What it takes for a successful career in PR

When I teach marketing and public relations courses, or lecture at universities, students often ask about a career in PR.  Too often young people have the wrong idea about what skill-set a full-time PR job requires.  Some believe the public relations business consists of attending parties and posting on Facebook all day.Hardly.PR and marketing are serious business functions.  To be successful in the marketing business one needs to have a strong sense of how business functions, have a keen sense for news and perhaps most important, possess excellent writing skills.I can’t tell you how many resumes I receive from recent college graduates applying for a job with my firm that contain typos, grammatical errors and sentences that don’t make sense.  I am not talking about foreigners but born and raised American young people.

If you want to get into the PR business, sharpen your writing and communication skills, read the newspaper everyday (yes, the newspaper not just the Drudge Report) and learn to understand a balance sheet.

You might attend a party or two, but there will come a time when you will have to write a strategic marketing plan and carry it out.  Or, you can go to law school, not a bad option.