Careers in communications - help please!

[MiniMacaron]

Hi everyone.

I'm really interested in jobs in PR and communications as it's such a wide and varied sector, with lots of opportunities to work for different organisations and to do lots of varied work.

I love writing and also would love to use languages (French and Spanish) as part of my job, and both skills seem to be something I could use in a communications role.

I'm just wondering how a career could be made out of it and how people tend to progress in their careers.

With other area of work (teaching, medicine or law, for example) I've heard more about how people can progress through their career.

In an industry like communications, what is job progression like? What opportunities are there at the top level of the job for example?

Thanks :)

Bump :)

How old are you? What's your qualification in Communications jobs in most industries now refers to either specialist legal/compliance or technical (digital/economics etc) communication not generalist stuff which is usually outsourced or offshored.

The entry routes are typically staffed by highly qualified young graduates.

Thanks for your reply Groupie :)

I'm 25 - I did a Languages degree, and worked for my university newspaper in general and editing roles.

I've also done quite a few internships for national newspapers and have successfully pitched freelance articles to national newspapers.

If you joined a PR agency, the job progression would be something like:

Junior account executive (starting out learning the ropes, doing lots of the admin work)

Senior account executive

Account Manager

Account director

Then you'd leave and nick all the best clients and start your own company

Do you have digital experience? Most of the communications entry staff who I've met are technical experts rather than have any journalism experience - but those involved in creating digital content almost always have a blend of digital/journalism skills. So the need to create interactive content (SharePoint, websites etc), video production, designing interactive and innovative collaboration tools etc.

Thanks for posting, Puppy :) After, say, progressing to Account Director or another senior-level role, is it common for people to move into senior-level or advisory communications roles in other organisations? Or do people tend to get to the top of their company and then start up their own company? Also - do people tend to stay with the same company or move around to different companies as they progress through their career? (Sorry - the last question might seem a bit silly, but I thought I might as well ask out of curiosity :) )

Groupie I started my own WordPress blog last year and have been maintaining it since then, so have learned a lot of digital skills through that.

Yes - the standard route would be to join an agency and progress through the ranks there, before becoming a partner/director or moving in-house/ going freelance or starting your own business.

You could also start out as a junior in-house PR but I think working for an agency to start off with would give you exposure to a broader range of clients and types of projects (which sounds like what you want).

There are also journalists who move into PR at a mid to senior level depending on how successful/senior/high profile they were as journalists.

In the agency I worked for people had all sorts of backgrounds - journalism, in-house PR, financial services, politics (advisers and researchers rather than MPs). The specific degree they'd done, and their prior experience, seemed less relevant than being bright and confident and interested in communications.

We had a grad scheme and took new grads (and people with a few years experience) onto that - we also offered paid internships. They would typically join as junior account execs rather than admin assistants - admin was a separate career path there and very few people made the move across.

In terms of how to find about opportunities, I think PR Week advertises jobs and there are also quite a few recruitment firms which specialise in comms.

There is a lot of movement, both from agencies to in-house and between agencies. Some people do stay at the same agencies for years but there's also a lot of poaching of staff.

IME people to move about a bit in agencies.

The other route is corporate Comms at hospitals, councils, government offices etc - loads of journalists end up in these roles.

I'm a communications manager, I started doing internships (I was 25 too) etc, I had a degree in journalism. I got a junior role as a marketing assistant, then jumped to a PR and content role- so web content, internal comms, social media, external PR) Then I jumped to Comms Manager for a small company. You need to choose if you want to be an internal resource or an external (agency) If you're a writer at heart than I'd stick to PR and content. Many marketing roles now require you to be part writer, graphic designer and part coder, but that's not me. Communications can also be quite business developmenty if you don't pick the right role, you need to know what you actually want to do- it might mean liaising within the sector in person or through events and presentations, producing research or being a spokesperson for interviews and TV- VERY different skills to a PR Officer.

There's also internal comms but that's a qualification and specialty in itself.

With your background I don't see why you couldn't get a junior PR (or content writer if agency) or marketing role and you just claw your way up from there.

Did I just make it more confusing?

I work in comms - my career progression has so far gone:

Started out as a graduate trainee in an agency (these roles exist less and less now and a lot of people start out as a paid intern instead).

From there became an Account Exec and progressed up to Account Director before going in-house. In house I progressed from PR Manager to a broader marketing & comms role and then moved orgs to become a Head of Comms which means I manage a team and various agencies. I started out on about 17k and about ten years later earn about 60k at a mid-sized organisation.

The next rung up in-house would be Director of Comms - almost every organisation of a certain size has one of these, so the pay and responsibilities vary massively.

I would definitely recommend starting out at an agency - gives you loads more experience. But once you get to Account Director level people tend to either go into an in-house track or stay on an agency track - which could mean starting your own agency or becoming a partner in the agency you work for. IME it gets harder to switch between agency and in-house the longer you've been in one specialism as the jobs feel quite different. Agency-side tends to be much more about creative execution whereas in-house tends to be more of the crisis comms and overarching strategy/messaging work.