The document discusses careers in public relations, including different employers such as agencies, corporations, non-profits, government, and small businesses. It also outlines various areas of specialization within public relations like health, sports, political, financial, consumer, and international work. The document advises planning for continuing education and evolving skills, and maps out typical career trajectories from entry-level positions to executive roles. Ethical considerations around competition and loyalty when changing jobs are also addressed.

1. Careers in Public
Relations
Chapter 14

2. Key learning outcomes
• Identify different types of employers for public relations jobs.
• Assess how different areas of specialization in public relations
match your interests and consider the knowledge and skills
that jobs in those areas require.
• Plan for your own continuing education in public relations
including core competencies and evolving skills for a changing
media environment.
• Map a public relations career trajectory from entry-level to
executive.
• Discuss ethical dilemmas related to the professional values of
competition and loyalty.
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3. Possibilities
When you close your eyes and picture yourself working in public relations,
what do you see?
• Do you picture yourself in a chic urban agency or tech startup,
surrounded by hipsters and creative geniuses?
• Are you dressed more formally, working with laser focus on business
strategy in a corporate high-rise?
• Perhaps you’re walking the halls of a children’s hospital with a therapy
dog and a group of reporters?
• Do you see yourself working quietly, uploading data to a government
web page behind the scenes?
• Or are you leading an environmental protest with a bullhorn and a
smartphone, hash-tagging the energy of a movement?
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4. Employers
• Agencies
• Corporations
• Nonprofit organizations and
NGOs
• Government
• Self and small business
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5. Agencies
Agencies provide corporate clients with
specialized services:
• Research
• Campaign planning and
implementation
• Speechwriting
• Crisis management
• Special events, etc.
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6. Corporations
A corporate job on the client side may look
like a posh gig with one “client” to serve.
For example, compared to the
median salary of $36,000 for
account coordinators, the median
salary for a communication specialist
working in-house at a corporation is
$47,500.
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7. Nonprofits and NGOs
While nonprofits often benefit from the service of volunteers, as
strategic organizations they operate with business models that
require full-time paid staff.
Nongovernment organizations (NGOs) are one type of nonprofit.
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Public relations jobs in nonprofits are just as
demanding and require just as much accountability as
corporate job.

8. Government
According to the World Economic Forum, the U.S. Department of
Defense is the largest employer in the world, with 3.2 million people
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The second largest is the People’s
Liberation Army of China (2.3 million).
Other top-ten employers are also
government-related, including the UK
National Health Service (1.7 million)
and Indian Railways (1.4 million).

9. Self and small business
On the opposite end of the spectrum from jobs with enormous
government organizations are small businesses—millions of them
worldwide.
In the United States, about half of the eligible workforce is employed
by a small business.
Small firms accounted for 63 percent of new jobs created
from 1993 to 2013.
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10. Areas of specialization
You’ll find as many different areas of specialization in public
relations as there are different missions of organizations.
• Health
• Sports and entertainment
• Political and public affairs
• Financial and entrepreneurial
• Consumer
• International
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11. Areas of specialization
Health: The goals of healthcare are as universal as the human race.
Sports and entertainment: This is one of the hardest areas to break
into right after college because so many people would love to work
for the athletes and celebrities they already enjoy following.
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 Family planning to end-of-life
hospice care
 Governments
 NGOs
 Hospitals (for-profit and
nonprofit)
 Private physicians
 Pharmaceutical companies
 Educational and research
institutions
 Medical device manufacturers

12. Areas of specialization
Political and public affairs: Political campaigning done well is the
epitome of a public communication process that builds strategy
from research to achieve measurable outcomes.
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Financial and entrepreneurial:
Employers include publicly held
companies like Bank of China, Berkshire
Hathaway and General Electric, Samsung
Electronics and Apple, in addition to
small startup businesses raising capital
for entrepreneurial endeavors.

