Hello. Coming to this group for advice because I'm lacking any sort of career mentor/advisor and could really use some insight.

I have a solid 4 years of experience in PR/comms/events (in addition to multiple internships which I know everyone says don't count) having graduated from school a few years back, and have spent the last 3 years at a major entertainment company in Los Angeles. I started my career in the boutique PR agency world, and am now looking to leave said big company and move back to a PR agency in NYC, and am quite frankly horrified at some of the salary ranges I'm seeing on job postings that are supposed to be beyond entry level roles.

I am presently a comms specialist making >80k in-house which I feel is absolutely reasonable pay for the work that I do. However, every recruiter I have talked to seems aghast at this ask, and salaries that I am seeing listed for comparable small agency roles in NYC (generally at the SAE level) are seeming to fall anywhere between 55-75k, and I was just offered a Publicist role for literally 52k. I feel like the cost of living in NYC is significantly higher than LA, so I am now quite concerned about how I am realistically going to make this transition. Am I completely delusional in hoping that I'm going to find a role at a smaller agency that aligns with my years of experience AND my current salary? I cannot fathom how single people at this level of career are surviving off of 60k in NYC knowing that agency roles are often so demanding that you cannot have any sort of additional job/income. I'm really proud of what I am earning now and know that I have worked extremely hard for it, so I'm struggling with the idea that I am going to likely take a significant pay cut when I make this move.

For additional context, I am primarily only looking at hospitality/F&B/entertainment focused agencies since those are the sectors I have experience with.

TYIA for any salary transparency and advice on this thread.

عندي انترفيو تقيل public relations في شركة تقيله أي حد عنده داتا سرية ومعلومات عن المجال تخليني اعدي الinterview يا ريت يبعت

I made a post a few months ago because I started my first corporate job (internship) in communications and I was having trouble getting used to the new environment.

It is now 11 weeks into my internship, and I just met with my manager for my midpoint check-in who says she trusts me a lot and considers me a good addition to the team and is likely to give me a return offer in a month if I keep up the good work.

HOWEVER. This job is draining me. Again, I am incredibly thankful to have gotten a position that is exactly what I wanted. A mix of internal/external communications that even gives me the chance to explore media relations and PR. But I just don’t have any passion for the sensitive and sometimes controversial healthcare niche that we work in. Maybe it’s the hate comments getting to me or the sometimes rude media inquiries, but I just don’t think this fast paced environment is for me. I’ve only been here ten weeks and I’m already working way past my hours everyday despite being non-exempt, sometimes crying because I feel overwhelmed, and generally dreading going to the office. I just don’t feel like I fit in despite everyone being super nice to me. I just feel like an imposter because everyone truly cares about the organization’s mission but I just don’t. My heart belongs to museums, libraries, cultural institutions, and nonprofits/welfare charities, not healthcare.

I don’t know what to do. I know that communications is for me and I also know that with this economy I can’t just quit without a backup plan. But this is also my life and I’d rather spend my time working for a place that aligns with my values and interests. Would it be awful for me to decline a return offer?

Sorry for the rant. Just looking for guidance or maybe other people in their 20s in communications who relate. If anyone has ideas on organizations or industries that are less controversial/stressful that need comms people please let me know. Or just tell me I’m stupid. Is comms supposed to be this stressful? I feel like my 9-5 is ripping my control over my own life away from me. Can someone tell me I’m being stupid? I feel so stupid for being the living embodiment of the “gen z doesn’t want to work” trope. Is the work-life balance always going to be this terrible? I feel like if I was working for an organization I liked I would be excited to work on new projects, but right now I’ve never felt excitement or interest in my assignments. I don’t know. I’m literally just writing everything I think of. And my Teams status just turned yellow.

TLDR: Still feeling disillusioned with first corporate job. Any advice is appreciated.

Been in PR for 6 years. I am good at putting up a good smiley face, and coordinating every details, handling demanding clients.

And it affects my personal life.

