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Scarcity of PR professionals?
By Editor on Oct 6, 2006 in issues
If you a junior to middle level PR professional, it’s common these days to hear from a fellow PR professional or a placement consultant offering you a better position in some other agency. Seems like every PR agency in Delhi, Mumbai, and maybe other cities as well, is looking out for people and many have hired placement consultants. Some have asked their employees to get more people and earn commissions out of each successful referrals. From the grapevine, the list of those looking for people includes Genesis, Corporate Voice Weber Shandwick, AdFactors, Hanmers&Partners, Vaishnavi, Rediffusion, and Text100 to start with. Look at social networking sites and all you get to see in the discussion forums nowadays is job offerings in an agency. The vacancies: starting from anywhere between Account Executives to Account Directors levels.
So smart PR professionals are taking advantage of this and are jumping at higher salaries like never before. Agencies are offering higher salaries, better perks, better profiles, just to snatch any good performer from each other. For a PR professional, staying for six months in an agency before jumping to another has become quite a starting trend nowadays.
PR people are scarce today. PR people who can handle technology clients are up for instant grabs. Many of those who have 4-5 years of experience do not want to continue in an agency anymore. As more youngsters pass out of PR institutes, more and more experienced PR people are leaving the profession. The usual explanation - I don’t like PR, or this is not what I want to do for the rest of my life, or I can’t make my career out of buttering some silly journalists. So off they went to join some other professions. Rememeber we are not talking about the senior people people, but those who actually go out in the field and represent the clients they handle to the media and outside world. These junior to middle level people are those who make things happen in any agency- which makes their scarcity all the more critical.
Is it because the industry is not providing enough for the youngsters? Maybe like the BPO sector, we need some association to talk good things about the PR industry, make it a lucrative career option. The PR industry is full of youngsters like the BPO sector, and here as well, we need some exciting offerings besides the money for those who are in the field and for those who are entering the profession.
This made me remember a recent interview in Exchange4media.com where in Idea’s PR Manager said the challenge is to make this career more sexy and we are attempting to do that. I wonder who that we is going to be? PRSI, PRCI, or PRCAI?
Technorati tags: PR, Public Relations, India, India Public Relations, India PR,
On Oct 7, 2006, sj said:
Well, scarcity of talent is the fault of the industry, if they had started out with better pay scales, perks etc and ensured that the field got a respectable name ( talk about bad pr ! ) then they would not be facing a problem today.
Considering the kind of smarts required for this field, the kind of talent that comes in are usually fresh grads, MBAs do not even think of joining this field, experienced talent have switched to the client side or joined another field. All due to lousy work atmosphere, lousy pay, bad hr policies.
I believe that the hikes in pay, better profiles and perks took too long to come and it is going to take a while before the industry starts to stabilize with regard to getting good talent.
On Oct 7, 2006, hobbit said:
Maybe sj, it is because there is no standardised structure in the industry with respect to pay scale. Any agency can pay Rs. 2-3 thousand more and whisk away an executive from another agency. Standardisation also needs to be there in other processes as client billing, PR deliverables promised, etc…I think these are issues that need to be look into at priority by all the PR associations if the Indian PR industry wants to mature and compete with global standards. Talks about the wonders of PR and what we can achieve with its powers can come once all these issues are sorted out.
On Oct 7, 2006, sidi said:
today’s youth just does not want to go through the experience procress. look at the young guys with 3-4 years of exp…they think they have learnt a lot and are ready to lead a team and service the client on their own and they are underpaid. it is just to do with the attitude of the generation…thats why there is a dearth of talent that has done that and been there and can use their experience…
On Oct 7, 2006, hobbit said:
Hi Sidi, you mean like young doctors trying to open their own clinics
On Oct 7, 2006, Anonymous said:
There are a few reasons for the state we are in:
1. Low pay scales (not just inter agency levels but also inter industry levels considering the fact that we are consultants)
2. A sizeble number of bad bosses like “2/2″ Yadav ji of Shandwick and “Chacha” of perfect relations who do not consider associates as humans
3. Myopic industry vision where agencies are under cutting each other recklessly to grow revenues (but not really profitability). Therefore low investment in infrastructure, training of associates, etc
4. Low level of corporate communication jobs available till a couple of years back. Suddenly when jobs have started tumbling in, the demand is being fed by middle level executives. Before this boom, the lack of jobs in corp comms were a deterence to new talents joining the industry.
On Oct 8, 2006, hobbit said:
Maybe we need to look into the work profiles we are offered as well. It should not just be a ‘go call up a journalist, meet him, do whatever but organise an interview. Nobody with a brain wants to do tat for a living. People pass out of Mass Comm degrees from universities and they don’t want to end up being a calling machine and someone who cuts newspaper clips and arrange them whole month long into client reports. Intelligent PR is what we might be looking for. A class 8 school student can do tat.
If journalists think we are irritants calling them up with pitches, it is our fault. Tat needs working. Maybe how we pitch today is all wrong. And here I can generalise that everyone in the industry pitch the same way as everyone else. Some years of experience is enough to meet whole lot of people, work in some half a dozen agencies, and figure tat out.