Ten Tips To Make Your Career Swing Up in 2014

When Sarah Stimson approached me for some quotes for her great new book (above), it got me thinking about what I would do differently in my career if I knew what I know now.   As an experienced recruiter, as well as PR practitioner, Sarah wanted to get the thoughts of a wide range of people who've made all the career mistakes, so you don't have to.

I've just finished a year working with some very talented young PR professionals on a fast-track course which included thinking a lot about personal career development.

Here are my own top ten tips to follow if you want to go places in your PR career in 2014.


1.  First of all, subscribe to the following rule.  I would prefer it if you had it tattooed on your wrist, but as some employers don't like tattoos, perhaps not.   Life is not fair, there is no justice in this world.  There is nothing you can do about it.  Don't spend a second being preoccupied by it.  Get on with your life.  People who are less able than you get promoted before you. The lazy get rewarded. The guilty don't get caught.  You don't get the recognition you deserve. People take credit for the things you do.  Focus on the things you can change and you can do something about.  They are almost all things about you.   It was the most important lesson I learned from the management guru Sue Aherne when I became a manager.  Set yourself free from a life of worrying about fairness.  I can give you the answer now.  It's not fair.

2.  Take charge of your career.  Don't wait for jobs to fall into your lap.   Don't wait for your dream job to come along.  Make plans.   Not all will come about, so have a range of plans.

3.  Don't look for emotional fulfilment through your work.  Work is for earning money to live.  It's great to enjoy your job, to feel you are doing something worthwhile, and to have great colleagues.  But your emotional fulfilment should come from elsewhere.   You often see people expressing hurt at the way they have been treated at work, passed over, made redundant, "after all I've done for that company".  Your job is just business, it's not personal.  Your company is not your family. Do a great job.  And have a great life.  Outside of work.

4.  Whatever your current job is, do your best in it.   Work hard.   Don't be a clockwatcher.   Be the person that stays late because an important job needs to be done.  But not every night.  Otherwise you will be taken for granted.  People who can't stay late because they have to pick up children often add value by working on something at home that's urgent or coming up with a new way of tackling a task because they used the journey to focus on it.  Make sure your manager knows about it.

5.  Be loyal to your manager.  Look out for how you can support their goals.  There is nothing more appealing for a manager than feeling they have the support of the team.  And by the way, never bitch about your manager to colleagues.  It doesn't reflect well on you, and a lot of it gets back to the manager.   If you really don't like your manager, get another job.  Most managers love seeing younger people get on in their career.  They love to recommend you for a higher position. You may not even know they have done it.

6.  Be strategic.  Be strategic.  Be strategic.  The default position of PR people is to be tactical.  As you rise up the ladder, companies are looking for strategic players.  Practice being strategic in everything you do.  Know your company's strategy and your department's strategy.  If you don't have it, ask your manager.

7.  Be as physically fit as you can.    Lose weight.   Get enough sleep.  A lot of PR jobs are really demanding, and the fitter you are, the better able you'll be to perform in them.  I wish I had paid attention to this years ago.  

8.  Don't stay in a job for too long.  After two years, you should be thinking about where to go next, particularly at the start of your career.  If you are great in a job a company will want to keep you there.  The problem is that you will get pigeon-holed for the thing you do best and you'll also be taken for granted.   Take jobs that are different from the one you are doing.  Get a wide range of experience.  Don't keep taking jobs that are more of the same, they add nothing to your CV.

9.  Network.  Network.  Network.   You should be using every phone call to network.  But you need to find ways of networking beyond your current job.  Join a professional body.  Go to events.  If you are invited to something, accept the invitation and be grateful you're on someone's list.  Go to the event.  Meet people.  Become known.  It is more likely your next job will come through networking than a job ad.  And if you are not socially confident, ask a colleague who is to teach you the simple tricks of working a room.  I run a course on networking and I know how many people lack confidence in working a room.  I used to be the same and a former boss helped me.

10.  Finally, be on social media.  But you have to understand that employers may look at your activity on Twitter or Facebook if it is open to them.  Prospective employers definitely will.   And people who want to spike your chances will draw attention to your social media to your employer.   And employers will judge you.  (See rule 1).  I don't think what you do in your private life (provided it is lawful) is any of your employer's business.  If they want to make it their business, find another job. They are buying your time during work hours.  They are not buying you or your life, unless you are taking Holy Orders.    However, the clue is in the word "private".  It ceases to be private if you publish it.  A friend in a big American company told me recently they fire people for discreditable behaviour on social media even where the company was not identified and it caused no public issue.  Many companies are very risk averse.  (Again see rule 1).  

So are you approach 2014, make it the year that sees your career go in the right direction.  Don't tread water.  And if you are just starting out, think about getting some agency experience, even if you want ultimately to be in-house.   You will learn a lot in a short space of time.



