Your career seems like a lifetime away and anyway, surely a 1^st in some form of degree will be enough for you to waltz into a PR agency of your choice and demand a lucrative salary and expense account.

Future graduates, you are wrong.

Whether you are graduating in 2010 or 2013, you will be entering one of the most competitive job markets in recent years and you need to make damn sure that you have earnt some PR stripes well before you send through your CV.

So as a relatively recent graduate who managed to avoid the doll queue, I thought I would share with you my top ten tips.  No…..Scrap that.  I will share with you the top ten minimum criteria that you need to achieve in order to stand a good chance of getting that first PR role:

1.    Read: Industry press, newspapers (regional and national), trade magazines, influential bloggers; you need to be keeping up with the media and PR industry on a daily basis.  Read, absorb and read again.

2.    Get a PR client: You are at university and have access to a thousand and one different societies, clubs, sports teams etc. Approach these people and offer them your PR services.  There may even be a little (and I mean tiny) bit of budget there to do a PR campaign, but most of the time it would be your time spent for free

3.    Start pitching: The biggest fear a grad starter has is speaking with journalists.  Well as one of my MDs put it in his recent blog “That’s a big part of the job, dummy”.  The sooner you overcome this fear the better.  Develop a press release for your new penniless client and start pitching it to the local press.  Try and make sure it is at least vaguely interesting, it will help

4.    Blog: A blog is a fantastic way of honing your writing skills, commenting on industry issues and getting yourself noticed.  Write what you want but bear in mind who is going to read it, a blog can be the most important bit of writing you do before your first job.

5.    Tweet: If you haven’t been then you need to get a move on.  Twitter, despite its recent increase of spam, is still a great platform for developing a network, showcasing your activity, pitching to journalists and interacting with future peers and colleagues.  Ignore it at your peril

6.    Get LinkedIn: Develop your profile and add anyone and everyone you come across in a professional capacity.  Having a bank of contacts to bring to the table at interviews will impress and may make things easier once you start

7.    Experience Junkie: It doesn’t matter what your lecturers say, you cannot learn the trade with a hangover in a lecture theatre and agency owners know this.  I promise you, if you are eager, you won’t be a coffee monkey.  Work experience is gold dust to a new grad, start yours as soon as possible.

8.    Work at a publication: Maybe blurring the lines, but I think utterly valuable.  Spending a little time in a newsroom will give you a glimpse into how busy a journalist’s life is. It will make you appreciate their time, their working day and their editorial process.  You may even like a couple of them.

9.    Don’t be an arse: PR is still full of self righteous people who treat journalists as a nuisance and clients as a means to max out the company credit card.  These people are quickly being exposed as the industry gets tougher.  Start off well, understand that you are at the beginning of a very big learning cycle and always act professionally.

10.  Get in quick: Start applying for jobs at the beginning of your final year.  Hopefully, if you have followed the above, you will have relationships with a few agencies, be able to get some journalist references and have a portfolio of work.  Now all that is left is for you to do is get in there before anyone else. It’s never too early to apply.  Worst that can happen is that they advise you to apply later, they may even remember your name!