Sunday, June 17, 2012

Technology and the Budding PR Practitioner

I remember sometime back when one of my students was refused a job at a PR agency because she did not possess a Blackberry phone. The reason given was, how could she then maintain contacts much needed in the PR profession? 

I  also noticed the increase of endorsement requests on LinkedIn from current and previous batch students to elaborate on their educational and communication skills. 

Thus Blackberry and LinkedIn have become important tools to show that you have arrived as a professional.
Facebook so far seems untouched by prospective employers as otherwise the young budding practitioners would be more alert before posting random status messages and pictures. Or worse be found playing games.

Twitter is still used as a medium to speak out on issues, if you go by the "trending" issues. Again, doesn't seem to be under the scrutiny list.


YouTube could be used for uploading fun videos by students. Are they checked?

These products of technology have quietly entered our lives and somehow have becomes an extension of ourselves which could be under scrutiny by future employers. How many of these tools or more such tools are being used by employers in India to study prospective employees? Do students need to be trained to use this sites more carefully in the future? What are your thoughts?

5 comments:

  1. i would say that although twitter and facebook is a great source of understanding a potential employee, most of the indian employees still fail to understand what to upload, tweet or share. I fondly remember a student of mine getting rejected as his twitter were all about his depressed state of mine while another was thrown out as he was talking about how his boss was a useless piece of garbage during hks office hours. Sadly facebook is beginning to be just another junk mail and it is a shame that a sns which can be used for a lot of potential is still being used as an 'entertainment' page. Until this ideology changes within us, india will still be in digital infancy

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  2. Ok Sagar which also means that employers are looking at these social networking profiles very closely! These young minds will then have to be trained to use these social networking sites with care.

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  3. Don't you think, so called employers are making PR practice more and more complex? No doubt tools and technology very important, but this should not be criteria to select budding PR professionals, they can fit in any frame according to situation and requirement.

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  4. I believe that with the emergence of social media, PR students should be given the knowledge about how to handle these tools both for themselves and for the sake of the profession. On a normal online job hunt, there are hundreds of openings for social media under PR. Also recently, I had a couple of job consultants asking me for my FB ID. So there stands a major opportunity for PR people to showcase themselves on SM and also use these tools as a part of their PR campaigns.

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  5. Melissa did you give your FB ID? I seriously wonder even if students are educated on use of social media for a job profile, if they will make any serious changes. Just curious! :-) On a more serious note budding practitioners will have to be careful on what they post or keep two separate FB or Twitter ids.

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