Avenues of Employment: Career in Public Relations (PR) – Managing everything through communication

"Information given to the public, persuasion directed at the public to modify attitudes and actions, and efforts to integrate attitudes and actions of an institution with its publics and of publics with those of that institution." – Defined Public Relations (PR) by Edward Bernays, Father of World PR

There is a say in public relations profession that “PR is everything and everything is in PR”. Here everything, needless to purport that PR is the driving force of persuasion management in this competitive world where reality is being spin everyday by the individual and company. The definition given by Edward Bernays highlights following notation about public relations profession –

1.      Persuasion of attitudes and changing behavior of public is a major aspect of public Relations.

2   PR seeks favourable public opinion of an institution by both internal and external publics. Public opinion is like customer opinion which gives higher satisfaction level to everyone. Satisfied and happy publics keep continuing to invest in company’s goods and services and spread positive message through various channels of communication.

3.      Business, Profession and institutions are giving very good employment opportunity to an individual to disseminate regular messages to its internal publics like ‘employees’ and external publics like governments, regulators, opinion makers or influencers and mass media.

4.      PR helps to establish the complete understanding about company’s mission, vision, and objectives in the mind of its publics.

Closely Working with the Top Management Having Apt Skills Set

Making career in public relations is like thinking of becoming a communication coach to the management for managing everything through communication on behalf of top management or many-a-time independently. Your job will be identifying, establishing and nurturing relationships between the company and various publics. Good communication skills both writing and speaking, having apt understanding on current events locally, nationally and globally can help to strategies communication for promoting your organization’s position to various publics using mass media and other communication channels, this function often referred as media relations. You are the gatekeeper especially controlling the messages during crisis situation and clarifying erroneous, rumors or fake information that could create the panic or tarnish the company’s image. 

Right Education will help in shaping Required Skills

Public relations is often quoted as an Associated Journalist, means, one has to draft and create regular messages in the form of press release (s), organizing regular press conference and media meet, interview, preparing the information booklets like brochures, newsletter, and journal, writing speeches for the client or employer’s representatives, respond to media for specific information, evaluate advertising and other promotional efforts that are aligned to the PR, giving qualitative and quantitative feedback to the top management for better improvement and taking appropriate corrective & preventive measures whenever required, organizing events, track, evaluate and share results of PR efforts to everyone and many more. Lists are numerous, and each specific task required complete learning and practice to become a good PR professional. Therefore, Bachelors (after 12^th) and Master (after 10+2+3/Graduation) degree can set a right path to get into this highly lucrative career.

Employment Opportunities and Perk Benefits:

After completing Bachelors or Masters Degree, you can join any public relations agency or communication consulting firm or any private and public organizations including Governments, Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), schools, colleges and universities. Now-a-days, every sector is either appointing PR Executive at initial stage and later can be promoted as a Public Relations Officer (PRO) or hiring an independent consultant or public relations agency to manage regular communication affairs. Salary is no bar for the right candidate, however, in current market scenario one can get initial monthly salary vary from 20K to 80K or even higher depending upon the organization or size of the business that you are getting into.

Contributed by Dr. Shashikant Bhagat, Faculty, National Institute of Mass Communication and Journalism (NIMCJ), Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.