Digitized Thoughts

I was unemployed from around Valentine’s Day until April 5th. I was fortunate enough to participate in #HAPPO in February. While I didn’t get a job offer as a direct result of #HAPPO, what I DID learn is how to connect with a larger community than the one I was involved with, and where to look for job opportunities I may not have looked previously. Here’s a few words of advice, which are worth what you make of them.

• Landing a gig at an agency is not the be all/end all. PR agencies are fantastic. I know many people in the agency world, and have many friends that work there as well. It is a great career path. But don’t forget that those Fortune 500 companies, or large non-profits, or any other number of entities, usually have PR/Marketing departments. There’s just as much a chance to start your career in a place like that…with far less pressure than will be placed on you in the agency world. Again, and I can’t stress this enough, THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE AGENCY WORLD OR MODEL!!! I’m just saying there are more opportunities out there than those at agencies. Explore them.
• Have a particular area of interest. I’m not talking about a particular area of practice. Do you like the health care industry? Sports? Agriculture? Or do you have a particular area of the country you absolutely adore? Focus your search in those areas. It narrows down the fire hydrant of job listings you’re looking at and makes it easier to select the jobs you want to go after. I’ve settled in Missouri. Never would have pictured myself here, but it’s home now. The advice there? Take a risk on an area you’ve never been to that you think you might enjoy.
• Large metro areas are fantastic…but so are smaller areas. Maybe it’s because I’m from the Midwest and tire of being called “fly-over country”, but there’s great areas like Kansas City, Columbia, Iowa City, Des Moines, Austin, MSP, and others that aren’t named New York, LA, Miami, etc. Here’s my point. If you have your heart set on being in New York, then by all means, go after a gig in New York. I’d encourage you to explore areas less traveled. These places are just as exciting as other major metropolitan areas. Give them a shot.
• Don’t be disappointed. Don’t expect to get a job offer during #HAPPO. DO expect to make lots of great connections. As I’m sure you’ve heard many times, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Treat #HAPPO as the who you know.

I hope you’ve found some of this helpful, or organized your thoughts somewhat. Best of luck to all of you in your search.

I participated for the first time this week in #pr20chat, and boy did I pick a great week to start. The topic this week was ethics. Heather Whaling, who co-mods with Justin Goldsborough, ran the show this week, and asked some really tough questions. You can click on her name above, which will take you to her blog where she’s listed the questions she asked on Tuesday night. I could do a blog post on every single one of those questions, and each one would be a monster, Bill Simmons-and-his-buddies-in-Vegas length post. Thousands of words. So, instead, I’ll focus on something I said. Hey! Don’t look at me like that! This is MY blog after all!

Photo courtesy of Primer Magazine

During the chat, I said we as public relations professionals need to hold ourselves to a higher standard of ethics, transparency and honesty than the journalists we deal with on a daily basis.  Let me expand on that.

Forgetting for a moment that the public, in general, distrusts everything about the media, it is much more likely to take a reporter’s word for something rather than a PR or marketing person. The perception of our industry is one of placing our interests ahead of those of our audiences. Because of that, we are not afforded the same luxury of being taken at our word.

We MUST be as upfront, honest and transparent as we possibly can. Generally speaking, a journalist is trusted when they write something, or report something on the air. Generally speaking, we are not. Truth be told, your reputation is the only currency that matters as a pr professional. If you are caught in a lie, covering up embarrassing details, or anything else that may harm your credibility, you’ll never gain the same level of trust with journalists, and by extension, the public, you enjoyed before.

When you were a child, what were your parents most upset about when you busted a window throwing a baseball against the side of the house when they’d told you NOT to do so many times? The fact that you broke the window? Or that you lied about doing it? If your parents are anything like mine, it’s the latter option. That’s the way the public is too. They won’t be happy that you broke the window, but they’ll respect you for being honest about it, and be more willing to trust you in the future.

All lying does is postpone the inevitable. If the embarrassing info about your client, or employer, is interesting to enough people, it will come out at some point. You might be able to control WHEN that info comes out, but make no mistake, you have no control whether or not it WILL come out. Be honest about it. You’ll be surprised how people react towards you in the future.