Four IPR Trustees were selected as advisers for PRWeek’s 2014 Career Guide to share the most vital skills for a practitioner’s success. The expert panel included Mike Fernandez, VP of corporate affairs at Cargill, Bill Heyman, president of Heyman Associates, Gary Sheffer, VP of corporate communications and public affairs at General Electric, and Andy Polansky, CEO of Weber Shandwick. The group agreed the skills a PR professional must master are as plentiful as they are broad.
Mike Fernandez values PR practitioners who have a global mindset during a crisis. Professionals must have a global perspective and keep atop issues operationally and culturally.
“You must think about how you collaborate with people across the globe,” Fernandez states. “That requires PR pros who have an interest in the broader world and are open to different points of view and ways of working.”
He adds Cargill must think about how their counterparts in Asia might be able to respond to an issue first, then when they hit the pillow they can hand the challenge over to their European colleagues.
Social media platforms raise the stakes even higher today. PR pros ought to utilize the developing visual tools in social and digital media to generate more compelling content.
Bill Heyman suggests candidates need to demonstrate a comfort level with social and digital media, but more importantly, they must know how to take strategic advantage of it for continued success.
“That is why we are careful about evaluating candidates on their social media skills,” says Heyman. “They also must know what to do with it from a business sense.”
Andy Polansky explains that young talent can separate themselves from the competition by leveraging their social media aptitude with creative output.
“It takes creative firepower to develop big ideas for clients who are navigating this new environment,” points out Polansky. “A person’s creative output doesn’t relate to years of experience or where they sit in the world.”
Gary Sheffer stresses the need more visual storytellers to connect with people. Sheffer defines storytellers as PR practitioners who can craft copy that is engaging, personable, and succinct and then match it with smart visuals.
“It is about simplifying complex information,” says Sheffer. “It is what your colleagues in the C-suite seek from you, whether it be about a big acquisition, a complex reputational image, or a cultural initiative. They want you to take something with multiple story-lines, goals, and voices and synthesize it into something simple, persuasive, and compelling.”
All advisers agreed the skillset a PR professional continues to develop with the realm of social and digital platforms. The daily evolution of PR demands modern communicators who love to learn and are curious about the world around them. The advisers all underscored intellectual curiosity as the most essential characteristic of a successful practitioner. For the full article visit PRWeek.
