10 Unconventional and Creative Ways to Find a PR Job

Finding an employment is a bit like money — it takes employment to find employment.

There’s a theory in PR employment that I’ve observed on both sides of the table as both a job seeker and as a hiring manager: the good PR people already have jobs. To find talent, employers have to poach from existing employers.

With unemployment hovering at just below 8 percent, overcoming this preconceived notion is yet another challenge. But wait, there’s more: the deluge of resumes. Hiring managers are simply overwhelmed with the sheer volume of applicants. If an application gets a look, it’s only cursory with the reviewer specifically looking for an excuse to toss a resume into the recycle bin.

As PR pros, we have a skillset we can put to work on our own behalf to find a PR job: To break through the clutter, we have to run a marketing campaign on ourselves. Recently, I was looking for work, and while I have found gainful employment in a relatively short period of time, I’ve learned quite a bit along the way.

I wish I could say this was a well-conceived plan, but it wasn’t, it was an evolution — trial and error — and so this list is sequential:

1. Contact everyone you know

The first thing I did was contact everyone I knew — by email and social media. This led to numerous phone conversations — perhaps 50 — and I was truly surprised at just how many people were more than willing to help. I was also surprised by those who wouldn’t — and Jason Falls nails the reasons why.

What did I ask for? An introduction to anyone in the Raleigh-Durham area that might be able to describe the employment environment, recommend networking organizations, or make an additional introduction. Complete strangers agreed to take a call from me merely as a result of an introduction, and with each call, I picked up a tip about the area, potential employers and was able to refine my pitch.

2. Edit your LinkedIn profile

LinkedIn is incredibly important for a job seeker. eMarketer reported recruiters are increasingly using LinkedIn to find talent. It’s obvious why — in a few clicks, prospective employers can see your work history, recommendations, network, and work samples — it’s a solid snapshot of a candidate. However, it only works if hiring managers can find you:

Edit the title and location. The title and locations are important parameters for searching LinkedIn. Originally, I had my last professional job (Director of PR) listed as the title, and my location was set Washington, DC where I was living. The chances of a hiring manager in Raleigh searching for by that specific job title are slim, so on the advice of a career consultant, I edited these. For the title, I chose keywords that described what I wanted to do: PR, content marketing and social media. In editing my location, I also explained in the first paragraph of the profile to explain that I lived in DC, but was seeking to move and work in Raleigh.

Link to multimedia. LinkedIn has changed the profile formatting which means video from YouTube, and presentations from SlideShare, are now added under the “Background” section. I culled through YouTube to find video interviews, often conversations I had forgotten about and created new SlideShare presentations to include here as demonstrations of work.

Add publications. LinkedIn offers the chance to add published works to your profile. For this section, I chose a set of links from contributed blog posts I had published, but a job seeker could also include virtually anything published on the web, a press release or media placement you pitched, for example.

Ask for recommendations. There’s a lot of endorsements on LinkedIn, but one of the most powerful features is the recommendations section. Don’t shy from asking people to recommend you — this is a great point of validation of your talent and skills that will aid in a job search. After all, PR is about third-party validation.

Subscribe to LinkedIn. Rather than wait for jobs to be posted, I’d actively research companies I was interested in on LinkedIn and find decision makers. Wherever possible, I’d ask someone in my network to make an introduction, but in the cases where I had no “link” to the targeted company, I’d use the InMail feature to send a note. Subscribing is expensive, but I do plan to deduct the cost on my taxes this year. The response rate was about 20 percent.

3. Edit all your social media profiles

I edited every social media profile to describe myself as an experienced professional seeking work in PR, content marketing or social media in the Raleigh-Durham area. Twitter proved to be the most important among these, and I received a number of inquiries from friends on social networks asking how they could help. People notice when you make a big change — so make that change consistent across all your profiles.

4. Create a landing page that sells YOU

For the last couple years, I’ve diligently kept a running list of links to demonstrate the work I’ve done and I edited this page, including the title, to provide a brief introduction about goals and background (I’ve since re-edited it to remove this). Later, I got smarter about it and added a completely separate page, to use solely for content marketing purposes and ensured that no other page on my blog linked to this particular page.

