A. Thousands of talented, bright young people who seek a professional life where they can make a big difference to the world in which we work and to their own financial future
For a change, here is some advice for these younger folk with a dream and an ambition.
Public relations has become a top career choice and the demand for talent is so huge that you may think you will have your choice of dream jobs with a fast track to the top. So you think getting into public relations will be easy? It might be, but only if you are immensely experienced and hardworking and enthusiastic and charming ... and lucky. Like politics, unless you are very tough and determined, too often public relations can end in failure and tears.
What did you think it would be like? Glamorous, exciting, challenging, well paid?
It could be all those things ... some of the time. But be prepared also for intense frustration, massive and nonstop hard work, limited support and resources. And, above all, brace yourself for constant criticism from those who understand nothing but who believe they know better than you about everything. Also prepare yourself for hostility from many of those you are trying to help - from the media, from your customers, employees, parliamentarians and even your own chief executive! Expect to be kept in the dark and derided by anyone outside public relations. Oh, I nearly forgot, be thick skinned and pigheaded enough to cope with those frequent times when you will be lonely and unappreciated
To get anywhere near success, you will need to be (in strictly alphabetical order):
articulate, committed, creative, energetic, good-natured, imaginative, industrious, loyal, sensitive, talented, tolerant and wise beyond your years.
But those are only the basics. Do not ever say in your applications or at interview that you want to be in public relations because you can communicate and you like people. Those are shallow, joke qualities that might win the response that you should consider being an undertaker.
And never admit to being shy. No one buys that.
I told all my graduate trainees and applicants (100 and over 2000 respectively at the last count) that they could be shy. But only if they practised that at home on a Sunday. I never wanted to see timidity at work. Indeed I have put the same message to the 10,000 plus undergraduates I have lectured around the world in the last few years alone.
If you do manage to get onto the shortlist for an unadvertised job or apply for one that is advertised, then you will need killer instincts but combined with Oscar-standard personal skills to beat the massive and impressive competition.
Winners will not be the best candidates but those least likely to fail
So minimise the risk. Show the interviewer that you understand the demands, know the organisation, its environment, ambitions, strengths and weaknesses and you have exactly the right experience to prove you can handle this impossible position. Of course, fresh out of three years of heavy drinking, clubbing, countless rock concerts and innumerable affairs (some intense ones of more than one day duration), you will have honed all these skills. You may have squeezed in the time to produce all the practical examples you might need.
Real work in a real environment will count for a lot. Particularly if your interviewer is exhausted by the job demands, frazzled, never went to university, hardly understands what a gap year might be and has less experience of human relations at 40 than you had at 14.
For example, your university activities will count for nothing. The time to start planning for your job search is the day you start your degree course - or even earlier. Do any work that will give your relevant experience and material for your folio. Network . People like me with connections turn up to talk to you and it is another name in your databases. Call them, email then and you may find they can help - "I do not know, but I know a bloke who does know".
If I talk to 300 undergraduates, how many do you think email me? Just three or four. So hundreds miss an opportunity. Networking works. Recently, I have helped one student rewrite his cv, another to use a simple technique that improves chances of being put on the shortlist by a factor of ten. I have introduced would-be public relations professionals to top practitioners in some of the largest and most successful companies in the world.
If you are still at university, consider looking for a holiday job with a public relations consultancy - even if you are offered unpaid work experience instead. If you work for a company unpaid for a while, you'll be in pole position if they ever have a vacancy coming up. The work helps you demonstrate your skills and personality far more than a job interview can. Be willing to muck in, but don't let yourself be exploited. Making the tea is fine, but only if you're given opportunities to use your skills as well.
Be resilient. You may have to approach public relations or media companies many times before you get anywhere. It is all good public relations practice. As a public relations professional you will be turned away many times during the course of your job, especially when selling your stories in to the media, so you need to harden your hide a little!
Subscribing to PR Week or your local equivalent will help you to identify potential employers and will provide information on current issues in public relations. If you can't afford that, try logging on to the website (which charges, unfortunately, for full access to articles) and reading the headlines to get a sense of the issues. The CIPR website (www.cipr.org.uk) is also a good source of information, and has a jobs section which you can use to find out names of employers, even if the jobs themselves are not in your league (yet).
If you know something about public relations, you have got (or on the way to getting) the right qualifications, if you have strength of personality, integrity and determination, you may jus make it. But watch you do not get into the lowest divisions as it can be very difficult getting up to the premier league form there. But to be a junior in an Arsenal or Chelsea is far better than a star with Bognor Regis Town.
Note that the best jobs, almost all those worth getting, may never be advertised and those that are may already have their short list prepared before the ad appears and, even if they haven't, you will face hundreds of other candidates likely to be better qualified, better prepared, better equipped and better than you. So if you are not sure you can make it, do yourself a great favour and save the heartache and give up now.
For more help, advice and information, visit www.getstartedinpr.com and check what has been rated as the world's best public relations career inside-track ebook.
Roger Haywood is chief executive of leading strategic consultancy Issues Managers. He is the only person to have chaired both the Chartered Institute of Public relations and the Chartered Institute of Marketing. He formed and chaired the world's largest partnership of business communications consultancies.