Bringing ideas to the table for reporters and making recommendations to clients is half of our job as PR professionals.
It’s time for the final part of our series on picking up PR skills from jobs outside the industry. In part one we covered lessons learned from broadcast journalism, politics, music and teaching, and for part two we covered sales, Greek life, psychology and theater. Today we take a look at another set of skills that a few more of our BOCAteers found helpful in jumpstarting their PR career.
Art History
Lucas Mayer, one of our senior account executives, spent a year in Paris and studied art history at Wheaton College in Maine before starting in PR. Both experiences helped him make a smooth transition after he moved to San Francisco and started working at BOCA in the Fall of 2012.
“Working at TAJAN, the leading French auction house in Paris for fine arts, antiques and collectibles, I had to speak regularly in English, French and German. There were very high standards for client service as you can imagine, and I learned a lot about providing a stellar client experience, translating across languages and cultural barriers.”-Lucas Mayer
Travel Writing
Like former reporter Becky Quinlan, who we highlighted on the BOCA blog earlier, Ashley Breinlinger, one of our vice presidents, found her experience as a travel writer for MSNBC to be an invaluable asset in her PR career. Traveling to exotic places like Italy, Greece and other Western European countries and interacting with heads of tourism, authors and professional athletes exposed Breinlinger to a wide range of cultural experiences she could apply to tech PR.
“Being a reporter and travel writer taught me the value of doing your research and knowing how to ask smart questions. Bringing ideas to the table for reporters and making recommendations to clients is half of our job as PR professionals. However, to do that effectively we must also know how to ask the right questions to bring new ideas to light and build a compelling story.”
“What makes a founder a visionary? What is their approach to leadership? What aspect of the market is their company or product truly revolutionizing? These are the questions we should be asking and helping our clients to answer.”
“What I love most about PR is what also drew me to reporting — getting to speak with people at the top of their field to learn about their areas of expertise, what they have achieved, and what drives them to succeed.”-Ashley Breinlinger
Sports Management
Account Executive Shauna Roberts, the most recent staff member profiled on the BOCA blog, studied communication and sports management before making her mark in tech PR.
“During my sports management internship at Santa Barbara, I worked closely with MLB players and the people behind the scenes running the organization. I learned a lot about how businesses are run, working with leaders in an industry and client service. In addition, being a teaching assistant taught me how to present information in a compelling way to my students (similar to crafting stories for PR). Balancing work and school really helped me develop the time management skills necessary for PR.” – Shauna Roberts
We hope you enjoyed this blogs series and that it helped inspire you to consider what makes for great PR people in a different way. Do you have a skill from another job that helped you with PR? Tell us more in the comments section.