My career in the PR industry began in 2011 at an agency in San Francisco called SutherlandGold Group, where we represented startups in the tech industry.
When I started my internship I knew very little about the tech industry and didn't really have any professional hands-on PR experience. When I arrived on the first day, I was immediately placed on six different client accounts and was thrown in both feet first. While this was painful and terrifying at the time, I am so grateful for the experience.
Within the first few months, I got a firsthand look at how quickly the tech industry moves and how crazy busy working in PR can be. I learned to fill my calendar with reminders for myself ensuring I would never miss a deadline - because - when you miss deadlines your clients get angry. Very angry.
Every morning when I got to the office I'd look at my never-ending to-do list and place a one, two or three next to each task, ranking them by priority, which to me was the only way to juggle all the assignments for different clients, and again all of the deadlines. I learned that some days will be full of mandatory meetings leaving your to-do list untouched, meaning you were staying late that night to check off those tasks ranked number one.
Working in PR can be a crazy, overwhelming and a daunting experience, but when you learn how to prioritize your tasks and manage your workload effectively, it can be extremely exciting and rewarding. There is no better feeling than finally securing that interview with the New York Times that your client has been asking about for months.
I found working in in-house PR to be slower paced and a bit easier to balance. After all, when you're working for a company, you're only representing one "client," not six. Projects move a lot slower in a corporation because you have to get every piece of content, every social media post, every press release and every briefing book approved by six executives who are typically in back-to-back meetings every day.
My suggestion to anyone interested in working in the PR/marketing industry is to start with an agency. You will learn the most valuable lessons to manage a career in this fast-paced industry while working in that environment. If you burn out (which, you probably will at some point) working in-house can seem like a walk in the park in comparison, that is, if you find a company that really interests you and has strong, level-headed leadership. But, don't get it twisted, if you choose to work in this industry, there will always be days where you don't leave the office until midnight. It's just the nature of the beast, and those deadlines...oh those deadlines.