The future for grads in PR: an interview with Tony Byng, Leeds University Business School
It is coming up to that time again. Dissertations are in, final exams are looming and the prospect of leaving the fun university life that has been a reality for the past few years is becoming more and more real.
But, given the current financial climate™ what are the prospects for today’s graduates?
Rather than come up with a flimsy list of tips (that is the next post) I thought I’d speak to an expert. Tony Byng used to work with me at The Weber Group before pursuing a career as a lecturer. He is currently the programme Director for Leeds University Business School’s MA in corporate communications and PR. I asked him what he thought of the industry today and how tough it was for Grads:
… from what I gather, the market is still relatively open for those students who are prepared to ‘put themselves about’ or who have garnered some real experience during their summer vacations. Having said that, we have seen an increase in applications for our marketing-related Masters programmes of between 20-40%… suggesting many are hoping to ride out the economic storm by spending another year in education - if they can afford it!
We have a large Careers Service at Leeds and the University has a very good track record of graduate employment. While the ‘Milk Run’ is rather a sparse affair these days, Leeds is still targeted by many corporate employers - partly due to the quality of its education, but also down to the quality and background of the students we accept.
The issue with PR specifically, is that both agencies and in-house departments appear to be pretty poor at graduate recruitment. I have rarely come across agencies who start a recruitment drive in, say, November… interview in the spring with a view to employing in August/September. Most of them don’t seem to be able to plan that far ahead! And, it’s not just PR - most marketing agencies are the same, apart from the some of the larger ones. Of course, a lack of experience tends to shut the door pretty quickly as well.
I asked Tony what his advice is for this year’s graduates:
So, my advice to students considering a move in to PR is, perhaps, a little old-fashioned. I tell them to surf the web, read Guardian Media and PR Week, talk to anyone with even the slightest association with PR and encourage them to identify agencies they would like to work for (based on awards, client list, positioning, etc.) and then get on the phone… looking to find out who’s hiring, when they may be hiring and generally selling themselves and trying to get a network going. I even encourage them to ask for internships - even a day shadowing an account team. It’s difficult to say no to someone who appears keen and bright when they offer themselves for free! If they think this sounds too much like hard work, then they’re probably not cut out for the industry anyway!
How does the Uni help PR grads find work?
In terms of the University, I recommend that students look to the careers service for advice on preparing CVs, interview skills and using resources for researching target agencies. I also advise students to look at their whole CV and find something that differentiates them - not a just a rounded CV balancing work and play but something genuinely interesting to talk about. It is difficult for the education sector to do too much more when the industry appears to be less than organised. I would be delighted if you proved me wrong on this last point
I would also add a whole online dimension when targeting employers. Many grads (see Jed and Michael to name but two) over the past couple of years have had success through building a digital network through twitter and blogging and this has really augmented the real life meetings they’ve had during the job hunting process.
To help prove Tony wrong, I will be speaking to PR students at Leeds over the coming few months and we’re also reviewing how we promote the graduate scheme at Ruder Finn.
N.B. Cross posted on my blog
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Comments (4)
May 26th, 2009 at 9:33 am Posted by Will H
Tony’s right about this year’s grads having to work very hard to get a job. At Christmas when I was looking at Public Affairs I used the internet and having spoken to a friend in recruitment about the need to apply widely - must have applied to 20-25 public affairs and political PR firms. I got offered a job, but found out afterwards from the 3 companies who got back to me that there were up to 200 candidates per job (in normal times it had been 20-40).
For companies this means there is far more supply than demand and so anyone hiring will have the pick of the graduate market and graduates will generally look at a variety of different sectors and be forced to take what they can.
Already I have worked with two highly educated interns with cracking CVs who are looking abroad for jobs or in a variety of different sectors because they cannot find work in London.
May 26th, 2009 at 11:11 am Posted by Annabel Kerr
My old university apparently sent a letter round this year to all fourth year students advising them of how hard it would be to find a job once they had left - as if they did not already know. What worries me is the advantage many companies seem to be taking off the abundance of graduates looking for any kind of work at the moment by only offering unpaid internships with the faint hint of a paid job afterwards. A friend of mine has been jumping from unpaid intership to unpaid intership over the last year and has had to move back home as she can no longer afford to live in London.
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:30 am Posted by The Blog Planet - UK Employment: Lucrative Graduate Jobs
[...] The future for grads in PR: an interview with Tony Byng, Leeds … [...]
June 7th, 2009 at 7:47 pm Posted by Charley Morello
It’s true that it’s a very difficult climate at the moment, I am in the last few months of my PR Masters course at Leeds Met University and I am experiencing it myself. However, I do think that it’s important for graduates and post graduates not to get disheartened. It helps to be keen and willing (if possible) to work voluntarily to gain the valuable experience. I’ve been doing one/two days at week at a PR agency since February and it’s given me the opportunity to work on accounts across the very different areas of consumer, healthcare, financial and public affairs PR. However, I am also getting to the point where the student loan is running out and I will need a full-time paid job - I just hope I can find one. It might take longer than it would have done a year ago but I’ll get there in the end, as will the other graduates out there!
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