Visit speed website Earlin' PR abuse home
October 7th, 2010 by Steve

Grad to be here. Where’s the photocopier?

I never bet. But if I did, a good punt might be that graduate recruitment has not appeared on board meeting agendas at most PR companies in the past year.

I’ve written before about the difficulties of getting a first job in PR at the moment, why many agencies have what amounts to a hiring freeze and why agencies should be bolder in looking to the future. Most of which is pretty obvious.

One part of all of that was the issue of graduate recruitment schemes, and what agencies should look to do in order to turn people into competent PRs, starting the day they join. Training is obviously an important facet, but it does not begin and end there.

Why am I regurgitating this? Well, at Speed’s last board meeting there was – shock – an item about graduate recruitment. Not because we didn’t have much else to talk about, but because we’re serious about attracting a high-calibre graduate intake and taking a responsible, sustainable approach to developing their skills. And not just graduates, but people with the right skills and experience who want to get into the fast-modernising PR trade. I didn’t go to university myself, so that’s a topic close to my heart.

What should a good graduate recruitment programme look like? Without giving away too much on the Speed approach, which we’ll be unveiling in the coming weeks, it should cover:

- Close links with universities and training courses so that students know what may lie ahead (and we can bag the best ones early). Not just PR courses, but marketing, journalism and broader media courses. Not the crap ones though

- Clear and written commitments to potential recruits about what they’re getting into, what the employer will provide and, equally, what the employer won’t do. Plus, crucially, what the employee will be expected to do to develop themselves and build a successful career quickly. This is critical in sorting the ambitious, industrious and intelligent from the lethargic, confused and under-equipped. And you can quote me on that

- A reasonable model and timeframe for making the transition from assistant in the background to consultant in the foreground. There will always be shades of grey. Yet if a person will never meet a client for six months so that when they do they are ready (think about how the likes of Beckham, Scholes and Giggs were introduced to the first team of the three-time European champions) then be straight with them about that. There is a lot less photocopying than there used to be in this job, but there will always be grunt work to do as new recruits gain a 360 degree view of the job

- Details of salary bands and what is required in order to make progress through them. Agencies fudge salary expectations at graduate intake level more than with any other level of employee – largely because the rest of us have got wise to it. Be clear and honest and it will help you attract clear, strong and honest candidates who respect you. Providing you don’t pay peanuts obviously

- Above all, complete and utter honesty. Do you risk creating a bad first impression with a client if you wear something a bit weird to your first meeting? What’s the best way to make a name for yourself with colleagues without becoming infamous for the wrong reasons? How do you show a client that you know your stuff from the off? All questions the graduates will come across, and all things that their colleagues can help with. Graduate schemes need to have the commitment and the involvement of everyone in the company, both to give the new intake the best possible start and ensure that they become colleagues that everyone can rely on

- Grammar, spelling, timesheets, quality (*slaps wrist*)

More on SpeedGrads soon. And some memories on my start in PR, which might prompt a few tears and a few wry smiles.

By the way, want a career in PR? Leave a comment below or track me down elsewhere if so.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
3 Comments »
Share this:Stumble It!Digg This!Add to del.icio.usBookmark to TechnoratiShare on FacebookSend to Reddit
September 2nd, 2010 by Steve

The lost boys (and girls) final part: training not lip service

At the moment, there are two main problems with training people when they start their first PR agency job. One is that PR is modernising so quickly that it is a fast-moving feast – meaning the whole agency really needs constant training. The other is that most agencies have a long and undistinguished history of being pretty lacklustre about training people properly.

There I go again, wooden spoon in hand. But it’s true. Admit it. There are a few exceptions, many will say they have a structured training programme but they’re hardly comprehensive, while others do next-to sod all really.

The ability to turn entry-level people into really good PR people is not just a commercial priority, it’s something of a moral obligation too. Given these types of stories about exploitation of graduates by agencies, the industry is going to soil its own reputation if it can’t take a more responsible approach.

It’s blindingly obvious. Agencies are people businesses. Winning and retaining the best clients is linked closely with attracting and developing the best people. Inadequate training is bad for business and bad for the industry. And I’m sure the industry bodies would agree wholeheartedly with that.

So what should training for entry-level staff look like these days?