13. Areas of specialization
Consumer: Consumer public relations is one the most visible
segments of public relations, perhaps because it is so closely tied
with the advertising and marketing of brands we all know well
and products we consume every day.
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The growth of digital, social and
mobile media that reach consumers in
so many ways has further blurred the
lines between public relations,
advertising and marketing.

14. Areas of specialization
International: Healthcare, sports, entertainment, political,
financial, and consumer product organizations and publics are
spread all over the world.
• The relationships between them cross national
borders more than ever before.
• Many organizations distinctly identify themselves as
global or international and specifically seek
employees with a strong desire to work and
communicate across countries and cultures.
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15. Public Relations Careers:
Public Relations Specialist
Job description
• Responsible for expanding participation and optimizing
engagement in online communities including Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube, Google+, and Pinterest “while operating
within the strict regulatory guidelines of IRBs [institutional
review boards], sponsor companies and FDA.”
• The public relations specialist is also responsible for media
relations and special event support to drive enrollment in
clinical studies.
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16. Public Relations Careers:
Investor Relations Coordinator
Sample duties & responsibilities
• Writing for communication with vendors, investors,
attorneys, and third parties
• Discussing investments on phone with investors and their
registered representatives
• Organizing and attending investor conference calls
• Preparing and distributing meeting announcements, time
sensitive documents and ballots to investors
• Processing and disseminating of investor tax documents,
assisting with annual compliance filings and quarterly
reports
• Reviewing all correspondence for content and grammar
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17. Education and
continued learning
You’re probably reading this text for one of three reasons:
• You are taking public relations as a required course
for your major in college
• You are taking a public relations course as an elective
for a related degree plan
• You are interested in public relations work and
educating yourself independently.
These reasons represent three common tracks into the field.
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18. Education and
continued learning
Practicing public relations does not
necessarily require a specific college major.
• Public relations-specific degree programs
offer a series of courses designed to
prepare students for entry into the field.
• If you’re working on a college degree,
however, keep in mind that your broader
education is just as important as your
public relations-specific courses.
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19. Skills for the future PR pro
According to public relations blogger and consultant Arik Hanson, the
PR pro of 2022 should have the following skills. Most of the core
competencies are not new, but the contexts for practicing them have
changed.
• Writing for both internal and external publics
• Producing multimedia
• Managing social media content
• Analyzing and presenting data that make sense to
management and clients
• Collaborating online
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20. Career tracks and roles
Long before the rise of social media, research suggested that
public relations practitioners could be broadly described as
either fulfilling a technician role or a management role.
In the early 1990s, the PRSA Foundation published a career
guide that outlined five levels of professional growth:
• Technician
• Supervisor
• Manager
• Director
• Executive
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21. Case Study
CEO vs. New Hire. Who wins?
After completing a degree in English literature from Cal State
Long Beach, Talia Jane headed north to the San Francisco Bay
area to pursue a career in media.
Jane landed an interview with Yelp/Eat24 and was hired on that
same day.
• Her paycheck was small.
• She placed a letter in Medium.
• What transpired?
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22. Ethics
Competition, loyalty and job changes
Most people entering the workforce don’t expect to stay in any one
job for much longer than three years.
• Job hopping, however, creates ethical challenges.
• Mid-career employees also recognize that switching jobs
is often the key to raising earnings and moving up in
management.
As a legal matter, many employees sign employment contracts
that include non-compete clauses prohibiting them from
working for competitors or sharing competitive information
such as trade secrets.
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23. Summary
• Identify different types of employers for public relations
jobs.
• Assess how different areas of specialization in public
relations match your interests and consider the
knowledge and skills that jobs in those areas require.
• Plan for your own continuing education in public
relations including core competencies and evolving
skills for a changing media environment.
• Map a public relations career trajectory from entry-level
to executive.
• Discuss ethical dilemmas related to the professional
values of competition and loyalty.
Kelleher,PublicRelations,1e
OxfordUniversityPress
23