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Switching careers

The decision to switch careers can be a daunting prospect, especially when you have already established your professional reputation within a sector. Starting afresh often means leaving a “career comfort zone” to carve your own niche/ path within another field.

It’s important to spend some time thinking about why you want to change your career to ensure that it is the right decision for you. Potential employers will want to know why you have chosen public relations, so be ready to answer their questions. Research your new career choice carefully – as a good starting point, you will find much information on PR as a career and about the industry as a whole on this website.

If you know that PR is for you, the next step is to identify skills you have gained in your current employment that can also be applied to public relations. When your core skill set covers the basics of writing, media contacts and the ability to build and maintain client relations, the switch to the PR industry is in fact not such a gigantic leap. Knowledge of specific sectors is more often than not secondary to core skills as the latter is more easily transferable.

Demonstrating the core skills above will stand any candidate in good stead and build the necessary foundations to flourish within this competitive industry. Dependent on the entrance of level, senior candidates should exhibit good people-management skills. Also, presentation skills and having played an established role in new business pitches is beneficial to becoming a senior PR consultant.

Stretching beyond relationships with the specialist press and establishing key associations with national media that include feature and lifestyle editors, provide candidates with a breadth of opportunity to pitch in news stories. If you can demonstrate that you have built up key contacts in your previous career, then highlight this when applying for the public relations role.

This is only part of being an effective PR practitioner, however. Compiling a personal portfolio to convey the generic stories you’ve generated certainly speaks volumes – remember the “proof is in the pudding”! For those looking for more senior roles, any issues based work that you’ve dealt with is highly transferable regardless of sector so this is a key area that should be highlighted in your CV and portfolio.

Certain professions provide a good background for switching to PR – healthcare, for example, has proven to be a highly transferable area, especially if the professional has a scientific academic background. Public Affairs Consultants have quite easily moved into the Public Affairs PR arena, as have IT professionals with a marketing/brand background due to a shortage of professionals in IT PRs at present.

For further information please contact Katja Bresman, Marketing Executive, Blue Skies Recruitment on 0208 255 2302 or email katjab@blueskiescareers.co.uk

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