Well, first off in my experience the best training schemes recognise that the person starting their first PR job doesn’t just need skills and knowledge to enable them to do their initial jobs, but to equip them well for the rest of their careers. And to enable them to progress as fast as they’re able to. It’s not just a question of giving everyone a gun, boots and a tin hat and then sending them into combat. They need to understand how the machine works and what its aims are, and be exposed to some of the many subtleties that will determine success. Equally, they need to know what not to do if they want to keep themselves ‘alive’.

But the scope of training needs to be pretty broad. There needs to be sufficient time allowed to undertake it. It needs to be taken seriously, treated like another client essentially. And the individual needs to understand its purpose, rather than see the scheme as a series of disconnected chores.

Here are nine things I think entry-level training for PR agency jobs should encompass. Pace will depend on individuals and budgets of course, but this lot is all realistic – or should be – within the first year:

1. How to do the basics: most agencies seem to be reasonable good at ensuring people have some basic grasp of what the job entails and what it’s all about in order to get started. Of course they do – otherwise there’s a massive risk that someone will monumentally f*ck up something important. Learning on the job is vital, but equally there should be some structure behind what’s required to deliver all of the client work assigned, how best to manage time and how to undertake basic personal administration.

2. The money side: exposure to the fundamentals of how the agency makes money, banks and may lose money. The basics of risk and reward. But also some outline knowledge of how clients’ budgets work and how we help manage them (and what things tend to cost).

3. Keeping everyone happy: you have three masters – clients, the media and the person who pays your salary (the agency). You need help juggling their multiple wants and needs, all of which may suddenly turn without warning.

4. People development: OK, you’re on the bottom rung, but you need to know what the other rungs all look like and how others will help you to get up them. It’s part of their jobs too. Agencies should ensure their people are all clear on how they develop people, then come good on their promises. Few do. I am by no means perfect, but am doing all I can to be far better at it in future. Oh, and firms should have transparent salary scales, rather than trying to play mind games and fob people off with vaguaries.

5. Understanding the media and media change: yes read the media, but also understand how it works and how it is changing. Even ask senior people about media change at interview stage – if it’s clear they don’t understand it, it might not be an agency that offers you a long-term future.

6. The agency and its difference: most PR firms are pretty ropey at explaining how they’re different – because many of them AREN’T that different. But where points of real difference exist, everyone in the business should understand them, rather than relying on some mystic osmosis to enable people to find out.

7. How we do new business: I know some agencies don’t let junior people pitch, ever. It’s not always appropriate, as whatever is needed to win the pitch is the priority. But people should all be exposed to new business and be involved, in whatever way possible, in sales from day one. The best new business people of the future will be those who start early.

8. Legal/contractual obligations: well the contractual stuff can be tedious, but it’s the best way to understand what the agency has assured it will do and what the scope of the account is. Perhaps more important, though, is to understand the legal implications of PR work – media law, employment law, criminal law, copyright and so on. It amazes me that PRs are hired to represent brands to the outside world and yet so few get even the most rudimentary instruction of the legal risk of doing so and the potential consequence of their actions. If you don’t tell them, you’ve only got yourself to blame if the sky starts falling in.

9. English: the best saved ’til last. I wish it weren’t so, but far too many people coming into PR these days have poor spelling, a scant understanding of grammar and seem to have never received any instruction whatsoever on how to use the humble apostrophe. And don’t start me on incorrect use of plurals. So rather than moan about it, those who get it should help them. That is all.

Anyway, I hope these few posts have been in some way useful in setting out what PR firms should be doing, commercially and morally, to breed the best talent for tomorrow. And what people coming into the trade can do to increase their odds of landing the right job, and ask the right questions in doing so.

PR has largely been paying lip service to proper people development for too long. We need to improve, and the new generation trying to get a foot in the door is the best place to start. Before it becomes a lost generation.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
2 Comments »
Share this:Stumble It!Digg This!Add to del.icio.usBookmark to TechnoratiShare on FacebookSend to Reddit
August 31st, 2010 by Steve

The lost boys (and girls) part three: how to land that first PR job

Shame on me. I said I’d write this last Friday. I have a valid excuse, but won’t bore you with it.

So if PR agencies should be more optimistic and assertive in hiring entry-level staff at the moment, are there staff out there who’re worth hiring?

That seems like a stupid question. Surely the backlog of graduates with PR, marketing and journalism qualifications, or other degrees, or no degrees but bags of ambition, is such that competition is rife and agencies can pick from the very cream of the crop?

