For a good part of my business life I have made two or three visits a year both in this country and when traveling abroad to speak to students and faculty at colleges of communications and graduate schools of business. My two most recent talks were at Boston University and City University of New York (CUNY). At both, the Q&A portion of my presentation was palpably more serious, the questions more purposeful, than usual. The top-of-mind topic for most students was how to find a job.
As I parried their questions, the thought crossed my mind that members of the class of 2009, mostly age 22, were never aware of a serious downturn in the economy. Barely 13 years old when the Silicon Valley bubble burst, they were toddlers when the economy bottomed out in the early 90s. Throughout their pre-adult life they knew and experienced only the showy extravagance and excessive consumption as real estate prices and credit card debt soared and jobs were there for the asking.
Expecting magic answers on how to get a job in public relations, I could assure them only that I was confident in believing that the value of public relations/communications as a business discipline was greater today than ever and its future even more so. When pressed with questions demanding a more specific response, I told them that those best at networking were the ones most likely to find a job. I pointed out that more than half the staff at Burson-Marsteller were first introduced to the firm by friends and families and neighbors and acquaintances of employees, clients, media representatives and others who had a “connection.” This is not an unusual occurrence at professional service businesses.
This piece of advice was in line with my answer to my most-often-asked question by students: “what should I be doing now to improve my chances of getting a job in public relations?” My response, developed after years of pondering the question, was “start now building a network of friends and colleagues whom you expect to be in positions of influence or awareness.” Nowadays, a typical college graduating class includes a likely governor or senator, several future entrepreneurs, numerous lawyers and physicians and college professors with broad acquaintanceships, dozens of business leaders who influence the hiring process.
But I admonish them that networking is more complicated than simply knowing people. Networking takes both time and effort. Like getting together for a beer, e-mailing or otherwise communicating, exploring mutual interests like hiking or watching football. I also shared an observation learned through experience that friendships established early in life, say during high school of college, are the most lasting, the most likely to deliver when times are toughest.
Another bit of advice I have given students through the years has to do with writing. There’s not much argument that writing quality has been diminishing for at least half a century (some say since the advent of television, which absorbed much of the time once devoted to reading). The present array of more sophisticated devices that claim the time and attention of the young – cell phones, i-Pods, text messaging and other computer-driven recreations – can only be expected to further reduce time available for serious reading and writing. Accordingly, the young job seeker who demonstrates writing skills is immediately differentiated from others competing for jobs.
But despite the miseries that await the class of 2009 in their quest for employment, I take a small measure of comfort in observing that the current recession – the most severe since the Great Depression of the 1930s – has had a less adverse effect on public relations employment than the ten or twelve previous recessions that coincide with my business career. Many public relations firms have trimmed their staffs, but usually not to the degree of past recessions. Save such industries as financial services, real estate and automobiles, corporations have not cut and slashed staff and budgets to the same extent as in past recessions.
There are, I believe, two reasons.
The first is the maturation and, with it, the appreciation of public relations by clients and employers as a valued business discipline. At this time of major turbulence in how messages are communicated to target audiences, public relations has proven itself to be agile, flexible, creative and comprehensive in the sense that it is without boundaries in its scope and reach.
The second is the impact of digital communications. Institutionalizing digital as a communications medium is still a work in progress. Corporations, indeed all societal entities, are at different levels of experimentation and sophistication in both the content and the context of messages to employees, customers and other significant audiences. Despite the recession, the use of digital is growing, albeit in some areas at slower rates than in previous years.
But little of this serves the purpose of those young women and men seeking entry level jobs in public relations. Sadly, we will lose many of them to other disciplines. But I suspect those most committed to public relations will achieve their job-hunting objective as the economic environment returns to normality.