A Rather Optimistic Thought About Our Future Careers!

Navigating in PRWeek’s website, I got surprised to see an opinion article with the title Use Your Graduates. This article, published on the 11th of November 2009, expresses the view that fresh PR graduates can do really well in the sector and be of great help to experienced practitioners.

According to according to Laura Oliphant, since "they’ve grown up in a digital word", PR graduates can deal easily with social and digital media. Most students, especially from overseas, make great use of social networks such as facebook, hi-5, twitter, myspace to keep in touch with families and friends, exchange ideas - not to mention the fact that they are very familiar with video sharing websites like youtube. During their studies they learn how to read intelligently blogs and articles, practise critical thinking and develop clear opinion on a wide variety of subjects. These competencies combined with the expertise of those having worked for years in PR, would really pitch publics and help organisations to change.

I believe that education offers individuals very broad knowledge in a chosen subject, which is vital when things come into practice. Sometimes, however, work experience is considered to be something more than necessary because some positions do need experienced people rather than know-alls. However, I think that in fields such as Communications and PR, both knowledge and expertise are needed. For instance, how could anyone identify the strengths and weaknesses of an organisation without knowing what is a SWOT analysis? How could anyone practice PR without knowing what is it about? How a PR campaign could success without establishing smart objectives? and from the other hand, one who have never worked for an organisation won’t have trouble to understand how things work in businesses? To my mind, in PR knowledge is associated with practice and practice is associated with knowledge.

I was amazed when this article came to my eyes because it shows that we PR students, even new to the discipline, we could really be useful to the PR industry, provided that we try really hard and benefit from all the things we learn everyday and use them appropriately when we’ll start working.