It’s partly true. Agencies that I know of have certainly got more applicants for entry-level positions than they’ve had for a long time. But if my own experience of the past few years is anything to go by, the vast majority of applications are, in the main, utter shite.

I would say this. I’m a pedant. I am by no means perfect, but equally I can normally spot an incorrectly italicised bulletpoint at 50 paces. Fundamentally, if people care about their jobs and their careers, they will care about the quality of their work, always. Mediocrity is not my friend.

Even so, by more watered-down standards, the quality of approaches made by many entry-level applicants to PR agencies in the midst of a gruelling recession is shocking. Not just what they write, but what they say and how they act. All-too-often, applications are insipid, errors are rife, and both personality and ambition are conspicuous by their absence. Harsh, but in my view true.

There is no magic formula for landing the first job in PR and getting a foot on the career ladder. Equally – and this is intended to be helpful to genuinely keen, intelligent and media-thirsty people out there – there are a few basics that will help your application stand out, so that you’ve impressed from your very first contact:

1. Don’t make spelling errors. This is blindingly obvious. There is a thing called a dictionary. Use it. Prove you can at least both read and type.

2. Communicate your difference. You are applying for a communications job. You aren’t expected to be the world’s best communicator, but equally you need to pinpoint concisely why you should be considered.

3. Don’t bullshit (but if you have to, make it exceedingly good bullshit). If you try to over-egg your achievements and experience, it will be spotted. We spend all day doing this stuff. Equally, pure cheek will at least raise a grin and may get you a foot in the door.

4. Personalise properly. Don’t send blanket emails. Spend the time approaching each firm individually. Call up if you like – few people do this these days, and it may show you have balls.

5. Don’t kiss the agency’s arse. Anything banging on about why you approached this agency because you ‘know’ how great it is will probably be scoffed at. If you do think you’d be suited because of what makes that agency different, say so – but play it straight and ease up on the praise.

6. Don’t focus exclusively on your academic achievements. Yes a PR degree can be useful, but it is no substitute for real-world experience (academia: queue here to take issue with this point). Same goes for other degrees. You will learn harsher lessons about PR in your first months on the job than you ever dreamed of as a student – show that you acknowledge that.

7. Think about the email title. ‘CV for consideration’ won’t make you stand out. ‘Busty blonde seeks PR job’ will, but for the wrong reasons. Be smart and you stand a better chance.

8. If you’ve done work experience with PR firms, explain what you learned and how it improved your skills. Don’t just say you worked somewhere from one date to another. Surviving a few weeks of photocopying and donkey work does not an account executive make.

9. Develop a digital profile and use it to flaunt your wares. Wadds has already imparted wisdom upon this topic. One of the first things a prospective employer is likely to do is Google you. Exploit that, and keep the private life private too.

10. Show your enthusiasm for the job on offer. The three essential ingredients of a good PR are intelligence, real passion for the media and hard work. We can spot the former, while the latter is to be proven down the line and by others’ comments. The middle part is up to you to show the agency when you make the approach and, if you get one, at the interview.

Tomorrow’s concluding part: what to look for in an agency’s approach to training.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,
6 Comments »
Share this:Stumble It!Digg This!Add to del.icio.usBookmark to TechnoratiShare on FacebookSend to Reddit
August 26th, 2010 by Steve

The lost boys (and girls) part two: can agencies afford to hire them?

Yesterday I tried to set the scene about the challenges the PR industry and graduates are facing at the moment over entry-level positions – boiling it down to something like agencies need to sort themselves out and the best grads should retain hope.

Most people who make the hiring decisions about entry-level staff at PR agencies have empathy with those who want to get a job at the moment but can’t. Some aren’t hiring because they don’t need the extra staff or can’t justify being over-capacity. Others will say they simply don’t have the time to invest in training entry-level recruits. Then there’s the tendency to get freelance support in rather than make permanent hires. It all comes down to a combination of cost and risk.

And rightly so. Now is certainly not the time for any PR agency, however well it may be doing, to throw caution to the wind and hire way ahead of need.

But my main point here is that skilled people are the absolute bedrock of a PR agency’s success, and a two-year hiatus in the intake of entry-level personnel combined with lack of proper training for the future will not only damage graduates’ career prospects but the PR industry.

Yes of course the focus at the moment must be on delivering great client work, attracting clients and producing the best financial results possible in the circumstances, but without a commercially mature and systematic approach to developing people, things will eventually start to unravel. Note that I said approach, not necessarily investment.

