Mack the Flack

By Diane Stewart, Office Manager at Peak Communicators

In my role as office manager, I review requests for internship
opportunities and employment. People want to work at Peak because they
are outgoing, influential, great communicators, have an eye for detail,
have had experience in media relations – all the things we’re looking
for. Surprisingly the majority of applications we receive are sent by
email with short cover notes. Very few candidates contact us directly.

As PR professionals, we pitch ideas and stories to media. We also
promote and sell our services to clients. We are the best at it because
we talk to people and persuade them to cover our story or give us their
business. We never just send an email.

If you seek a career with a top public relations firm, pitch yourself.
Demonstrate the skills you’ve put on your resume. Sell us.

Strong research skills: prove it

Spend time on the company website; know who you’re applying to, the key
players.

Attention to detail: prove it

Proofread your resume for spelling, grammatical or formatting error.
Don’t have your resume stand out for all the wrong reasons.

Strong communication skills: prove it

Putting together an impressive resume and cover letter is a good start.
List only the experience that is relevant to working with us, or reword
your past experience so that it’s clear it will transfer to the new
role. Write an impressive cover letter. Call to arrange an informational
interview or better yet a meeting with someone in the firm who makes the
hiring decisions.

The interview, well that’s a topic for another day.

Social media has been both good and bad news for PR. On one hand social media provides PR with an inexpensive killer way to communicate directly to people the world over. Conversely social media has forced old school PR types to adapt or die.

Mack, an ever-adapting PR guy, offers 5 reasons why PR still rocks in the social media age:

1. It’s the message stupid. Social media provides PR with a great means of communicating key messages.

2. Crisis still happen. Crisis management skills, a PR mainstay, are vital in the fast happening online world.

3. Social media isn’t just marketing. It’s about crafting a relationship with others, a focus of PR.

4. It’s cheaper. Many businesses, non-profits and groups can’t afford marketing and advertising campaigns. A social media PR campaign affords a bigger bang for the buck.

5. PR does media relations. As traditional news media shrinks and migrates online it remains a key source of information and a major influencer of public opinion.

Learn how PR rocks. The SFU PR Certificate Program.

Ms. Felding, Mack’s grade 10 English teacher, carefully read every one of his assignments. He knows because she used a red pen to correct every mistake. Turns out she didn’t do him any favour.

She was paid to read his stuff, but outside school most people don’t have the time or interest to read what you write. In the real world you have to fight to be read.

With that brutal reality in mind, here’re three tips on how to write to be read:

· Don’t start at the beginning. Teachers gave you an “A” for a beginning, middle and end. Start instead with the most important information. Write what you have to get the answer or action you want.

· Don’t pad, cut. Get right to the point. Cut to the bare essentials.

· Cut jargon, fancy and unnecessary words. Corporate-speak, pretentious phrases and big words should get red penned.

Learn how to write like a PR pro. The SFU PR Certificate Program.