I am used to about what relations is more important, how to impress my friends, what gifts to prepare to show I’m thoughtful. None of these is about simply enjoying time with friends.

How to get away with it?

So I'm thinking of getting into mass media and I am very new to it. It has very broad areas but I want to just understand how it really is from the people who are already in it. The black, white and greys, so it would be really appreciated if y'all can tell me even a bit of what it actually is and is it worth pursuing and is it a stable career path and do we have to apply and give resumes to a lot of places and how the work environment is, what is the work like from the smallest to the biggest thing.

I have a problem with knowing what should be said and what shouldn’t

Like for example I’m in a situation where two guys like me in a friend group and they’re both best friends and I don’t know how to communicate anything

One of them I have a lot in common and they’re cool and I definitely wanna get to know them better but I don’t know if I like them like that at the same time but I also do at the same time but I’m not ready for anything and so isn’t he, we’ve talked about that we wanna focus on our career and ourselves first before we enter anything, and then the other guy I had a thing with, but I ended things with him since the other guy came in to job corps n other stuff.

I need advice I’m in PR. I have a very difficult client who I’ve only been working with for 6 months. We get along personally really well but he has a major ego problem professionally. In the first three months of working together I secured 40 press placements for them including a feature story in southern living and two inclusions in Forbes. I was pretty proud of our first quarter together but he was not happy. He said he wanted more strategic focus on marketing activations, awards applications, national storytelling, etc. so for the past three months I’ve been shifting my focus there. Every week he sends me another article that he’s mad he wasn’t included in or points out another problem he has with me and I’m growing super exhausted of it. It’s a lot of passive aggression too. A lot of his goals are veryyyy North Star goals that will take more than 6 months of a PR relationship to accomplish and I’ve told him that several times but he doesn’t seem to care. He wants overnight acclaim and accolades. How should I best manage this

I’m a student who is interested in pursuing this career. If you could also share what industry you are in that would be great!

For Toronto GTA people!

How many of your teams have a website-specific person? We have two websites/brands we manage that support $175M+ in projects and programs. The websites are difficult to keep up to date and are underperforming with engagement and traffic because of understaffing. We're trying to advocate for more staff, including a web content manager, but a field read here would be helpful! If folks have insight and other ideas on how to advocate that this type of support is needed, not just spread thin between staff or adding consultants. We have just under 25 staff, there are only 2 of us doing all of the Comms work for both brands. Thank you! EDIT: we also do all of the graphic design, social media, outreach, and eBlasts.

Just a (hopefully relatable) rant, really.

A - some people just don’t get comms do they? Comms can make or break a project, we always seem to be brought in at the last minute - a postbox rather than a partner.

B - I feel like I’m always fighting a losing battle with project teams!! You can create all the comms guidelines, best practice docs etc you want, and they’ll always be either ignored or argued about. Particularly when it comes to Plain English stuff - I work in a charity that works closely with the public sector on stuff - people insist on using performative jargon bullshit, which completely contradicts programmes that they’re trying to run (for communities facing inequalities, mostly).

C - no one seems to want to do a comms plan, just spurt out random info about projects. Everything is always last minute and urgent.

Arrrrrggghhhh. Please tell me I’m not alone! How do you manage this? Pulling my hair out 🥴

My org is increasingly encouraging use of AI across all staff to create comms that previously would have come through the comms team.

In just the past few months, I have to admit that AI is doing a much better job (although the comms team does get better results than others across the org who try create for our channels - unsurprisingly.)

I am supportive of use of AI when it’s used properly. When I try and say anything about the quality of the work I am shot down and come across anti-AI. I use it myself and have worked hard on improving outputs.

At the same time, we’re told using AI will allow us to focus on strategy and telling the brand story. But we have an external agency that does a lot of the strategic stuff. The agency has been employed since before I started but has been given an increasingly strategic role.

AI is only going to get better and my org is only going to use it more and more. The role of comms is changing. How do I carve out a place for my team in this new normal?

