10 things companies look for in PR hires

If you’ve sat across from a hiring manager to interview for a PR job recently, you probably know all too well how valuable it would be to know exactly what he or she thinking.

What exactly are companies looking for when they hire PR pros? Of course you have to have strong communication skills—and it’s likely you wouldn’t be seeking a job in PR if you didn’t at least have those fundamentals down—but of course there’s more to it.

A recent infographic from The Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations at the University of Alabama offers highlights from interviews of some leaders in the PR industry to find out what they’re looking for in new hires. Here are a few examples of what they had to say. You’ll notice that one word in particular keeps coming up: Intangibles.

“When I hire people today, it’s almost always on the basis of intangible things … It’s always the things that I can learn in the course of a conversation, what they can demonstrate to me about their level of curiosity, their world view.” – Mark Harris, VP of communications for IBM Global Business Services