Overcoming Blind Spots

By Tanner Poe

The thought of entering the job market as a student can be intimidating. Questions like “What soft and hard skills will I need?”; “What are employers looking for in an employee?”; “What personality traits stand out when interviewing?”; and many more can pop into your head when applying for internships or jobs. 

While at PRSSA ICON I attended the session Conquering Your Fears- Overcoming Blind Spots as Emerging PR Professionals hosted by Jarno Oostingh, senior director of Social & PR at Nebo — a marketing agency based in Atlanta, Ga. In this session, Oostingh shared what skills employers are looking for in future PR employees. The good news for Kent State PR students; most of the skills Oostingh talked about are taught in the PR courses at Kent. 

Hard Skills 

Writing 
As PR majors, we all know that writing is a big part of the industry. From press releases, social media bios, fact sheets and more, writing is a central part of being a PR professional. While Oostingh hit on this point, he also mentioned how there is much more writing than just press releases and social media captions in your future career.

Oostingh mentioned how important it is to write concise, short emails, Slack or Teams messages, briefs and reports. Oostingh said that when writing these things you have to remember that people don’t have time to read long emails or messages. Using bullet points, highlighting important details and making sure there are no mistakes in your writing are three things that can help you succeed when communicating with your team.

Excel
Another hard skill Oostingh highlighted was understanding Excel and the importance of knowing its formulas and functions. Filters and pivot tables, graphs, and conditional formatting are the main Excel functions Oostingh recommended to be familiar with. These things can help you sort your data, tell a story with that data and quickly understand what is going well and what is not. Fortunately, Kent PR majors learn all of these skills in Digital Analytics.

Social media 
The last hard skill Oostingh mentioned was having an in-depth understanding of social media. 

“You have an understanding of something that is really valuable in the economy,” Oostingh said. 

It is important to remember that your social media is curated for you and it may not relate to the audience you are trying to reach in your organization’s social media efforts, Oostingh said. It is also important to know how to translate current trends to the audience you are speaking to. For instance, if you find a trend that you think will work for your campaign you may have to explain it to your supervisor who is older than you and does not understand social media as well as you do. 

Another key skill to have when it comes to social media is learning how to capture good content. The ability to put out high-quality content can be impressive to leadership, Oostingh said. It is also important to not only create good content but also listen to your audience and understand what they are talking about. Learning how to conduct thorough social listening can help deliver insights quickly and add value to strategists in your organization.

Soft Skills

Organization 
Employers commonly value organizational skills, but what does it actually look like? Oostingh broke down organization into five key points:

1. Project management 
Learn how to prioritize the right thing when working on multiple projects and understand what project will drive the most impact to your organization.
 
2. Communication 
Communicate what you need and what you want to learn from other people. Whether that is extra time on a project or needing to learn a new skill, people will not know what you need until you tell them.

3. Come prepared 
When you show up to meetings make sure you have read the necessary documents, looked at your client’s website or social media pages and are prepared to answer questions based on what you are sharing at the meeting.

4. Know Thyself” 
Do you thrive or crash under pressure? Is your best work done in the morning or late in the evening? Knowing how you work best and how you best stay organized can help you crank out amazing work and lean on your strengths when working on projects.

5. “Be consistently reliable” 
Make sure people know they can count on your work to be great. To do this proofread your work, deliver things on time and don’t be afraid to ask clarifying questions.

Continued learning 
The last soft skill Oostingh mentioned that I wanted to share was the need for continued learning. PR as a field is constantly changing with new media outlets, influencers and platforms. It is important to keep learning by asking questions, using free resources and listening to your mentors.

Oostingh wrapped up his presentation by reminding the room that as students entering the job market through internships or full-time positions, it is important to remember that we are expected to be learning. Companies don’t expect us to be experts at everything, but they do expect a motivated and eager attitude. So make sure you stay curious, ask questions and are consistently reliable.

This was just one of many ICON sessions I attended. By attending these sessions, I feel that I was able to strengthen my personal and professional development as I was surrounded by other passionate PR students. While PR can sometimes feel like a hidden gem, ICON showed me just how many people there are in this industry and what we can learn from them.