As the PR industry evolves, there’s a growing conversation around skills gaps, opportunities for young people and preparing the next generation for working life today.
Over the last couple of months, we’ve started welcoming students to the coop for short-term work experience placements. We’ve found the experience valuable for both sides, and not just because we gain an extra pair of hands for the week.
A realistic look at agency life
Giving someone an insight into agency life can shape how they see the communications industry. It can also help them decide whether it’s a career they want to pursue.
As a business with transparency at its heart, offering this opportunity feels natural to us. We all had to get a realistic look at the PR industry from somewhere. Having the chance to do the same for someone else feels important.
Recently, we welcomed Josh to Team Rooster for four days of work experience. He got the chance to experience life inside a busy PR agency and see what the job really involves.
Check out his LinkedIn post here to read more about what he got up to and how he got on.
More than making coffee
The term “work experience” often comes with connotations of filing paperwork, making coffee and tidying the office. That’s not how we see it. If someone gives up their time to spend a week with us, they deserve to see the good, the bad, and the ugly of agency life.
That means joining team meetings and seeing how campaigns develop from the ground up. It means understanding how we approach journalists and influencers, what makes a strong pitch and why we make the decisions we do. We want students to see the work as it really is, rather than watching from the sidelines.
What PR actually looks like
PR can sometimes be falsely advertised as launch parties, influencer gifting and celebrities. In reality, that represents a very small part of the job. Good PR relies on strong relationships, an eye for what makes a story and solid commercial awareness. It also involves a lot of behind-the-scenes hard graft, much less sexy than cocktail parties in Soho.
We’re proudly old school when it comes to relationships. We avoid mass emails and irrelevant pitches, and are keen to share what realistically builds a successful PR career with those interested in starting one. These skills form the foundations of a successful career far more than the glamorous moments people tend to associate with the industry.
PR isn’t the only career on offer
Of course, not every student will decide PR is for them. At this stage in their career, we think it’s just as important to give young people a wider view of the working world.
Behind every successful agency sits a team of specialists across HR, finance, operations and office management. Each role plays a pivotal part in delivering brilliant work for clients, and may be one better suited to them.
Seeing how these pieces fit together can introduce students to careers they may never have considered before.
Work experience works both ways
While work experience can offer invaluable insight to students, one of the unexpected benefits is what it gives back to us.
When you live and breathe your role every day, you rarely stop to question how or why you do things. Students do. They ask why journalists respond to one story but ignore another. They ask how we build relationships or why we approach a campaign in a certain way.
Those questions make us revisit our core skills and values as an agency. They force us to explain our thinking, reflect on our processes and recognise just how many nuances there are in PR. In many ways, work experience helps us reset and check ourselves too.
Creating opportunities to mentor
Work experience also gives junior members of our team the chance to mentor someone for the first time.
Supporting a student gives them the opportunity to build confidence in their own leadership and communication skills, explaining their work, answering questions and helping someone else develop.
That makes the experience valuable far beyond the student sitting beside them.
Opening the door to the next generation
We’ve only recently revisited work experience, but we’re looking forward to continuing to open our doors to give young people a genuine and realistic insight into agency life.
PR is notoriously difficult to break into, so providing those first opportunities matters. Most of us remember the people who gave us a chance or helped us understand the industry when we were starting out.
If we can do the same for someone else, while reminding ourselves why we love what we do along the way, it’s time well spent.
And who knows? The next student to walk through our door could become a future member of Team Rooster.
