Nearly eight years ago now I decided I wanted a change of job and wanted to do something I would really enjoy.  I saw a job advert in the local paper for a PR Account Manager for a PR consultancy in Farnham.  I knew nothing about PR and thought I’d start to investigate it.

I found few bits on the internet about it and it sounded great. It seemed that PR involved promoting a company, individual or product to the media.  How this actually happened I couldn’t quite be sure but I was up for the challenge. 

To cut a long story short, I didn’t get the job I applied for but the MD was so impressed that I’d had the balls to even apply for a position I knew nothing about, he gave me a job anyway as a Junior Account Executive (gopher). 

I turned up on day one and absolutely loved it. I can honestly say I really enjoyed getting up and going to work everyday. The job, the people, the challenge, everything about it was great.  The MD there was an inspiration. He was from the ‘old school’ PR generation and liked everything done a certain way, a “house” style he called it. While sometimes a bit stuffy, he really got me interested in PR.  He also ran training courses for all the staff which were fantastic. 

I went on loads of training courses while I was there including press release writing, event management, presentation training, computer skills, you name it, I did it.  I showed an early interest in IT PR and after six months, was promoted and put with a team that dealt mainly with IT clients.

The agency operated differently to others I have worked for since.  Each team consisting of four people had a specific job to do within the team.  One account director overseeing everything, one copywriter, one events organiser (me) and one senior account manager organising everything in between.  Our team worked really well together and we acheived some fantastic results.

So that’s how I got into PR but what does it involve and how does it work?  I feel another blog coming on……..

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