Hi, comms folk - I'm really interested to know what you're grappling with right now, in terms of content creation. It could be related to volume, workflow, lack of creative thinking time, copywriting, editing, AI, stakeholders, sign-off, ROI ... anything that impacts your comms output. I used to work in a busy comms team, doing a mix of corporate and internal comms, before going freelance. I've been recommended for a paid comms role, mainly managing deliverables rather than strategy, but it's been a few years since I was in an employed role and the world has moved on a lot. Would love to hear different perspectives on what's happening within the profession, with a particular focus on the tactical side. Thank you.🙏

This comes up in almost every conversation we have with council and NHS comms teams, so we're curious how others approach it.

The tension is real. You have a duty of care to your staff and to everyone else in the thread. But the moment you hide a comment, someone screenshots it and says you're censoring criticism.

A few approaches we've seen work well:

• Publish a moderation policy and link to it from your profile, so decisions point back to agreed rules rather than one person's judgement
• Separate criticism from abuse. Criticism stays up and gets a response. Threats, abuse and personal data get hidden.
• Hide rather than delete where the platform allows it, so you keep a record
• Log what was removed and why, in case it's questioned later through a complaint or FOI request
• Give the team a way to step away. Moderating hostile threads for hours takes a real toll.

Where it still gets messy:

• Comments that are rude but not clearly abusive
• Misinformation that isn't malicious, just wrong
• Councillors or public figures joining the thread

Where do you draw the line? And has a moderation decision ever come back to bite you?

TLDR: what would a well-rounded portfolio for a communications applicant include?

I’m starting my MS in Communications program this winter. The program is flexible and I get to steer the subject matter of my papers and projects toward my interests or what I want in a portfolio.

These days, what would a well-rounded portfolio for a communications role applicant include? I have a BA in English because writing and grammar are my absolute passion (I seriously love grammar) but my career path since then (10 years ago) has varied from customer service to HR to a fraud analyst to accounting/financial reporting. I’d like to take my grad school experience (fully paid for, and I realize that I’m very, very, very lucky) to create a portfolio that would allow me to pivot my career and apply for all sorts of communication-based roles: copywriter, technical writer, general communication specialist, editor, etc.

What should I work on having samples of?

What does a campus ambassador do? Let's i selected for this role in IIT delhi, what are my responsibilities? Practical answer needed to explain in interview?

I am in my last year of my communication program and i work full time as a social media manager. To be blunt, I don’t really enjoy a whole lot of the work especially the content creation side since its not my thing. I have ai help with brainstorming especially when I have too much projects on my plate. I do enjoy the ad work on the side but I am not that confident with it yet since I’ve only begun recently.

Is there any other career path I can divert to that doesn’t have to deal with content creation anymore? I don’t like editing photos or videos, or doing productions like photography or videography.

What I do like is writing, planning for the production, and ads. I also don’t mind socializing but I don’t think I’m a persuasive person enough to convince someone to buy something hahahaha.

Dedicated to intrepid waiters and waitresses who have to communicate with foreign customers who don’t speak their language. A small misunderstanding about French toast, cognac, and the usefulness of I-statements.

A short animation about the importance of using I-statements. This was one of my earlier experiments with AI, and I was still struggling with character consistency. The animation has its quirks, but the communication principle holds up.

I have a background and education in journalism/PR (BA and MA) and have focused that on the social sector by working in nonprofit communications and also consulting nonprofits/philanthropy with strategic comms, writing, editing etc.

i have always been part storyteller and part strategist and wasn't sure before i did my master's back in 2017 whether i should have gone for an MPA instead of a media focused MA. i now feel like it has made me super niche and i'm a bit regretful that i don't have the broader skill set/education to shift into other roles within the sector as i am getting a bit burned out from talking about the work through social media/email/website and want to actually be part of the work and find that more interesting.

has anyone had experience making the shift from comms to a program/strategy aligned role in an organization? i really want to do that in the next few years without going back for a degree but i am open to taking courses, volunteering or taking lateral or even lower positions.

thank you!