Writing Skills are Highest Priority for New PR Hires

Do PR and marketing graduates seeking jobs in PR agencies have what it takes? Do they have the right education, knowledge and skills? Do they have the preferred personality traits?

According to the latest survey from Gould+Partners, PR M&A specialists and management consultants, the answers depend on the agencies’ wants and needs.

Entitled “What PR Agencies Require of New-Hire Junior Account Executives,” the survey was answered by a cross section of agencies from GP’s national database of hundreds of firms.

I authored this survey in my role as GP Senior Counselor and Instructor in New York University’s School of Professional Studies Graduate Public Relations and Corporate Communication Program. I did the survey with GP’s assistance to help PR and marketing graduates have an easier time finding jobs. I also did it to help the agencies themselves codify their hiring requirements.

According to the survey results, most of what is required today has always been required, but with a few obvious differences based on current trends and issues in the expanding PR agency industry.” More than 85 percent of the survey responses were from agencies with under $3 million (54.55%) or $3 million-$10 million (30.91%) in revenue.

Five Key Questions & the Results

Q1: Minimum education: Nearly 97 percent of PR agencies want a bachelor’s degree as opposed to a Master’s degree, but that’s probably because the question asks solely for the minimum. One agency emphasized, “At the entry level (junior AE) we are looking for self-starters that are curious about our world. We prefer if they have had a PR internship and understand the basics or have some experience but [we] care less about major in college. Most folks here do not have PR degrees – we prefer to have folks from many disciplines.”

Q2: Preferred degree major: With a choice of seven majors, the three most important were public relations (92.86%), journalism (73.21%), and marketing (64.29%). Mass communication came in fourth (50%). No one added “other” majors.

Q3: Preferred basic job skills: “Writer” was the clear first (92.59%) with “Media Pitcher” a close second (88.89%), and “Researcher” third (59.26%). Researcher in this instance means someone who is good at finding and analyzing information, not someone who is a professional opinion researcher.  Writing, a perennial issue in PR as well as in K-12 education, elicited the usual clichés:

• “Please get them to have good writing skills! That is so important and yet missing in most college grads.”
• “Strong writing skills are our first priority in a new hire.”

Q4: Preferred knowledge: For their three choices among eight, the agencies picked Social Media Practices (88%), PR Practices (69%) and Marketing Basics (60%). Business Practices came in a close fourth at 58%).  The emphasis on social media practices reaffirms the growing dominance of social media in today’s PR marketplace.  The need for greater knowledge of business was expressed as follows:

• “Most . . . students are graduating with little to no business skills.”
• “Need students to take at least one or two business classes.

Q5: Preferred personal attributes: With a choice of five of eight attributes, the respondents chose articulate (83.93%), motivated (82.14%), strategic thinker (69.64%), cooperative (55.36%) and client centric (51.79%). One respondent interpreted cooperative as “team player,” a better term for future surveys on this topic.

Respondent Comments

Other required skills that were mentioned by the survey respondents include public speaking, presentation delivery, creative writing, storytelling, digital capabilities and “out-of-the-box/online thinking.”  Technical skills like proficiency with Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel were also listed.

One agency provided a detailed description of its new-hire philosophy: “We look for a diversity of skills, we don’t want all traditional PR experience, but what else does the talent bring to the conversation. Where they have lived, worked, volunteered. How up to date are they on trends, digitization, economic and global issues that will be discussed with clients. What’s their Rolodex look like? What do they read, what events do they/have they attended, what knowledge to they have on brands and the perception of those brands so we know how they think?”

In general, new hires need to have most of the job requirements when they walk through a prospective employer’s door. As one agency explained, “We do not have time to teach remedial PR — and many of these skills cannot be taught if a core competency does not exist after four years of college.”

To download a free copy of the new-hire survey, visit

http://www.gould-partners.com/uploads/2015/07/New-Hire-Junior-AE.pdf

Don Bates, APR, Fellow PRSA, and Honorary Trustee of the Institute for Public Relations, teaches at New York University and is senior counselor at Gould Partners, PR agency M&A specialists and management consultants.