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Archive for category Uncategorized

The Graduate Job Hunt: Emma Topping

Posted by Emma Topping on Monday, August 30th, 2010 09:54 am GMT +1

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.


Day in the life of an account executive: Petya N. Georgieva

Posted by Petya N. Georgieva on Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 11:07 am GMT +1

Petya N. Georgieva (pictured left) is an account executive at a PR firm in Bulgaria. In this feature, Petya gives us an insight into the Bulgarian PR scene.

9am: My day starts earlier, around 7:30 or 8:00. Then I check my e-mails, Twitter and Facebook accounts and listen to podcasts on my way to the office. The very first thing that I do at work is media monitoring, I am responsible for a media monitoring in English, so I have to summarise topical articles in Bulgarian language which are important for the client and translate them as a short summary in English. Read the rest of this entry »


A PR Puzzle

Posted by Becky Murch on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 10:17 am GMT +1

The first fruits of my labour are ready to read and I would love your feedback. In my first post here on the Vox-pop site I spoke about getting ahead in the PR industry and work placements to gain hands on experience.

I have been working at global tolerance for 2 months and my placement is in full swing and whilst working on lots of different live accounts and projects I have also been assigned a personal research project that is very close to my heart. The task is to look at PR as Personal Relations, I have elaborated more on this in my blog post on the global tolerance connect site which I would love if you could read and let me  know your thoughts and your opinions on PR being Personal Relations. In a time when PR has developed to have quite negative connotations and associates with Propaganda, Spin and lies I want to develop a humanising approach to the industry that offers an alternative option. PR is a communication led industry and we cannot forget that Communication is really powerful, the words that we use and the way that we say them sends a message to the receiver be it in our professional or our personal lives, they reflect who we are and the type of person that we are. Think about Obama and the powerful message of Hope he built his campaign on. One word said with passion and conviction to paint a picture to the Americans……. read more at http:/tiny.cc/upp42 and you can also see more about global tolerance, communications consultancy and the work that they do at www.globaltolerance.com

I would love to hear your personal opinion, Becky