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Working in big vs small agencies
By Editor on Aug 19, 2007 in HR, PR career
Some of my industry colleagues and I had a discussion on whether it is better to work in a big agency or in a small/ medium size agency for say a PR professional with 1-3 years of experience.
Lets say big agencies are those with more than 3 branch offices in India with more than 50 employees. Small/ medium size agencies can be those in a particular city, work through affiliates in other cities, and have around 10-20 employees.
While the popular belief is that a big agency is a better place to work comparatively, there might be some advantages of working in a small agency as well.
A stint at a small agency can provide a good exposure to things that you might miss at a bigger agency. In smaller agencies, you manage added responsibilities and thus learn more faster. A PR Account Executive level professional might be doing what an Account Manager in some big agency is doing. Thus, you learn to manage this and that and so on.
For instance in a small agency, if you are working on a particular account, you might be required to interface with the client yourself, network with the media, make the reports yourself, and handle everything yourself all the activities that come with the account.
Additionally, if you know how to negotiate well, you can demand a bigger pay packet. That said, there are small agencies that are way below the industry standards when it comes to paying their employees.
Now what happens at a big agency? These agencies typically have different departments to take care of different things like the media monitoring department, the media team that go out to distribute the press releases, the client servicing team that interface with the clients, the accounts planning team, etc. You learn to wok under established systems and protocols that are in place. The agency name looks good in your resume. There might be big clients and you learn to work together with their global PR agencies in other countries.
On the other hand regarding the pay scale, there are salary brackets and you cannot expect the agency to favor you out of the rest and give you a better pay unless you are a super performer. That said, big agencies often pay well.
Maybe every young PR professional in the early years should at least experience the work atmospheres at both a big agency and a relatively smaller agency. Grinding oneself and mastering the art in these diverse environments - the combined experience can be a loaded one when you are some years old in the industry.
On Aug 21, 2007, Floor said:
Fresh from university I got a job working for an investor relations firm with 4 employees: in other words a very small firm. Since I worked very closely together with the only senior, I learnt and saw a lot. However, personal development (skillswise) is fairly low, since small firms have no education budgets. Furthermore my senior advisor is the only one I can ask for advice. As such, I think larger firms can be more beneficial to see different styles of advisory. I am now switching to banking for a while to learn the basics of finance. I hope to be back in IR though. By the way, the bank is the largest bank in The Netherlands, so I am leaving the smaller environment
On Aug 21, 2007, hh said:
That’s great, Floor. You are now going to experience both sides of the world.
On Aug 23, 2007, Bella said:
Hey HH,
Well I agree that you learn a lot in small agencies, but you learn the execution part only not planning, strategies etc etc. As you must be aware how small agencies work, it’s like pay us this much and we will give you these many stories, infact they are more like sales agents then PR professional.
On the other hand in big agencies you learn about planning and documentation stuff which you don’t even hear of in small agencies, you don’t even know how to organize a press conference as they don’t have clients big enough to go for press conferences.
But the saddest part is when you put a lot of handwork to get in to a big agency and end up doing same thing in a different way. I mean, you are in a big agency but there again people don’t understand what is PR and are only selling stories.
Cheers!
P.S.- All the best to you Floor.
On Aug 23, 2007, hh said:
hi bella, thanks for the input. i understand that some agencies are focusing solely on media relations and starting a career from there and staying long there might restrict our vision on PR. The profession is lot more than media relations and I guess we should get exposure on all of them .
On Aug 30, 2007, Anonymous said:
Hi!
The topic is close to my heart. I have started my career from a very small agency be it in terms of manpower and infrastructure then afterwards that I move on to medium size agency.
Well, honestly I have to start from small because as a fresher I didn’t had any knowledge of what PR not even how to make a press release, I entered in public relation because I urgently needed a job to earn my bread and butter and rent.
When gradually faced inner frustration to grow and learn more I felt sick to the way I worked and some of the industries I handled primarily lifestyle ( I believe Lifestyle is a opium-ation of PR mass). And like rest of the world I tried to be innovative to fix the screw up life part. I build a personal agenda for my inner hunger. Like – creating news peg better in each day, felling unsatisfied with every story and presentation I made.
Well there is bit funny stuff, I used to sit in the corridor of the media house hours to watch others and senior people, they way they speak to media people in phone and personally and many times I read the press releases that has been kept with the guards.
I don’t believe there can be much difference in the growth of personal where he or she works. If we can see the future ours then all is fine.
Trust my words I am start guessing many the big writers here. Thanks to your old written press releases.
Bhaskar
On May 9, 2008, Roshan Nazareth said:
Every PR person is his own brand manager.He/She would like to work with a bigger PR agency with big names(clients)and improve his/her brand name.
Bigger PR agencies work on streamlined documentation and work is well planned, thus ensuring a proper work life balance for the PR person.
Proper focussed approach in a big agency vs unplanned overexposure in a small agency
choice is yours..