Search And Selection In The Age of Austerity

‘So how’s the market?’ is a frequent question I’m asked. This isn’t just a conversation starter, people have a genuine concern about the recruitment market and, as the suppliers of human capital, usually a businesses’ greatest expense, it’s true that we are generally a good thermometer of its health. But when candidates ask this, what they really mean is ‘Will I get a lot of opportunities to look at, or maybe one or two?’


Certainly, the PR industry seems to have staged a recovery from the recession of 2009 and is in good health. Lots of people are looking to hire and there are a good number of candidates interested in a move as I’ve mentioned before. I’ve found that there has been some genuine under-payment, where people have been promoted but not given a pay rise, and some genuine progress stagnation, with candidates simply not promoted at all due to a lack of funds, or indeed clients! Now that the cloud has somewhat lifted, people are looking at what’s out there, who are the consultancies that are fast-recovering and where they can get a leg-up to compensate for the missed opportunities last year. Not just glad to have a job at all anymore, candidate confidence is returning with the market’s.


But it’s not 2008. In the early part of that year, the height of boom before bust, pretty much anyone who could talk and write was being snapped up by consultancies looking to service their overflowing accounts and skilled candidates were commanding multiple offers, big pay-rises and big counter-offers.


In 2010, it’s a different landscape. 2009 was hard, but it wasn’t another dot.com crash moment. PR weathered the storm well and, in response to client demands for more (for less), adapted to new techniques and strategies. The uptake of social media and digital PR was greater at the end of 2009 and start of 2010 than ever before – ‘The Digital Revolution’ as many dubbed it. Digital and new business roles were pretty much the only jobs on the market that year. Digital wasn’t a new thing, by any means. Marketeers were using digital a long time ago. But the advances in social media, integrated into digital media such as websites, really drove the PR interest.


As a result, the industry has both consolidated and fragmented. Consolidated in the sense that more disciplines have been brought under one roof to give clients a 360 degree service. Fragmented in the sense that the jobs in this environment have become even more specialised. Every consultancy has a slightly different take on what services they offer to clients, and this means they are all looking for different things from candidates. It’s simply not the case that any ‘digital specialist’ can receive multiple interviews from all the agencies looking for that type of person. The agencies are both more selective and more discerning than ever before.


The fear of the double dip recession is still there and the pain (in terms of redundancies from 2009) is still felt. Clients need candidates that fit into their differentiated offering and cannot afford to make mistakes when hiring.


Is this the industry growing up? Maybe. But what it means for candidates is that your CV needs to shine, your interview techniques need to be sharp as a razor and you need to play to your strengths carefully. You also need to brush up your digital. If you don’t have this, look for the opportunities that will give you some of this and think about how to sell yourself into them. Show your potential at the interview, and make every interview an important event. Most of this should be standard advice to anyone going for a new job, but in good times, people get lazy with the basics. Now the basics are everything.


Put more effort than ever before into your new job search. If you do, it will pay off. You may not get a huge pay rise, but you’ll get the leg up you need and, if you’ve chosen carefully, more potential for advancement. Counter offers are still there for high valued employees, but only if their agency genuinely can afford it and after a long spell without a pay rise, can seem a bit hollow. But it’s unlikely to be multiple offers, unless you are like the Swiss Army Knife of PR.

How To Construct A CV – And Secure The First Interview Part 2: Structure & Content

Ok, so in my first instalment of this series, I gave you some pointers on the overall impression that your CV should exude. In this post, we’ll look at the structure and content for the CV, the nitty gritty if you will. Here's a handy ten-point plan:

1. Your name: Generally looks best in a slightly larger font (2 to 4 points larger than the rest ) and on its own – don’t write ‘Curriculum Vitae’ or even ‘CV’ – that’s a bit like writing ‘banana’ on a banana. Also generally better to leave out the degree acronyms after your name – let your education history do the talking. If your degree is relevant (such as a PR degree), you can slip a mention of this into the opening statement, or even list your education before employment, but only if it really sells you to the next role – remember the ‘first two paragraph’ rule of selling yourself on the CV (see previous post). You might want to discuss this with your recruiter.



2. Personal Details: Where you live and contact details. That’s all. Recruiters will only leave in the area you reside in anyway. It's about your ability to do a job, not your age or marital status, or whether you own any dogs.



3. First Person: The best idea. Third person can sound pretentious. It’s a CV, not an obituary. However, try to avoid repeating “I…” as in “I did this, I did that”. You can get around this by delivering it in what might be called the "No Person" – “Gained coverage in”, “Managed a team of seven”.



