How Australia’s PR and comms industry can overcome the talent drought
Finding young talent in the PR and communications industry has been a long fought battle. Mumbrella’s Abigail Dawson speaks to industry leaders and young PR professionals to understand where the talent issue starts and what the industry can do about it.
One of the biggest issues the public relations and communications industry has been grappling with for the last few years is talent, from recruiting juniors to retaining highly skilled and well trained employees.
Despite agencies implementing internship programs, mentoring strategies, training days and staff incentives; the shortage of talent has continued, leaving the industry scratching its head.
Talented account executives, account coordinators, senior account executives and entry level communications professionals are highly sought after by many businesses and agencies in adland, but on the other side of the spectrum, many graduates find landing their first job tough.
Every single person in this article is a female. Are men being discriminated against?
For every one woman interviewed in the media, four men are interviewed. Given the PR industry overwhelmingly (+70%) women I think we can let this one side hey?
Honestly, this is probably more a realistic representative of the PR industry. Studying journalism it was 3:1 females to males in the room, but transferring to PR became a 12:1 ratio.
Reality is, males are under represented in the PR industry. It’s not a discriminatory thing, it’s purely there are less males entering the industry.
Of course this reality also has its own culture problems for the few males who do work in consumer PR…
I worked at a big 4 bank once in 2007. Of 140 “communications” people there were two males. The guy who ran the shop and me as a contractor.
Ah, I see now. Because it is the PR industry then it is just the way it is.
But if it is the inverse in another industry it is gender bias.
Thanks for clearing that up.
I have 100% seen blatant discrimination against men entering the PR industry. I had one director tell me they had once hired a male employee who was terrible at his job, after they fired him she told me they ‘had an internal policy that they wouldn’t hire anymore men’.
I also heard a different PR director mention that “women are just better at PR than men” Oh yes – the PR gene, that only females possess, how could I forget? *sarcasm*.
Of course it just become a self-fulfilling prophecy that turns into unconscious, or conscious, bias. The sad thing is you miss out on some fantastic talent because of this.
If merit is equally distributed among the sexes, then every industry should have a rough split of 50/50 between men and women – across all roles and leadership positions. If it doesn’t – then there is a problem with your company and your industry that needs to be fixed.
Sorry Samantha, to argue there’s a problem if there’s not a 50/50 gender split across all roles and leadership positions in every company and industry is a crock.
You need to understand the difference between equality of opportunity (everyone has the right to do whatever they want without discrimination, which is good) vs equality of outcome (how things actually are). The difference is personal choice, and we can’t force people into roles/jobs/industries they don’t want to be in.
Are you arguing that women should make up half the people working on construction sites, driving trucks? Or that men should make up half of hairdressers, nurses? Even if they don’t want to? (I’m stereotyping, just to make the point)
And what about CEOs? Do you realise the level of psychopathy required to become CEO of a large company? There’s very few men or women who are prepared to do what it takes to reach this level, and I suspect there’s very few who actually want to do it. That it’s more often than not men who take these roles is in my view more a cry for help than something we all should aspire to, or push people into.
Let people have every opportunity to pursue whatever they want to do, but let’s not force these ridiculous gender-based outcomes that defy personal choices.
Of course you learn things in practice that you wouldn’t have learned at university. And vice versa. That’s why so many professionals who are passionate about their career and furthering the industry return to university.
Not all university degrees are theoretical. From experience (as regular reviewer of accredited programs and Chairperson of PRIA’s Education Committee), most PR degrees are actually very much hands-on and industry orientated.
At Curtin University we have a compulsory industry placement and real life clients in most of our units – but that’s only a starting point. Individuals need to take charge of their journey and embrace the (extracurricular) opportunities offered to them – like additional placements, seminars, participation in relevant clubs, networking, mentoring, etc.
I believe we are working in and industry that is already benefiting from close relationships between educators and industry. But more can be done. I encourage employers and senior communication professionals to become actively engaged in the education of future PR professionals, by volunteering as guest speakers, putting their hands up for advisory group positions and providing up to date case studies and industry insights.
I believe there is plenty of talent out there! It’s about providing that talent with the appropriate skills, networks and training opportunities – and neither industry nor academia can do this in isolation!
After 20 years of PR I decided I’d go and get a Masters. After examining the coursework at thre group of 8 I decided against it. a – mandatory unit on “the media landscape” another on “ethics”, an assignment at one of them consisted in writing a communications plan…seiously!
Same
I looked at a masters in HK. As well as a questionable course structure that focused on the kind of stuff you would teach in a couple of weeks as part of agency on-boarding, I also looked at some of the guest tutors. A bunch of tired, uninspiring names from the HK PR sector. Exactly the kind of people the more progressive networks are trying to ship out.
My daughter is struggling to land her first post-degree job in her field of events management. She has absolute no illusions about hard work, dull tasks etc having worked on a warehouse the past 4 years plus intern and volunteer event work.
My observation is one thing the comms industry overall needs to take a hard look at how it frames job ads and interviews. Ads that say entry level but then ask for 2 years experience. Linkedin posts with every possible tag so you get rubbish in searches. Roles marked ‘event manager’ that are mostly other types of marketing or even mainly admin. And so on.
The elephant that ran from the room is how much the PR industry traditionally relied on former journos to fill out their ranks at all levels.
With the hollowing out of newsrooms that trained these journos, PRs for the first time must develop their own intellectual capacity and sell graduates on the idea of working in PR.
Unfortunately, most new PRs have no idea how the media (and journos) work and there are few old hands around to educate them.