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PUBLIC RELATIONS Public Relation is a branch of management that involves monitoring and evaluating public attitudes to maintain mutual relations and understanding between an organisation and its public. Public could include shareholders, government, consumers, employees and the media. It is the art to manage people we constantly come in touch with. PROs ensures internal cohesion in the company by maintaining a clear communications network between the management and employees and external cohesion in the company by maintaining a clear communications network between the company and external public. Its core objective is to maintain an improved channels of communication to establish new ways of two-way flow of information and understanding for the company. Public relations as a separate career option has came into existence when lots of private or government companies and institution felt the need to market their product, service and facilities in a better and profesional way. Public image is most important to all organisations and prominent personalities to maintain their success. The role of public relation officer becomes the cruicial in crisis situations when the correct and timely transmission of information is needed to save the face of the organisation. For career opportunities, Public relations is broadly practiced for product publicity, corporate publicity, to have beeter relation with clients, to have better relation with shareholders, to have better relations with the government, to publish corporate publications like newsletter, bulletins, magazines for employees etc. If you are smart and outgoing, enjoy meeting people and have a flair for media relations, you can look for a career in public relations. This feature describes the job requirements, personality traits, growth avenues and lists institutes offering professional courses. ELigibility Educational Bachelors degree in any discipline but a degree in social sciences will be an added advantage. Personal One must have excellent communication skills, both spoken and written so has to express thoughts clearly and simply to do tthe justice with your job. An effective personality with leadership qualities and the ability to get along with a wide range of people. One must have self-confidence. He must be able to understand human psychology to take decisions depending upon the situation. Analytical skills are required to interpret any situation and information to plan activity. One must be polite enoug to handle any kind of situation, as he has to work under pressure or provocation. An organising ability must be integral part of his personality, as one may have to organise press conferences, lectures, exhibitions and events. Personality Traits As is evident from the above, a PR practitioner must have an extrovert, outgoing personality. He must have contacts with the media and be willing to use them. Such contacts are developed through parties, sending gifts both in cash and kind. One must be a go-getter. It is said that excessive PR has eroded the independence of newspapers and TV channels, which often use news items which have no relevance. This has been the negative aspect of the PR job. One must have excellent communication skills, both spoken and written. Press notes and handouts have to be prepared; and information given out that is both understandable and interesting. An organising ability is required too, as one may have to organise press conferences, lectures, exhibitions and events. Some other personality traits that a person must have are resilience and the ability to work under pressure. Sometimes it may be frustrating too if people do not turn up for the event or exhibition that you may have organised. A major source of worry will be if newspapers do not carry your press releases or if a journalist does not cover the events. An aspirant for a PR job must keep all this in mind and be aware of the shortcomings of the job too. However, one quickly learns the rules of the profession and will get to know what will work and what will not. Above all, a PR practitioner must be able to handle the client. Often, clients want good things written about them without actually doing anything. It must be remembered that PR cannot create a good impression on its basis alone: an organisation should actually be doing good 90% of the time and talk about it for only 10% of the time. Sometimes, people will want to be featured on the media with very little work and this creates a problem for the PR professional. The solution to this is to keep the PR department as part of the business activity of the organisation so that there is a holistic approach to the process. Courses
In public relation you can do the following courses:
Some institutes have entrance exams while some prefer admission on merit basis. Institutes
PR courses are offered by polytechnics and colleges all over India. Universities offer courses in mass communications and public relations. The basic requirement is graduation and there is usually an entrance test for university courses and reputed institutes. One need not look for a specific PR course since a degree in journalism and mass communications is also considered sufficient for such jobs. The following are some institutes where one can study. Some offer PR courses while others offer communication and journalism courses which are very helpful for PR:
These courses mainly cover areas like public relations principles and techniques, public relations management and administration, which includes organizational development, writing, emphasizing news releases, proposals, annual reports, scripts, speeches, and other items related to the image of organization, visual communications, which includes desktop publishing and computer graphics, and research, emphasizing social science research and survey design and implementation. Job Prospects & Career Options