It’s a “dark site.” This is because I planned some social and PPC ads and linked to this page, so I wanted to be able to clearly distinguish in Google Analytics where the traffic was coming from — and if those ads were effective. If I were still on the job market, I might consider writing still another page — a top 10 reasons to hire me style post — and then run A/B testing in social advertising to see which performed better.

5. Run social ads targeting employers

Social advertising is inexpensive and some sites offer the ability to precisely target the audience. Since I’ve successfully used this form of paid media to earn media, I decided to run a campaign on myself that linked to the landing page mentioned in #4.

I started with LinkedIn, and targeted people with HR, recruiting and C-Suite titles that were based in the Raleigh-Durham area. Initially, I experimented paying-per-click, but later determined paying-per-1,000 impressions provided better click results. In addition, I constantly analyzed and tweaked the ad copy to improve performance. Next, I created Facebook ads, again targeting the same demographics. In all cases, I set limits to my spend keeping it to about $100 per month.

6. Run Google AdWords targeting employers

Though I’ve worked closely with a lot of really talented PPC professionals, I’m not a PPC expert by any means but this was a chance to experiment with the medium, learn something new, and strive to drive targeted traffic to the landing page I had created. Unlike social ads, AdWords do not allow you to target by title, but rather by keyword and geography. The geographic area was obviously the Raleigh-Durham area, and keywords centered on related topics such as “Raleigh public relations” or terms I thought hiring managers might search for such as “human resource management.”

I also ran ads against searches for the names of 14 public relations firms in the area. My thinking was the opportunity was two-fold: a) executives at those firms might search for their own company to view results and see my ad, or b) someone thinking about hiring a PR firm, might search for them, find my ad and consider me as a hire or freelance work.

What amazed me the most was that I discovered very few PR firms run PPC ads on their own companies, so it was cheap traffic and my ad had a really good chance of showing up in related searches given the dearth of competition. In running these ads for a very short period of time, I could see in Google Analytics, that my landing page earned 63 page views from traffic in North Carolina and spent on average 43 seconds reviewing content. That’s 43 seconds with 60 potential employers I might not otherwise have earned.

In combination with social advertising and personal networking, I was working to ensure employers heard from me on multiple channels. I also learned that if I ever opened my own shop in Raleigh, I’d crush larger and more established firms in PPC — and have another service to sell in integrated communications. One other point: It’s not just the ROI of the ad that matters, but the demonstration of an ability to use modern tools that counts!

7. Create Twitter lists for content and contacts

Twitter lists are an effective way to study a target audience. After developing a list of tweeters in Raleigh-Durham, I turned it into a Paper.li, that I could read every day to learn about new programs, initiatives and stay on top of topics in which the people I was trying to reach were interested.

It was through this content curation tactic, I learned that Ketchum had acquired Raleigh-based Capstrat, and since I’ve got considerable experience with acquisitions, went to lengths to write a post reacting to the Raleigh-Durham PR acquisition news. There are several combinations in Google search that will put this post at the top of page one in Google.

8. Subscribe to blogs of target employers

I culled through lists of “Best places to work in Raleigh” to identify prospective employers — the Triangle Business Journal’s “Book of Lists” also proved useful. Next, I found these companies — and their blogs on the web and subscribed to them via RSS using NetVibes. Every day, I’d read and schedule tweets from posts I liked.

This wasn’t just about sucking up to a potential employer — there were a lot of poorly written blog posts (and blogs) I didn’t tweet — but it was also a chance to study the market: which of these companies really understood the web and how it has changed PR. Should I wind up in an in-house gig again, I’d want to have a sense for which firms really “get it” and which do not.

9. Read and respond to HARO queries

Anyone that is in PR that has not heard of Help a Reporter Out needs to get caught up. Yes, it’s owned by my former employer, but HARO is still free, and it’s still incredibly useful. Yes, you’ll probably get a sales call. If you have a solid answer to a reporter or blogger inquiry, why wouldn’t you pitch it? The biggest challenge I had was reporters weren’t sure how to cite my role. I settled on “freelance PR consultant” since I was in fact, doing freelance work.

