By Nigel Becker, Mira Cantania, Aislin Daugherty, Lexi Geltzeiler, Ava Huelskamp, and Bailey Wood
Public relations is a fast-paced, highly creative, and hugely rewarding career…but it can also be intimidating to people looking to break into the field.
Whether you arrived at OSU as a freshman ready to launch your PR career or you’re a fourth-year who just realized public relations might be your calling, there’s a lot to learn and a lot of fun to be had. Unsure of where to start? The PRactice’s Decent Exposures team — who work for a Seattle-based apparel company — are here to walk you through PR 101.
How to Gain PR Experience as a Rookie
Securing an internship can be scary and overwhelming, but it isn’t the only way to gain experience as a communication pre-professional. Everywhere around you, there are companies in desperate need of PR help. Think about your favorite local businesses—many of them don’t have a full-time employee dedicated to running social media accounts or pursuing earned media coverage. Reach out to them and ask if they would be interested in you developing social media posts or providing them with a website and social media audit. If they say no, that’s okay! Putting yourself out there is hard, and not everyone is looking for help. The act of pitching yourself and your skills will only help you in interviews down the line. If you do secure the chance to help one of these businesses, great! You’ve just secured something to add to your portfolio.
If you want more structure in your growth, joining clubs like The PRactice and PRSSA will give you the opportunity to grow professionally in a low-pressure environment that closely matches the real-world industry. Remember: you don’t get what you don’t ask for! Get comfortable asking questions, networking with peers, and making mistakes—these will all help you grow.
PR and Journalism: Navigating the Relationship
One of the first things you should remember as either a public relations professional or a journalist is that you don’t want to be each other’s enemies. While relationships between PR professionals and journalists have been controversial in the past, it is essential for either career path that you learn to respect the person on the other side because they can be your biggest asset.
It’s important to remember the difference between a PR professional and a journalist. A PR professional is someone who uses strategic communication to build relationships between organizations and their key publics. A journalist’s job is to evaluate current events or stories for their news value and objectively and effectively relay these stories to the public. You can see how these two roles might be confused for each other, but while they are different, they heavily rely on each other.
PR professionals send messaging for their clients to journalists, often in the form of press releases, in hopes that the journalist will write about it and provide the client with earned media. Journalists are often overwhelmed and busy, so they rely on PR professionals to provide them with stories and save them time from searching for them. This is also why it is important to do your research as a PR professional, so your pitches are worth the journalists’ precious time. This relationship has shifted in recent years as print journalism has become less popular and organizations are starting to move towards things like influencer marketing to communicate with their publics. Without the objective journalist as a buffer between the organization and the public, people are starting to become more skeptical and less trusting of the news. PR professionals are losing journalists, journalists are losing careers, and the public is losing trust. That’s why both professions need to support each other, so we can navigate and succeed in this changing world together.
The Hardships of PR
PR is fun…but not always. Great internships can be highly competitive—dozens or hundreds of great students applying for a single spot. Or, once you’ve landed that dream position, you might have to deal with difficult coworkers or headstrong clients.
The best way to overcome the hardships of PR is to have a growth mindset; see every setback as a learning opportunity, not as the end of the story. Anyone can find a way to make a “glamorous” organization sound cool, so if you’re stuck with a less awesome client, welcome it as a challenge to put a cool spin on what they do! Clients or supervisors who won’t listen to your ideas can be frustrating—but if you can tweak your suggestions so they like them, then congratulations: You’ve just acquired an awesome answer to “Tell me about a problem you overcame” in your next job interview. PR is all about creativity, and finding ways to put a positive spin on a sticky situation is one of the best ways to flex your creative muscle!
PR at Ohio State
The Public Relations Student Society of America, also known as PRSSA, is an organization to prepare students for their future careers in public relations and communications. Sister program of The PRactice, members of PRSSA have the opportunity to network with PR professionals and prepare for the future. PRSSA members also have access to a private internship/career database, scholarships, leadership, and more. PRSSA is the organization for students to learn about the field of PR, and The PRactice is the organization for students to put that newfound knowledge into practice.