Can agencies afford to hire people? Well, only they will know. But in the recent boom years many took on ‘hot’ graduates without even thinking about what use they could be put to. Competition to hire them was fierce. Now there are things like hiring freezes and freelance-only mandates, which may actually cost agencies more in lost business opportunities or higher costs.

Some agencies are continuing to operate graduate recruitment schemes and have simply scaled back on the volume in the past couple of years. Good on them. But many seem to have mothballed everything.

Even if an agency cannot financially justify taking on any extra staff at the moment, here are the things I think all should be thinking about in this area, rather than burying their heads in the sand:

1. Make entry-level recruitment a commercial priority now.
If you can’t recruit at entry-level, have a plan for doing so. Build a pipeline of people you may want to hire in the future and those who – without making false promises – you may be able to hire should circumstances suddenly change. Make this something that everyone in the company is committed to and understands. It will mean you have a broader pick of talent should you need to, the ability to hire quickly and directly, and there is enormous benefit in your current staff understanding that you are being responsible about entry-level positions so that they’re being challenged to develop rather than stagnate.

2. Upgrade the approach to entry-level training.
So many PR firms pay lip service to training. Or talk about how much they spend on it, or how much of an individual’s time is ring-fenced for it. Training is not a line item in a budget or a headline statistic – it must be systemic, part of the fabric of the business. People must want to learn, people must want to teach them and everyone must understand what the purpose of it is. The raft of informal training initiatives run by the CIPR and PRCA shows that individuals have appetites to learn even in a recession – in many cases, recession pressures make it more of a priority.

Agencies need clear, comprehensive and realistic training programmes for all staff but with specific tracks for entry-level people. In my view, the scope should include the broadest reach of conventional and digital PR, and open their eyes to how PR’s ‘editorial world’ may develop in the future. Training must move from an afterthought to being the client delivery and client development backbone of the business. Budget for external support will inevitable be thin or non-existent, but existing staff can teach them a lot of it providing adequate time is set aside. There are mountains of time squandered each month at most PR firms through not charging clients properly for work undertaken, inaccurate time reporting and constant griping about colleagues not being able to complete tasks properly (normally because they haven’t been taught properly…). So it should be straightforward and wholly commercially feasible to commit regular time to training, for everyone’s benefit

3. Be clear with potential recruits about what you’re seeking.
Graduates get the run-around from PR firms far too often. PR needs the best talent coming in to take entry-level jobs. PR will increasingly have to compete with other areas of the marketing for talent, particularly as digitisation means PR is having to redefine what it is and how it generates value. So agencies needs to explain and market their entry-level training and development ethos clearly. They must show how working with them is different. They must be clear about what to expect from their careers in the initial months and and years. They should, ideally, be open about salary scales. Most of all though, be clear about what clients you’d like them to work for and what they’ll be doing. Too often, potentially brilliant graduates wither on the vine or move jobs too soon simply because they were oversold on the excitement of the work or the opportunities they’d be given. Equally, recruits need to be honest about what they’re good at, bad at and ideally seeking rather than trying to talk their way through the hiring process just to land a job, no matter how scarce those are

Tomorrow, what the (potentially) lost generation of PR applicants should be doing to land the right job. Not just the interview, but the lock, stock and barrel.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,
6 Comments »
Share this:Stumble It!Digg This!Add to del.icio.usBookmark to TechnoratiShare on FacebookSend to Reddit
August 25th, 2010 by Steve

The lost boys (and girls): part one

“Gizzajob”.

Yosser Hughes’ lament in Boys From The Black Stuff became a popular hallmark of job seeking in the 1980s. In the 2010s, in PR, the clarion cry might be “Gizzachance, any chance”.

Getting your first job in PR is, probably, more difficult at the moment than it has ever been. Ever. This is the first of a short series of posts looking at what this means for young people trying to start a career in the industry, those of us already working in PR jobs and PR agencies looking to develop and attract the right skills – skills for battling through the recession and better commercial fortunes in the future.

First, let’s get the legal bit out of the way. The title mentions boys and girls, but by that I mean all females and males of an employable age, in possession of the appropriate paperwork in order to be eligible participants in the payroll. Phew.

