About the PR-manager Profession
The specificity of public relations is the formation and maintenance of a favorable image of the company. A PR-Manager is a qualified specialist, whose main goal is to create a positive public reputation of the company. The image of the company is directly dependent from the activity of these professionals (Halder, 2014).
Sphere of Activity
The activities of a PR-manager are aimed at creating a favorable image both of the company as a whole and a separate brand. Such an activity provides an analysis of the interests of society, affecting the image of the company, as well the forecast of the possible impact of the internal and external environment on the company and its development in the future (Halder, 2014).
Labor Duties
A PR-manager carries out the analysis of the external environment, aimed at studying its relation to the company’s activities. He also provides the answers to the requests of the means of mass media and other organizations about the company's activities, organizes press conferences and interviews of the company’s executives with the media representatives. In addition, he establishes contacts with the authorities and the local population, prepares press releases about the company's activities and informational materials for the media. He must also be engaged in the development and carrying out PR-campaigns, aimed at creating a favorable image of the company (Halder, 2014).
Type of Labor
The job of a PR-manager refers to the professions of mental (creative and intellectual) labor. During the work, sensory systems, attention, memory, thinking and activation of the emotional sphere play a major role. PR-managers are characterized by erudition, curiosity and rationality (Halder, 2014).
Personality Traits
In order to work as a PR-manager it is very important to have activity, diplomatic skills, creative thinking, organizational skills, leadership qualities, charisma and an ability to maintain trusting relationships with the management, a PR-manager should act and speak so that people would trust him (Halder, 2014).
Skills and Abilities
A PR-manager should possess:
• Writing skills
• Communication skills. It is necessary to be able to find a common language with people.
• An ability to concentrate on details. It is necessary to re-examine everything and to ask colleagues or a superior to have a look at the work done.
• Skills of working with the mass media - generally speaking, a PR-manager will deal with it the whole professional life.
• Problem-solving skills. It is necessary to be able to find an answer to any question.
• An ability to adapt to the working ethics. This profession will not “eat” all the free time, but it is necessary to be prepared to the possibility of staying at work, making final touches or helping a colleague (Halder, 2014).
Education
Future PR-managers can be graduates of advertising and PR departments, journalism, philology. But, in general, this profession requires a multidisciplinary approach. The activity of PR managers is based on specific disciplines such as sociology, psychology and social psychology (Halder, 2014).
Recruitment
I have stopped my choice on two kinds of recruitment for the position of PR-manager. The first, headhunting, I consider is necessary in this case, because 50% of the company's success depends from the PR-manager. I believe that headhunting has a number of significant advantages:
• Personnel search among the specific market, as it is supposed to search for the candidates among the employees of the competing companies. Using the other methods, it is possible to skip a lot of experts who are already employed.
• Confidentiality of the intentions. During the direct search, senior managers can explore the offer without the risk of losing the current job. Other methods assume an open search for vacant positions, which may lead to the problems with the management.
• The ability to expand the list of candidates. If a person is not ready to accept the proposal to change the place of employment, he can give the contacts of the employee with the similar professional experience (Youssef, 2015).
The second search for the candidates for the position of PR-manager, which I prefer, is the search through the Internet. I think that this method has the following advantages:
• A lot of people, who are interested in employment, every day look through the vacancies
• Monetary expenses are minimal
• Efficiency. Entering the Internet, after a few minutes it is possible to find resumes of interesting candidates. And if I place an advertisement about the vacancy, it will almost immediately become available for those looking for work via the Internet (Youssef, 2015).
Methods of Assessment of the Candidates
For the selection of a suitable PR-manager, I would use two assessment methods: testing and an interview.
Firstly, I would use the tests of professional knowledge, because they assess the volume of the professionally important knowledge which the candidate has. This includes both technological, which is necessary to perform the work, and the knowledge of processes, which ensures the efficiency. Secondly, it is very important to conduct the test of learning abilities. It is aimed at identifying to which extent an applicant can be trained during the working process (Youssef, 2015).
The next method is a situational interview. I believe that this method allows seeing the potential employee in the real world more clearly. A situational interview is concentrated on the candidate's ability to imagine how he will behave in a given situation. The advantage of this method is that all the candidates are asked the same questions, but the answers are evaluated by the comparison with a set of “standard” replies (Youssef, 2015). Thus, it is possible to extract a sufficient amount of the objective information and to compare the candidates with each other.
References
Halder, G. (2014). Public relations officer. Retrieved from https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/public-relations-officer
Youssef, C. (2015). Human resource management. (2nd ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education
