Skills
One practitioner – Thomas (NPRG) gave an overview of what he felt were the key skills that graduates should have upon entering the industry including the ‘ability to analyse, to collate,
to assimilate, to present facts’. Another practitioner (Roger, non PRG) was of the same view
in relation to having analytical skills - I think that people who can analyse, you know,
problems, yeah.
Listening skills
Another practitioner – Sally (non PRG) felt that students have the ability to present, but it’s the ones who are good listeners that she wants:
Something that graduates are not sufficiently trained in doing is to be able to listen. Listen, listen, listen, listen. If you say to people, “Are you a good communicator?” and they would say, “Oh yes, I am very good, I present a lot”, the ones who say, “I’m a really good listener” are the ones I want. Forensic questioning, and like, asking them to analyse data and mark out, “Yeah, where do we go from here?” The capacity to know what you don’t know. (Sally, non PRG).
The importance of listening in public relations was highlighted in literature as far back as 1951 in Ireland. In previously unpublished lecture notes, MacSweeney (1951) presented a summary of his first lecture and wrote:
Listening will often do as much good as talking. Listen not only to customers and the employees, but particularly people who have a grievance. If anybody is going to air a grievance about policy, product or organisation, it is far better that he should tell the PRO about it than write a letter to the newspapers. (MacSweeney, 1951).
In the literature the importance of listening was emphasised – for example Grunig (2009) who noted that two-way, symmetrical public relations uses research, listening, and dialogue to manage conflict and to cultivate relationships.
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Communications and people skills
Interestingly, one practitioner (Elaine, PRG) was of the view that before hiring a graduate, one must see them first, not to ascertain whether they’re ‘good looking’ or not, but in order to ascertain what they would be like if sent to meet with a client:
I think that PR is one of the only jobs you can never give somebody without meeting them before. You can give a lawyer a job on paper, from their biog, you can give an accountant a job from their biog or their CV. You cannot give a public relations person a job ever without seeing them, and it’s not just what they look like, it’s what they sound like, because what they’re showing you in the first five minutes is what they’re going to show a client in the first five minutes. (Elaine, PRG).
Another practitioner – Kelly (PRG) said that she has seen how it simply doesn’t work when a graduate entering public relations is shy or just not simply good with people:
Personality is huge, you know, because you know, it is a very outgoing profession, like, you do need to be the type of person who has good people skills, and I have seen that working against some people who have come into work with us where, you know, they just didn’t have the people skills,. You can’t be a shy person, you know, you have got to be prepared to put yourself out there, you know?
Look them straight in the eye
The confidence to look at people straight in the eye and not to ‘fiddle’ around at interviews was important for another practitioner (Elaine, PRG):
Look me straight in the eye and not to fiddle around at interviews and all that sort of thing.
Persuasion skills
Persuasion skills were mentioned by a few practitioners including Michael (non PRG): The other thing which I thought was very important, if you are trying to persuade, if the message is to persuade somebody to do something, and it can be a negative or a positive persuasion, in other words, “Do it or don’t do it”.
Social media skills
Whilst Padraig (PRG) stressed the importance of a four pillar skillset: Social, video, analytical and search engine optimisation skills for students in today’s digital world, other
167 practitioners such as Kelly (PRG) insisted that caution needs to be observed in social media and that graduates need to be aware of the danger of expressing personal opinions on social media when representing a client base where they may be a conflict of interest:
Anybody who is dealing with media on an ongoing basis knows needs to understand how tricky it is. It’s not, you know, for the faint-hearted. You need to be careful about how you phrase things, careful about the concepts that you put across because it can be either wilfully or accidentally misinterpreted and the same goes for your interventions on social media and you know, putting a heading at the top of it that says, “Opinions expressed are all my own” is not going to get you out of jail if you have said something foolish, you know?
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