Job Prospects Public relation officers can find employment in the corporate sector, public sector, government agencies, tourist agencies, hotels, banks and other financial institutions, private consultancy firms etc. Nowadays they can find work even with individuals like political figures, models and film stars who want their pictures, profiles and interviews published in magazines and need agents who can do the work for them so as to have a image in front of general public. Career Options Public relations officers have to work within and outside the organisation. Within the concern they have to conduct management-employee meets, to inform organisations policies, activities and accomplishments. Outside he has to liaison with government departments, trade unions, press etc whose cooperation is required for the smooth functioning, and also have to manage complaints from the consumers, organise events like fairs, exhibitions etc. The work involves keeping management aware of public attitudes and concerns of the many groups and organizations with which they must deal. In addition, public relations departments employ public relations specialists to write, research, prepare materials, maintain contacts, and respond to inquiries. Another important area of work in this field is to create public identity or an image for public figures like political parties, models and film stars. It include advising them on every aspect of personality, including dress code, behavior, statement given in press, public appearances etc. Lobbying, a new field in this career, involves bringing about the passage of laws favorable to the special interest group they represent like a company, industries, government etc. It is a strategy used to raise public consciousness and influence policy makers in areas like environment, human rights, education etc. This is an interesting area of work in public relation. Job Responsibility
The importance of PR is growing by the day. Both government departments and the private sector have realised that advertising must be supplemented with an effective PR. This helps in two aspects: first in keeping close to the customer to satisfy needs and anticipate changes in customer demand, and second, to create a favourable impression among the people which advertising may sometimes not do. Multinational companies have recently launched customer clubs through which they keep in contact with their customers, take their advice and inform them of new products or services. A happy customer will most likely make repeat purchases, so an effective PR makes a good business sense too. It is a means to win customer loyalty. State governments also undertake PR activities to create a favourable impression in the minds of the people. They have their PR departments which are supposed to communicate the achievements of the government, but much of it is a waste of money and amounts to nothing more than giving gifts to people. Very few governments realise the importance of good PR : one such example is that of the Chandrababu Naidu government in Andhra Pradesh, which has backed its activities with a good communication campaign. From a career point of view, a government job would be secure but real PR challenges exist in private sector. Functions involved in the job
The functions of PR can be described as follows:
One can see from this that all organisations need public relations activities. Apart from companies and the government, political parties also have to ensure that the public shares their viewpoint as they have to seek votes from the people. For practically any business, some amount of PR is essential. Avenues
A PR professional has several options for jobs. The first is to join companies or organisations in their PR departments and hope to rise to the level of Public Relations Officer (PRO) after one has gained experience. The second option would be to join professional PR firms who work as PROs for their client companies. Such agencies work on contractual basis. Many advertising agencies have started sister PR firms. Certain individuals having contacts with press correspondents have started small set ups of their own, using their contacts to get press releases published. Journalists are known to switch to this field after they have built up contacts which they can use for their clients. Among these are some well known people like former Doordarshan newsreaders, who own successful PR agencies or are working in PR departments of organisations. A third alternative would be to set up one's own consultancy, provided that one is pushing enough and has some contacts with media persons. It may be remembered that a PR job is not merely meeting people and keeping relations with them. Often, it could be tedious work as one sends out endless press releases or invitations for press conferences. Each one must be followed up since mediapersons have their own priorities and often may not turn up for the briefing. Moreover, newspapers have their own system of news selection and may well ignore the press release that a PR professional may have prepared painstakingly. Since the effectiveness of PR is judged on the basis of reports that are actually published, it is a tough job indeed as one's performance is based on what others do. When things go wrong, client companies will want that news be blacked out or that their own viewpoint be published as well. This is often difficult because newspapers cannot select news on consideration of others. It is not necessary to have formal qualifications in PR to get a job in this area, provided one has the contacts in the press. For others, a degree will help at the entry stage. People who have diplomas in advertising or journalism can get PR jobs, but some institutes offer diplomas in PR as well. One can start with a salary of Rs 3,000 to Rs 6,000 a month, depending on the kind of organisation that one joins. Thereafter, it is up to one's performance. A senior PR professional may get Rs 10,000 to Rs 25,000. If one is effective and delivers results, the sky would be the limit. The plus points of the job is that one meets high profile people from various fields. There is a certain amount of glamour, especially if events like beauty contests are being organised. PR professionals are much in demand in the film and beauty business too, since models and film stars want their pictures published in magazines and need agents who can do the work for them. The importance of PR is expected to grow in times to come. One reason is that globalisation has made a lot of difference to the business environment. Global companies are very effective in PR activities. As advertising is becoming prohibitively expensive, companies understand that their campaign must have an element of direct contact also since that is the only way to know how the customers perceive the company or particular products. That is why we have so many door to door campaigns, surveys and public events. The future of public relations is thus very bright and will often be done in conjunction with other media. |