I often get asked advice by graduates looking to break into the PR industry so here’s my round up of useful articles for job-hunting grads:
Twitter Feeds for PR Wannabes
How to stand out as PR interns
50 best blogs for PR professionals
Tips for getting a job in PR
How to get in PR and stay in it
How to make the most of your internship
5 good and bad ways to get a job in PR
How to write a thank you letter
How to make a good first impression
Making your CV more effective
Filed under Careers, Graduates, PR, Recruitment
2012 is turning out to be quite a year. Not only will the Taylor Bennett Foundation be running four PR internships, and increasing the intake from six graduates on each programme to eight but also, rather inconveniently, I am having a baby.
It was a planned pregnancy. Well, planned in that we have been trying to conceive for nearly five years with no luck, but I never really had expected it to happen and so in terms of when the baby is due to make an appearance, it was not diarised.
For anyone who knows me well, you will realise that this has caused me endless sleepless nights. My role at the Foundation is completely unique. I have never met anyone who does my job elsewhere and so I take great pains to make sure I am not away on holiday when the internships are running so that someone else doesn’t have to take on tasks they never imagined they’d have to. I never imagined, therefore, that I would be taking four months maternity leave in the middle of the year and leaving my precious interns in the hands of someone new.
The baby has been warned that it must appear on its due date of May 5th as to be early would be disastrous and to be late will mean mummy will be cross. My friends have scoffed at the idea of a child who follows my spreadsheet but it will have to learn pretty quickly I tell you.
The question of who will manage the internship programmes while I am away is still up in the air. We’ve had a few ideas but the decision of who takes over is down to the Foundation’s trustees so I have my fingers crossed they will go with my first choice.
Whoever it is will have to take on a bewildering array of tasks. I have been running these programmes for two years now and I had never quite grasped the variety of things I do on a day to day basis. To ease the cover person into the role, I have started compiling a “Guide to Running the Taylor Bennett Foundation Internships”. It is twenty pages so far and I’m only up to what to do to recruit the interns and how to settle them in on their first week.
I am very lucky in that I love my role. It is challenging, interesting and can be very rewarding, but it demands of me some unusual skills.
So, for those of you who fancy running such a scheme here are just some of the more random things you’ll be tasked with:
– Make sure the interns understand how to change a toilet roll (no one likes going into the loo to find that the last roll has been used and not replaced)
– Ensure you’re up to date with popular culture so as not to seem a million years old (I am 37 so to the average 22 year old I am ancient) and, if running an internship focussed on fashion PR, be clear in your understanding that Paul’s Boutique bags are chavvy and Mulberry are not
– Be clear when giving instructions. Graduates are used to pages of academic instructions with little room for interpretation. If your directions aren’t clear, they’ll go off piste
– When giving them career advice think about it from their mum’s point of view. If it’s not advice you’d give your own child, it’s bad advice
– Bring them cake. Homemade is best, but if you’re six month’s pregnant and can’t be arsed to bake then Krispy Kremes also go down well
In 2012 the Taylor Bennett Foundation (for which I am the Course Director) is running four more paid PR internship and training schemes designed to address the lack of black and ethnic minorities in the PR industry.
Application deadline for the Jan – Mar scheme run with Talk PR is midday on 19th December so get applying!
For more details go to our website www.taylorbennettfoundation.org
Click on the image below to read our recruitment advert.
Filed under Diversity, Graduates, PR, Recruitment
Since 2008, Taylor Bennett has set out to address the lack of ethnic diversity in the PR industry with an innovative PR training and internship programme. For ten weeks, six black and minority ethnic graduates are given intensive PR training, work-based experience and career guidance. They also get to meet industry professionals from a range of in-house, agency and media organisations. It is a fabulous scheme and in 2010 it won the Lord Mayor’s Dragon Award for Social Inclusion , which we are very proud of. Previous participants have already started successful careers in communications in firms which include Edelman, Brunswick, Cantos, Racepoint Group, MS&L, Freud, Talk PR, London Thames Gateway, Macbeth Media Relations and the Olympic Legacy Company. The success of the scheme means that by the end of 2011, nearly 50 graduates will have passed through the programme and that leaves us with a dilemma.
Until now, we have offered each of the interns personal career guidance, not only while they’re on the programme, but as they enter their careers and beyond. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to do this. We are a small organisation and while I adore all our interns, there are not enough hours in the day for me to run the programme, and to continue to support them regularly once they leave us. So, we are appealing to the PR community to step forward and act as mentors to these graduates – not only as they embark on their first PR roles, but throughout the lifetime of their careers.
Several PR practitioners have already put their hands up for this opportunity. We try to partner the mentors with grads we think will get the most out of their advice, and then ask that they try to meet up once a month for coffee to discuss their career aspirations. The rest of the time they are available by phone and email to answer questions and offer advice. We hope therefore that it is not too time-intensive, but that it gives the grads someone to turn to when they have a career question or issue.
Mentoring can be very rewarding. It gives you the opportunity to see a mentee progress and grow as a person. It also allows you to develop your management and training skills. Which gives you the chance to self-reflect – making sure that you regularly audit your own skills and professional development. It should also enrich your working experience. By keeping tabs on what junior people in the industry are up to, it enables you to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s new and should enhance your professional image.
For the mentees, it helps them to develop those all important networking skills and to gain a different perspective on how the profession works. It should give them confidence to speak to people more senior than them, teach them how to work towards goals, and give them experience of handling constructive criticism. In turn we hope that this will fire up their enthusiasm for the industry and inspire them to apply for jobs, and then develop their communications careers.
Our current mentors are:
Lisa Quinn, Taylor Bennett
Lily Lazarevski, Cut Communications
Nicky Rudd, Padua Communications
Nina Arnott, McDonalds
Sharon Chan, Consolidated PR
Magda Bulska, CHA
Howard Jones, CC Group
Chris McCafferty, Kaper PR
We are currently on the hunt for seven more mentors. Ideally you will have experience in the following sectors, but we are very open to anyone who has an interest in volunteering.
Fashion/beauty
Financial PR
Consumer
Digital
Charity
Professional services (particularly law)
You don’t need to be particularly senior, although you’re very welcome if you are, but ideally should have some experience of managing junior members of staff.
If you would like to volunteer as a mentor, please email
Over the past couple of years I’ve spent a lot of time giving job hunting advice to recent graduates. Given that they’ve graduated in the worst economic climate since the ’30s, they need all the help they can get I reckon.
We recently started investigating which PR agencies have graduate recruitment schemes and what their application criteria is. Here’s what we came up with but I am pretty sure there are plenty more out there. If your agency would like to be included in this list, let me know.
PR Graduate Recruitment Schemes