(Posted from San Francisco)

"Citizen Journalist" lessons from the Glasgow Helicopter Crash

Air crashes are statistically rare.   They are even rarer in cities.   When a Scottish Police helicopter fell from the sky on Friday evening, the Clutha Bar, a popular music venue, was packed with 100 people enjoying a local band.  The aircraft plunged through the roof of the bar creating a scene of devastation.  Eight people were killed and 14 remain in hospital with serious injuries.

The authorities responded by enacting a major incident plan which they had rehearsed many times.  But this was different.  This time, Scottish Police would respond to an incident involving the potential deaths of their own officers, and caused by their own aircraft.   They responded with public statements which were calm and measured, and I am pleased to say, unemotional.

There was a slip when Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond issues a statement warning that Scotland must prepare for fatalities, which broke the absolute rule that crisis statements must never, ever, be speculative.  You either have something to announce, or you don't.   Less is more, and it was enough to say that the situation was very grave.

There are two reasons for this.  Firstly, there were many families with loved ones missing.  They had the agony of waiting for news.  It was unnecessary to increase the pressure on them for no real purpose.  Secondly, it is extremely important that you become the authoritative voice in a crisis. You want people to look to you for information, not to the social media speculators.  You are the voice that deals with accurate facts.  To my knowledge this mistake was not repeated.

As each crisis unfolds across the world we are seeing the same trend.  The reporting of news is being transferred to social media.  We saw this in the crash of a Boeing777 aircraft at San Francisco airport (SFO) in July.  It is clear that news is now not broken on the conventional news channels.   Within 60 seconds of the crash at SFO, a passenger on another aircraft being boarded had broken the news, with pictures.  This was quickly followed by video footage taken by passengers on the crashed aircraft as they stood on the runway having escaped death.   TV news channels took a long time to catch up, and struggled to add any value to what the public already knew through social media.

In Glasgow on Friday night, the streets were crowded, and people got out their camera phones in a now familiar routine, taking pictures and posting them on Twitter and Facebook.  These were dramatic and quickly retweeted and picked up by the conventional media who used them until they could get cameras and reporters to the scene.

However, two things arose. Stuart Hughes (@stuartdhughes) summed it up in his tweet: "Awful incident takes place on a Friday night surrounded by digitally savvy people with smartphones.  Trad news sources now irrelevant".  Sitting in a hotel room in Singapore, I was watching the news unfold on social media and on the international news channels.  I was alerted to the story on social media.  I turned on the TV hoping for something extra.  I didn't get it.

But a second and important issue arose.  We often call people in this situation "citizen journalists".  They are, of course, not journalists.  They are individuals doing an activity which can form part of journalism, but that doesn't make them journalists.   You may bring your partner a cup of tea and wipe his brow when he has a fever.  These are activities which form part of the act of nursing.  They do not make you a trained nurse.

As people lay trapped and dying in the Clutha Bar, people took pictures on their smart phones and posted them.  There followed an officious discussion online about the importance of asserting the copyright of these pictures and in some cases of getting payment for them when reused.  There was encouragement to make sure that news organisations were paying up for them.

It's time for attitudes and, I believe, copyright law, to change if we are to continue down this road.  If it is to be the case that social media is to be the major source for news, it cannot be right that opportunists are allowed to use the fact that they happened to be passing by a tragedy to profit from it.  They do not make their living from news photography.  They have incurred no expenses in taking the picture.  They were by luck (or otherwise) passing by.   In essence, at the moment, they are allowed to (and by far not everyone does) profit from the deaths and injuries of others.   The practice of asserting copyright on pictures like this stifles the act of making the public aware of important and tragic events that concern overtone.   The law should be changed to enable those, including news organisations, who reuse these pictures to inform others to have a "public interest" defence in using them for free.

Should you disagree with this, let me give you another example of passers-by at this incident.  Many, including a brilliant local MP Jim Murphy (@jimmurphymp) risked their lives to go into the wrecked building to help survivors until the rescue services arrived.  None, to my knowledge, have so far sent in a bill for their services or made any statement asserting their rights to their personal story.  I am a (long lapsed) Registered General Nurse.   Registered nurses have a professional duty to render assistance in these situations, when they happen to be passing.  They may not, and do not, simply pass by.  I have never heard of a nurse in these circumstances asking for a fee, sending in a bill, or even claiming for damaged clothing.  They do it for humanity.

We must be motivated by humanity on social media.

If social media is to be a democratising source of news, this nonsense about copyright of pictures in a human disaster must stop.  It is a disgrace that anyone would seek to assert their own rights from a moment in which others have lost their lives.   The law should be changed.


(Posted from Singapore)