How To Find A PR or Ad Agency Job You Love

Three and a half years ago, I embarked on a pathway that would lead me into a career in public relations and advertising. In some ways, it remains one of the best career decisions I could have made. In some ways, I look back and there are so many things I would do differently.

Once upon a time, I worked at one of the more reputable, larger public relations and digital marketing agencies in North America. This matters for no reason other than that occasionally, a student from my alma mater would ask me to coffee to talk about their career aspirations. Most likely, it was with the somewhat understood intent that someday, they wanted to work for a corporate agency like me.

Photo by Helloquence on Unsplash

Here is your five-step process for someone who wants to get a job in public relations or advertising:

Step 1: Write out the three most important short-term career objectives you have

Most people begin their job search by researching the work that a certain company does. This is a good step, right? In reality, evaluating a company and its fit for you from their web sites, press releases, etc…that’s the equivalent of trying to sprint before you can crawl.

Note: I say short-term because the reality is that if a PR agency is your first job, that job has to work for you. Not the other way around. For a good percentage of people going to work in agencies, it is a stepping stone to a more lucrative, less hectic client-side role.

Step 2: Understand the differences between a “big” agency versus a “small” agency

There some very distinct differences between a big, corporate agency and a small, boutique one, but before you even begin to explore them…you need to actually understand yourself and what you need.

I’ve listed out a cheat sheet below:

Benefits of working at a boutique agency:

• Accelerated “learning”
• Flatter organization structure
• Learning a super-diverse skillset (AKA, you get to try a bit of everything)
• Learning a super-unique niche (most small agencies tend to focus on one vertical, such as fashion, tech, food, etc.)

Benefits of working at a corporate agency:

• More networking opportunities
• More resources to learn
• More structure
• Bragging rights (awards, working with bigger clients, etc)
• Almost definitely much better pay

You need to look at those two lists and decide, truly, what’s important to you. Is it making money? Is it actually learning? Is it working with famous influencers and celebrities?

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen an aspiring PR practitioner come up to me and say they want to be an Account Coordinator at a boutique PR agency that pays them $40,000/year while at the same time, moan about their student loans and rent payments.

Be realistic with yourself and understand what you need.

Step 3: Make a Google list from, “PR advertising agency in (whatever city you live in)” and put it into LinkedIn

Alright, let’s say you understand your life purpose and goals. Yes! Now, we’re going to head over to our good friend Google…

A good start for identifying the top agencies in the city

For those who live in Toronto, by no means is the above list some kind of bible. It isn’t, but it is a decent start. Now, what you’re doing to do is comb through a few pages of that search and make a list. I recommend making a list of maybe 30–40 to start, depending on how hardcore your career-finding pursuit is.

Now, the next question becomes — which of those agencies are “big” or “small”?

Well, I’m glad you asked. Let’s head over to our good friend, LinkedIn…

We see that 31 employees work at this agency…

What you now want to do is look up the size of each agency. In this example, this agency has 31 people working at it.

I recommend repeating this for all of the companies you found on Google. Then, you’ll want to look at your findings. Personally, I found that large agencies normally had more than 50 people working at them, and boutique ones had about 10–20.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Step 4: Take out a junior-level employee from your favourite companies for coffee

One of the weirdest things I’ve seen students do is try to have coffee with senior-level managers at the company they want to work for.

For various reasons, I think this is a waste of your time for various reasons. Mostly, people think that six months later, this manager will have an epiphany about their need to hire an intern or coordinator and reach out to you. This isn’t a bad thought process, but junior-level employees are way better because:

1. They actually empathize with you, since they were in your shoes a much shorter time period ago
2. Therefore, they will be way more “straight” with you
3. They actually carry out the day-to-day tasks that you will if you are hired

I’m going to point out that the following (for various reasons) are 100%, terrible reasons to want to work at a certain PR or advertising agency:

• Your favourite brand is one of their clients
• You want to “punch above your weight class”
• They win a lot of awards

Why? Because quite frankly, while a lot of these things are things that look good from the agency’s perspective, it has absolutely nothing to do with you and your career.

Step 5: Ask if you can shadow them…and write down what you hated

If you want to see if a career path is right for you, shadow someone. What you do is send that person an email/InMail that says…

“Hi So-And-So,

I really enjoyed having coffee with you the other day and learning about X, Y and Z. I thought your advice about ZZ was super insightful and I was chatting with Professor Whoever on it yesterday.

I’m super intrigued by what you do at Agency ABC and was wondering if you’d be okay with me shadowing you for a few hours on a day that you aren’t crazy busy. Let me know of a few dates that work for you!

Sincerely,

Eager Prospective Agency Kid”

Once they say yes, what you need to do is bring a simple checklist or notebook to the shadowing session. You can take a bunch of notes on what they are doing if you want, but the most important things to do are:

1. Write down three things you love about the role/what you saw
2. Write down three things you HATE about the role/what you saw

№2 is arguably more important. You see, the only reason anybody is ever unhappy at a job is that they did not know what they were getting into. If you, during a shadowing session, can find out three things that you hate about a job and still want to do it….congratulations! You would likely be very happy working in that role.

It sounds crazy, but the above method has been scarily accurate for every job-seeker I’ve ever met. If you love the highs and can stick with the lows, you and this job are made for one another.

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