a foothold in the industry, the vast majority of agencies will only offer unpaid internships. As any graduate will tell you, with student debt of roughly thirty to forty thousand pounds, and interest rates rising, it is vital that graduates start working as soon as possible.
So what’s proven useful in the graduate job hunt for me? By far the best thing I’ve done towards finding a job has been signing up to Twitter. Twitter is a great place to network. With growing importance given to the use of social media in PR, a lot of industry professionals and agencies are on Twitter, as well as many journalists and news publications. I’ve used these connections to pick up various bits of freelance work. Secondly, profiles such as @voxpopPRcareers list hundreds of PR jobs every day, many aimed at graduates all over the country.
I don’t want graduates to read this and feel disheartened. The job search is hard, but it’s not impossible. One of my classmates is in a great PR job, so it does happen but it takes a lot of work, and a lot of searching for. Here’s hoping that my search will soon be over.
