Category Archives: Graduates

50 PR Blogs Chosen By Graduates

Recently I asked the Taylor Bennett Foundation PR trainees to pick their favourite PR blogs and this is the list they came up with – all worth checking out especially if you’re just about to embark on your first PR job, but even if you’re a seasoned PR practitioner.

There were 8 grads and they chose 10 blogs each – some overlapped bringing the final total down to 50.

Tofayal – interning at Cohn & Wolfe (here’s the reasons for his 10 choices)
Sheeraz– now working at Perception PR
Raz – now working as a media planner at Nickelodeon
Hannah– recently interned at Bell Pottinger
Kerrie – interning at Luther Pendragon
Pritpal – now working at MHP Communications (here’s the reasons for his 10 choices)
Ndela – now working in comms at One Housing Group
Kiran – now working in comms at Royal London Group Continue reading

4 Comments

Filed under Graduates, PR, Social Media

20 Useful Articles for PR Job Hunters

1. What does a PR agency do? 

2. The future of the PR industry 

3. Why I deleted your PR job application

4. How to start a career in PR

5. The three Rs of job applications Continue reading

2 Comments

Filed under Careers, Graduates, PR

Video CVs – are they the future?

In an era of high-levels of youth unemployment, sensible graduates are trying to find ways to stand out from the crowd. Are video CVs the way forward?It may be much easier to be persuasive if you can talk to an employer rather than just send a cover letter, so it might be a great way to get noticed. A couple of years ago I featured this CVIV from Graeme Anthony (he then went on to secure himself a job at a PR agency so it did the trick)

Over at Inspiring Interns, Continue reading

Leave a Comment

Filed under Careers, Graduates, Recruitment

10 ways to start writing for a PR career

Image

Writing skills are highly prized by PR employers but if you’ve had three (or more) years of writing essays and dissertations, how do you go about changing your writing skills to be relevant to a PR career? Continue reading

7 Comments

Filed under Careers, Graduates, PR

Ten tips for new graduates

Image

So you’ve just left university and you’re hankering after a job in PR.  What should you be doing?  Here are my ten top tips.  Continue reading

2 Comments

Filed under Careers, Graduates, PR

Rude graduates don’t get jobs

 

rudeStats on graduate employment make depressing reading.  It is one of the hardest times ever to leave university and secure a graduate level job.  My trainees worked out it was taking them on average 33 applications to secure an interview.  AN INTERVIEW, not even a job offer!  These are well trained grads who write great cover letters and have sparkling CVs which experienced PR headhunters have combed through in great detail, and even they struggle.

 

Which is why I was surprised on Monday when six out of twenty graduates invited to come along, didn’t turn up for the Taylor Bennett Foundation assessment day.  Two¸I believe, had genuine reasons not to be there but the other four contacted us after 8pm on the day before to say they  wouldn’t be turning up.  One said “I’ve had a change of circumstance”.  What could possibly change on a Sunday night that they didn’t know about on the Friday?

 

None of them had the balls to call us on the phone.  Even the two with genuine reasons. They all sent vague emails.  That really grips my shit.  It’s rude, and cowardly.  Although in the past we’ve had some who haven’t turned up and haven’t bothered to contact us at all and that is unforgiveable.

 

To get an assessment invitation they had to fill in a very very long application form.  It is deliberately long to test commitment to the programme and to give me the opportunity to check out whether they write well and whether they have the right motivation to be selected.  Then they have to attend a two hour pre-assessment briefing where they are given a rundown of what the assessment day entails and a presentation topic which they have to spend several hours preparing in advance.  Finally, they have to complete a 30 minute online personality suitability test.  It’s hardcore.  It’s detailed.  It’s designed for us to get the best.  These six graduates completed all these stages and yet still didn’t show for the assessment.

 

They are told, even if they don’t secure one of the eight coveted spots on our programme we will give them very detailed and honest feedback.  This takes considerable time and effort by our assessors and our Programme Manager who has to collate all of the handwritten notes from the day.  It is feedback they are never likely to get anywhere else.  It is unique to us and it is our way of helping more than just the graduates who join us for the ten week traineeship.  Only about one in ten grads bother to reply to us to say thank you for the feedback.  Manners, it seems, are not taught at university.

 

If I were a grad in this economic climate, I would have to be on my deathbed to not to turn up to such an amazing opportunity.

 

In a way, those graduates did us a favour.  It saved us the job of weeding them out as unreliable and uncommitted during the assessment process.  However, they did not do other grads a favour.  If they had given us enough notice – say, Friday lunchtime – then we could have invited others to have taken their place and have a shot at getting a place on the TBF programme.

 

So if they apply again, their applications will automatically go in the bin.  We don’t take rude and selfish people at the Taylor Bennett Foundation, and I suspect other employers won’t either.

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Graduates, PR, Recruitment