PR Talent in the Social Media Age

I just read another in a series of excellent posts on the Council of Public Relations Firms' blog, Firm Voice. In this post, the Council reported on the results of their meeting with Sabrina Horn, Founder, President and CEO of the Horn Group; and with Gary Stockman, CEO of Porter Novelli.

From their meeting with Horn and Stockman the Council concluded, "The rise of social media and the erosion of boundaries between public relations and other marketing disciplines is rapidly creating the need for a new kind of public relations professional." This new kind of public relations professional will need to be much more global and digital than ever before. 

From the Firm Voice blog post, I culled the following quotes that describe traits needed by the new breed of public relations professional. Students who are planning their academic programs and internship options would be wise to pay attention. Acquiring these traits will position you to fill important niches in the job market, giving you a leg up on many other job candidates.

According to Horn:

Sabrina Horn

“Recruiting will change over the next three to five years. We’re all becoming digital communications people, not just public relations people.

“We’re already looking for people with a more well-rounded communications background—generalists who are capable of doing many things and floating between specialties, with digital skills as a central core area of competency. But the talent we hire just has to understand marketing strategy, because our clients are demanding that level of thinking as to how to build audiences.”

According to Stockman: 

Gary Stockman

“We’re looking for people who can see around the corner, can figure out where technology and human behavior are going.... But critically, we’re also looking for people who can join this digital thinking with other core skills that exist in the agency.”

"We’re looking for combination thinkers, and we’re actually finding that a lot of talented people are looking to public relations because they see it as the future.”

Stay tuned. Next week Firm Voice will publish another post from its meeting with Horn and Stockman that examines how to prepare for a career and look at the quality of typical university communication programs that feed the profession.