So, do YOU Want to Join an Agency?

Ready for the Real World, Agency Style?

It's funny, during interviews with interns and potential PR staff, Farrell and I often talk about how 'what is learnt at University has little or no relevance to everyday practice'. We are firm believers in hiring outside of the circle, and in realizing the potential that multi-disciplinary graduates bring to the table. In our experience, PR graduates bring little in the way of fresh perspectives, often looking purely at the textbook for a solution - right down to the "there must be a formula we use for writing a press release" (choke choke), rather than bringing a worldly perspective to our clients campaigns and our way of thinking. 

People often think PR is glamorous, but in reality is it not. Those fancy parties, those amazing dinners, the travel - yeah, its all true, but you're working! So at the fancy parties you are answering questions, smoozing with the media (and for the bosses, potential clients), and generally running around like poultry on steroids; at the dinners, most likely a food review, you're supervising photo-shoots (which means by the time you eat your food is cold anyway) and upselling the client; and the travel is quite often an en-masse baby sitting job on behalf of the client. And if anything goes wrong, its your neck. 

Its hard work people, very hard work! And don't be disillusioned that any form of education put you in the right step for the job - cos day one will shake that weird notion out of your head for good. Its a fun job, but its constantly thinking on your feet, and nothing you can ever learn at school. Trust me, I've taught University through to Masters level. What University teaches you (hopefully; as it doesn't in all cases) to "think"; working teaches you to "put your thinking into practice".

So, when this awesome article by Wesley Gunter was shared with us; written by an industry counterpart from overseas, we couldn't help laughing (because during job interviews its the very things Farrell and I say) and nodding our heads in collective agreement (for the very same reason).

So, do you want to join an agency?

Source - www.brandwatch.com

Here's Wesley's article for your reading pleasure:

I know many ‘marketing experts’ will get very defensive after reading this headline, partly because many will feel their years spent in a top school learning the intricacies of public relations or marketing will certainly be of utmost importance in their career today.

Sorry junior, welcome to the real world.

The marketing world is a war-torn place, and public relations practitioners are its ‘Navy Seals’: join our ranks, and you’ll find yourself running with an elite bunch of unforgiving and competitive mercenaries, and if you’re not up to speed, you’re dead — career-wise, that is. If you’re a fresh graduate, coming into an agency thinking you know everything based on your stack of notes from school is a surefire way to get you shot down quickly and brutally in your dream career. So pay attention, you’ll need to know these 5 pointers if you want to survive.

1. Your answers will not be found in a textbook

So you’re a straight-A student. Congratulations! Now try to apply what you learned to your job. Most new recruits who did well in their studies will always find it hard to adjust to agency life, because in a career where you need to constantly think on your feet, there’s no big book of answers to refer to. Sure, you’ve got millions of resources to search for online but PR is not about drafting answers, it’s about providing solutions. In an agency you will run into 101 client situations that need to be resolved based on instinct and experience that you can never earn from attending lectures and tutorials.

2. You are not an expert until you prove your worth

Coming in to an interview with a Masters in Public Relations is not going to earn you any brownie points. What matters in an agency is what clients you have handled and what you did previously. The only food you should be eating when you start in an agency is ‘humble pie’. So be good, take instructions carefully most of all don’t try to act smart. You need to start somewhere.

3. Make mistakes, learn, and move on

While you would be penalised in school for making mistakes and getting an ‘A’ was the only thing that may have really mattered to you, if you really want to learn the ropes in an agency you have to do the exact opposite – make mistakes, lots of them.

Early in my career as a junior executive, I remember being careless with my emails, missing grammatical or spelling errors, and that always got me in trouble with my superiors. My worst offence was sending a journalist the wrong financial figure for a story, which made me realise the magnitude of my carelessness, and it was my superior that spotted the mistake before it was printed, saving me from potential disaster with our client, and serving me a generous serving of that humble pie I just mentioned.

You will never learn unless you make mistakes. You WILL make mistakes, some of them big and some of them small. Either way you will be criticised and be torn apart for them. You learn when you stop making the same mistakes AGAIN (unless you’re a sucker for punishment). But most importantly, never take things personally: if you’re a sensitive kind of person with a huge ego, PR is obviously not the place for you.

4. Deal with change

Change is an integral part of any agency. You can be handling a super-cool sports client for six months, and then be given an entirely different project with a biopharmaceutical company for your next account. You need to adapt to different clients, work well in different teams, codeswitch through different writing styles and tones, etc.

At Right Hook, we’ve had to ride through many changes just over the past one-and-a-half years alone, including coping with our rising staff strength, our portfolio expansion to include content management, and building the flexibility in our services to add more value to our clients. Every agency needs to adapt in order to grow their business, because change is constant, and necessary.

5. There is more to life than a press release

You may be quite shocked when I tell you that most agencies don’t rely on press releases to get the message across. Rather, we find our success through personal pitching efforts and other tactics. While a press release is an important tool to get your foot in the door with media, it is by no means a ‘sale clincher’ by any measure. Your engagement success rate depends entirely on other factors such as timeliness, and your personal relationship with the journalist.

So there you have it folks. The cold, hard, truth about life in PR. Of course it’s not all doom and gloom. If you ever do have the opportunity to join an agency you’ll always be learning something new and never have a dull moment in your career with all this adrenalin pumping excitement going on which is very much like being in a PR battlefield.

And now, for your thoughts?

Cheers

The Orchan Team