So the ‘lost generation’ factor has been much-publicised by the conventional media in the UK. The spectre was raised as the recession really began to bite in 2009. As this summer’s exam results season got into full swing, reports followed about the social, professional and personal implications of a generation of school and college leavers who’ve been unable to find work for two years. There have been reports this year that prospects are improving for graduates, yet for many the employment outlook remains bleak. With GCSE results just announced this week, the question was whose prospects were bleakest – given the paucity of jobs available, would grads get the albeit low-level jobs in favour of those who left education at A Level or the GCSE stage?

The long-term impact on young people unable to start any sort of meaningful career is fairly obvious.

In PR, the picture roughly seems to mirror that of the overall labour market, although there is the added challenge of a industry with a major modernisation challenge, meaning the skills required are changing and will continue to change.

PR Week features editor Cathy Wallace wrote this piece on how difficult it was to get a job in PR last August. I asked her how the situation has changed in the year since then. Was it any easier now to get a job in PR?

She said: “I think it’s harder. I have heard horror stories from graduates who have been working unpaid for up to two years, without managing to secure a graduate position. There is a problem of supply and demand. Universities are churning out young, fresh, eager PR graduates faster than the industry can gobble them up. Unfortunately as many agencies have tightened belts, entry-level recruitment has been one of the first sacrifices made. This short-sighted approach means in five years time, agencies will be bemoaning the lack of senior account execs and managers, not realising this is a direct consequence of shutting their doors to graduates!”

Personally I agree that there has long been a disconnect between the PR industry and PR course leaders – academia does not always understand some of the commercial realities. I would’ve asked a tutor for a view on that but they’re on holiday, so that’ll have to wait for a future post. I also agree that, as ever, too many agencies seem to have a short-sighted approach to attracting talent at the moment, and it will come back to bite them.

I also asked Cathy for her view on how well PR agencies train new recruits, particularly graduates. How does PR compare with other sectors? In her view it’s mixed, and it hinges on management nous: “Depends on the agency. An agency with a well-structured approach to training, development and progression, managed by a professional who is as skilled as management as they are at PR, if not more skilled at management, will offer a graduate an unrivalled development path. Done properly, the training offered in PR agencies is absolutely second to none.

“But a graduate joining an agency run individual who has set up on their own because they are good at PR, without any management training or experience, can often find themselves flung in at the deep end and given far too much responsibility with little to no training or investment. Unfortunately despite the trend for agencies to cut graduate recruitment in tough times, some go the other way and snap up graduates because they are often eager, desperate to prove themselves and willing to work unpaid or for a pittance.”

The slave labour point is one I’ve made before. It seems to be getting better, with several agencies stating they will not take people on unpaid and unfair experience schemes. Speed is one of them. Even so, graduates are desperate for work so will often jump at the opportunity.

I’ll be doing a few more posts on this topic looking at what agencies need to do with entry-level recruitment, how graduates can improve their chances of landing a first PR job and what skills will be needed for the future. They’re all my own views, of course, but echo comments many in the business have made to me in recent months.

Until then, a few thoughts on what the current situation is for PR’s lost generation:

- Nervy recruitment: many positions tend to be on short-term contracts or on a freelance basis. This is commercially sound for the agencies but means PR is a risky career path for entrants. This is how journalism has been for a long time though. The PR industry needs to think long and hard about whether this type of casual labour is cutting off its nose to spite its face, given client relationships and excellent talent are what will see them through the recession and help them build for the future

- Graduate schemes are in flux: many agencies have simply deprioritised their approach to fast-tracking a graduate intake, but equally are tending to shut the door to others such as those without degrees but with relevant experience, such as in other areas of marketing. Agencies need to work out what it is they’re offering, adapt the schemes they ran when times were better and do more to be fair to the newly-qualified, who seem to be being led a merry dance

- The lost generation is, in the main, not helping itself by making broad-brush applications or not being smart about how to get a foot in the door in a cut-throat market. More on that later

- Agencies are angsty about how to develop new entrants in the current market. Training costs money and time, and they need their more senior people focused on client retention and business development. And as PR modernises, what skills does a new entrant need anyway? The classics of features tracking, media relations, press release writing and the like are now just a relatively small part of the mix. Equally, some graduates are applying for jobs expecting to do nothing but social media meddling all day. Agencies must be clear on what they need

More on this tomorrow. If you do send me a CV in the meantime, do check the spelling, grammar and style consistency, if you’re serious about getting an interview.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,
8 Comments »
Share this:Stumble It!Digg This!Add to del.icio.usBookmark to TechnoratiShare on FacebookSend to Reddit