This document summarizes an interview with MaryAnn Morrison about her career as a public relations specialist at Home Depot. She enjoys interacting with people in her job but dislikes the extensive travel required, which has become more difficult now that she has a family. Her duties include communicating Home Depot's messages to the public and media. The career generally requires a bachelor's degree in a relevant field like communications or journalism, along with internship experience. Key skills include communication, creativity, initiative, judgment, self-confidence, and teamwork. While this is not entirely her dream job anymore, MaryAnn finds the work engaging and fast-paced.

1. Career Exploration
A look at Communication Careers

2. Area of Communication
Public Relations Specialist
Communication Area: Public Communication
You deal with the public and various aspects
between the company’s leaders and the
media/public eye

3. Position Description
Public relations specialists communicate with the
public for companies, organizations or
governments. The position can also be referred
to as a communications or media specialists. A
public relations specialist spreads their
employer's or client's message to the public,
often using the media to further spread the
message (McCay).

4. Required
Education/Experience
I couldn’t find any specific amount of educational
requirements for working as a public relations
specialist, but I did notice that almost all possible
employers prefer to hire someone who has a
college degree (Bachelor Degrees and higher
preferably) and some experience (McCay). Many
people who do enter this field have majored in an
area of public relations, journalism,
communications, or advertising. Their experience
generally comes from internships that they
completed during college.

5. Required Skills
Those who want to work as public relations specialists
should have the following skills and abilities:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
the ability to communicate clearly
creativity
initiative
good judgement
an outgoing personality
self confidence
teamwork
writing and problem solving
• decision making

6. Interviewee Creds
MaryAnn Morrison
B.A. in Communications w/minor in Journalism
from Catawba College (2004)
Employed as a PR Specialist at Home Depot in
Cornelius, NC since 2005

7. Interview Part 1
For this assignment I decided to interview my cousin, MaryAnn who
works for the corporate side of Home Depot as a PR Specialist. She says
that her favorite thing about the job is the interaction with people. With
this job she gets to meet a ton of people every year and widen her
connections as she is constantly traveling around the country. She enjoys
that overall she mainly gets to make connections for Home Depot for
happy occasions. The biggest downside to her job would have to be the
amount of travel she does have to do. She makes a lot of trips out to Las
Vegas for corporate meetings as well as press meetings. When she was
younger it was cool because hey she got to visit the city of sin on an almost
bimonthly occasion, but now that she’s married with a newborn it’s
bothersome. Her boss lets her do most of her work at home, but she still
needs to travel to get to the media conferences and head meetings.

8. Interview Part 2
How did you become interested in this career?
Ever since she was little she had been a very outgoing type of girl. She liked meeting new people and smoothing over
issues between friends. It was almost second nature for her to handle any sort of conflict that arose. She said all the
practice with getting along with her little sister probably paid off. In all seriousness though she just enjoyed people and
seemed to be good at making sure people were happy so a communications job just seemed obvious to her.
What sort of education/experience did you have to get this job?
She went to a 4 year college and received a bachelors in communications with a minor in journalism. Throughout
college and even high school though she helped volunteered and gotten internships. She helped at baseball fields in
the booth, helped minor companies run the phones, and even helped out a news station for a summer. She took
whatever jobs she could get just to have some added experience.
Is this your dream job?
Almost. She is about one step lower then she wants to be, essentially she wants her bosses job. She wants to do more of
the management work so she can remain in North Carolina more. When she was younger though, yes this was her
dream job and she enjoyed every minute of it. She still loves her job, just her goals and life has changed since she was
younger.

9. Summary/Conclusion
Overall, I really enjoy this career. It’s almost
exactly what I would like to do and now that I’ve
talked to my cousin I know it’s a job that you can
raise a family on. It seems to be high paced and
a job that constantly would keep you moving
which makes me happy as I am not one to be
bored. It also seems engaging and a job that
keeps your mind moving from one problem to
the next. I think I would be very happy with a job
like this one day.

10. References
McCay, Dawn R. "Public Relations Specialist: Career Information." Career
Planning. About, n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2013.
<http://careerplanning.about.com/cs/occupations/p/public_relation.ht
m>.
Morrison, MaryAnn. "Public Relations Career." Personal interview. 6 Oct.
2013.