10. Ramp up your content marketing

Initially, I started posting here three times per week, writing in-depth posts and spending hours on them. It was incredibly liberating and this blog has grown tremendously as a result — more than double the total traffic, the bounce rate plummeted, page views grew 2.5x, and time on page increased dramatically.

However, I also wanted to be sure to do guests posts — an earned media effort to compliment my paid media efforts — and so reduced the volume to just two posts per week. In the process, I discovered I’d actually earn more visitors with just two posts rather than three, was more than enough to maintain audience interest.

I’ve deduced that three posts per week was overwhelming for my readers and they would just stop visiting. It’s likely when I return to working full-time, I’ll drop the frequency down to just one post per week, but I’ll do so knowing I can ramp it back up anytime.

11. Additional Tips

There are a few other more general tips I’d offer to job seekers that were reinforced during this search:

Keep regular hours. It’s imperative to keep a set schedule. Despite my military background, I’m not a morning person. In fact, I’m pretty grumpy since it takes about an hour and a good strong cup of Starbucks to warm me up. However, I kept a set schedule, working at least 8 hours per day on this marketing program to find a job. There is always something more I could do.

Don’t spend too much time on the job sites. Yes, it’s important to be on the job sites — here’s 20 places to look for a PR job — but don’t spend too much time on them. Often jobs are never posted, and I discovered, there’s a whole lot more opportunities in DC than in Raleigh. I’d go two or three days before running through my list of bookmarked jobs sites, searching for open positions and applying. And I’d be done in about two hours. Searching through job sites can be depressing, when there aren’t that many posted or you can see that 100 other people applied. Instead, I consciously focused my efforts on helping an employer find me.

Blog. If there’s one thing a PR pro can do to help their career, it is to blog. If you are still in college, start now. If you’re an industry professional, get going. Blogging will help you to grow in so many ways — refine your thinking, sharpen your writing skills, force you to learn basic web marketing, HTML code and technical details. It also gives you an appreciation for what works in content and what doesn’t. I’m amazed at the lousy pitches this blog gets — and from people that really ought to know better. Blogging will grow your portfolio, build relationships with other bloggers and demonstrate dedication, work ethic and competency to potential employers for your chosen profession.

Volunteer. One company, in particular, a small business, needed some help. They didn’t ask, I volunteered. We chatted about ideas one day and I offered to put them in writing. In fact, that 30-minute conversation turned into a nine-page content marketing plan that they can execute on. The process kept my skills sharp.

Read. Read. Read. One of the best things a job-seeker can do is learn something new. I’ve long been a voracious reader, but much of my reading has migrated online and the stack of books on the night table has grown. I’ve plowed through a dozen books in the three months I’ve been looking for a job including Rethinking Reputation and Quitter: Closing the Gap between your Day Job and your Dream Job. I couldn’t put the latter book down; it’s a must read.

Experiment with other social sites. With so many social sites, we often have limited time with which to experiment. Social networks have so many nuances, we might miss them until we really dive into testing. With the demise of Posterous, I spent a considerable amount of time on Google+, Tumblr and Pinterest as part of a content marketing program to help myself find gainful employment.

Know what you are worth. Understanding what the market is willing to pay for your skills and experience is incredibly valuable once you get your foot in the door for an interview. Benchmark salary data for corporate communicators and PR agencies types can be found on these links.

Have fun. Quite simply, I had fun running this little marketing program. I learned a lot on my own, made productive use of my time and well, achieved my goal. Oh, and I did enjoy myself in other ways. For example, I completed the accelerated free fall program to earn a skydiving license.

Relationships Still Matter

I’ve landed a new gig. I’ve resettled in Durham, NC and am excited to turn a new chapter in my life. Though I’ve learned a lot during this search, there’s one point that was really driven home: relationships, above all else, still matter.

I landed where I am because of a personal introduction to a person who I was connected to like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. However, the hiring manager, a CMO, explained that sure the relationship was important for the introduction, but the total package – like all the above – is what closed the deal.

It’s worth bearing in mind that each and every day, we are writing our resumes.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like:
Why Content Marketing and Public Relations Need Each Other