4. Opening Paragraph: Not necessary, as the recruiter should be doing a sell on your behalf, having interviewed you properly. But it can be a nice ‘way in’ to the CV and it can frame the content in a particular way. I think a short opening paragraph goes down well, but it’s up to you. No more than two or three lines of text. Make it a good sell, or don’t bother. If you’ve won a relevant PR award though, this is a very good place to mention it and attract attention immediately.
   
   
5. Employment: Unless your education is a particular highlight and/or very relevant, its best to start straight into employment. Get that experience and those skills across as soon as possible. These sections are the most important on the CV – give them attention:
   
   
   
   1. Write down the name of the employer, your job title and the dates (including the month) that you were there. Write these down for each employment, and write them in the same format every time to maintain consistency throughout the CV. Run employment from most recent first.
   
   
   2. Give a nutshell description of the employer’s business and your role in it - and list the clients you worked on.
   
   
   3. Write down the activities you were involved in, including such items as media relations, writing and selling in articles and releases, strategy development, new business generation and pitching, line management, budget management, white papers, experiential initiatives, social media – all your experience – you get the picture. If you can, relate these back to the clients at the same time (i.e. “helped devise social media strategy for client AnyBrand’s ‘ABC’ product launch”)– therefore showing not just the skills, but also experience in their application (i.e. competency)
   
   
   4. Include highlights and successes – great campaigns, business wins, impressive coverage, building a client’s brand. Mention team work, but try to get as much as possible across about what you, personally, have achieved – this is the biggest sell on your CV.
   
   
   5. Repeat the above for each employer working backwards in time, reducing the amount of content each time (ideally). Most space should be dedicated to your current role, least space to your first role (as a general rule).
   
   
   6. Only list jobs that you’ve had since graduation or leaving school, everything else is irrelevant, unless it was some kind of PR related experience, in which case work it in a very short and sweet way.
   
   
   7. If you had experience in another career before PR, keep these entries minimal. You need to show how you spent the time, but don't talk about irrelevant skills. While your experience in these previous roles will no doubt have been formulative in terms of who you are, they are not PR-specific and this is a PR sell-in. Be hard with yourself. Even if you were a journalist, keep it short and sweet.
   
   
   
6. Education: If you didn’t slip it in earlier, now is the time. List your highest qualification first, with dates you attended the establishment. Give your degree result, whatever it is. List your A-levels and grades, no need to list GCSEs, just write how many and what grades. If you studied a PR or Marketing degree, it's probably worth listing the modules you took. Some people also like to include a one-liner on their dissertation topic. If it's interesting, and you’re prepared to talk about it at interview, and this is your first or second job why not? At that stage, your personality has weighting on your CV as well as your experience, which may be limited. If this is your third job though, or you’ve worked in PR a few years, it's not really worth it. If you have any education awards, good to pop those in too.



7. Training, Skills, Languages: Good time now to list any specific, relevant, formal training you’ve received. Maybe you went (or were sent) to a social media boot camp? Maybe you are an NCTJ qualified journalist? It all goes down here, as the icing on the cake. Then list the IT skills you are fluent with. Talking of fluency, give any languages you are confident in and their level. Don’t both with ‘basic’ level, anyone can speak basic French or German, even Del Boy Trotter.



8. Interests: Your interests are good because they show you have a non-work side and can sometimes even be the starting point for an interview, especially if the interviewer shares your interest. But keep it short and sweet, not too whacky, not too mundane and describe them carefully. So, for example, “Regular club squash player, enjoy learning the guitar and have a keen interest in botany” is fine, whereas “Enjoy socialising with friends” is a bit weak. Who doesn’t enjoy socialising with friends? Equally, “love good books” is a little lame, as nobody loves bad books. So just write this section with care and attention. Maybe you love a particular genre of books – that’s fine. Of course, you might be a super fit pentathlon champion with several wins – in which case go ahead and put that in.



9. References: Always available upon request. If they can be contacted immediately, tell your recruiter, but don’t list on the CV.




10. Structural Note: 2 Pages
    The guidance above should help you to create a well presented and thought-out CV that flows well through your experience. If you find it over-runs two pages, however, it's time to start finding shorter ways of saying what you want to say. You can also play around with the page format. Word usually has high default setting for the page margins, so you can decrease these and fit more text on the page. Do try to get it on two pages though. You might also think about a smaller font size, although nothing below 10 point or it won’t be read without a magnifying glass.
    

Now you should be pretty much there with the CV, but in my third and final instalment, I’ll talk about some of the finer details of content that you might want to put in under your current and most recent employments, so you can fine-tune.