In Brief

• In a tough labor market, PR grads must recognize the critical skills they can build outside of the classroom that will set them apart. 
• Three important skills to work on are execution, industry fluency, and stakeholder prioritization.
• Even now, PR is still a great place to start your communications career because of its transferrable skills and exposure to different industries.

It’s no secret that getting a job as a college graduate is tough right now. A 2025 study found that only 30% of recent grads found jobs in their target sector four months after finishing school. That’s down 11% from 2024.   

Why? Besides the tight labor market and AI’s threat to entry-level workers, over half of the graduates surveyed cited a lack of job-specific skills as the main reason. In other words, students don’t feel like their classes are teaching them the things they need to know.

That resonates with me. Even though I went to a great university (go Northeastern!), the one PR class I took didn’t teach me much about what I’m doing in the field right now. Those lessons are still locked away in entry-level roles.

But unlocking them is often a catch-22. To gain experience, you need an internship, and to get that internship, you need experience…

To help break that bind, I wanted to share three things that college classes won’t teach you about working in PR—and how to learn them yourself. 

1. Learn Execution First, Not Strategy

In my college PR class, we spent most of the semester learning about high-level theories like the SCCT framework or CSR pyramid. 

Those basics matter. They show you how everything works and why PR is an interesting career. But in an entry-level role, you aren’t creating the strategy—you’re executing it. 

Good execution means learning the “hard” skills of the discipline that PR classes usually gloss over. Fortunately, you can easily practice them on your own. Take B2B media relations, for instance: 

• Monitoring for media opportunities. Pick a news topic you already follow (e.g. electric vehicles) and a company or organization that would have a useful source (maybe a rep from Rivian, or an automotive lawyer). Find ways to catch breaking news on the topic, such as social media notifications or official press releases. 

• Building a media list. Read recent news stories about the topic, record the reporters’ names, and find their emails (try their bio page, or the masthead section if it’s not readily available; if you’re still coming up empty, know that if you find someone else’s email at the same organization it will likely follow the same conventions).

• Pitching reporters. Try to imagine where your “source” might best add to the current media conversation (e.g., an automotive lawyer might be able to comment about EV parts recalls or the impact of new tariffs). Draft a mock pitch for your source that’s tied to a breaking piece of news. 

This exercise doesn’t have to be imaginary, either. You could run through those steps to generate publicity for a club or nonprofit you’re involved in to achieve various outcomes: raising money, spreading awareness, promoting an upcoming event, etc. That’s exactly the experience that agencies are looking for. 

2. Become Fluent in the Industries You Want to Work In 

One of the skills that gets overlooked in general PR classes is industry fluency: that is, even if you know how to pitch, you need to understand what it is you’re pitching. Consumer PR isn’t the same as legal PR isn’t the same as healthcare PR. 

To develop industry-specific fluency, you can use two methods: 

• Learning fast: You need to get up to speed quickly. Technology and colleagues come in handy here. For instance, I have an AI tool that assesses whether new press releases are pitch-worthy. You can also ask your colleagues who have more experience in the industry to help you out. Don’t have colleagues quite yet? Ask your friends who have relevant majors or are passionate about the subject. It could even be an opportunity to network! Find a professor or alumni who knows the industry and reach out to them. 

• Learning slow: This is just a corporate euphemism for going down a rabbit hole. On slower days or in gaps between tasks, take 30 minutes or more to just read and consume content on a topic you’re following. By just clicking around, you’ll start to see the bigger picture—and uncover trends that are rife with PR opportunities.

When I started pitching sources in the financial sector, I wasn’t familiar with the acronymed regulators that kept popping up: the OCC, the Fed, the SEC, the CFTC. So, I asked AI to provide an overview of each agency’s function and what parts of the industry they regulated. That summary was enough to get me up to speed on the news of the week and tie in my sources’ expertise in pitches. 

But it was only later, when I took the time to read Bloomberg article after Bloomberg article, that I was able to understand the political dynamics at play among each of the regulators. For instance, the question of whether the SEC or the CFTC is the primary crypto regulator—and the uncertainty surrounding it—was a key dynamic that underpinned a lot of news and helped me connect new developments to a broader pattern. That knowledge took my pitches up a notch.

Underneath this skill of industry fluency is something simpler: curiosity. Getting excited to learn about new topics will take you far!

3. Some Stakeholders Are More Important Than Others

PR classes teach students about the various stakeholders that all organizations have: customers, investors, employees, the broader public, and so on. But what they don’t tell you is that within PR, individual jobs (and sometimes entire agencies) will focus on just one of those groups. 

Knowing which group you need to prioritize at work is key, because building good relationships with them will make you more successful. In media relations, for example, reporters are the most important: influencing how they perceive your clients and how they broadcast that perception to their audience is the core mandate. 

Finding ways to keep your key stakeholders at the forefront makes a difference. Here’s how to get started:

• Make sure you know what’s going on in their world. In media relations, we closely track the industry by hosting Q&As with reporters and reading newsletters on the state of journalism.

• Be nice to these people and consider their perspective (especially when they aren’t nice to you). Don’t take it personally when they are mean or annoyed!

• Keep a list of contacts that you’ve worked with multiple times, so you can visualize where you’ve made inroads and focus your energy on growing those relationships.

• Take those key relationships to the next level! Move your next message from email to a phone call, or a text. Go from video meetings to in-person coffee chats. 

It might not be a surprise that in a field called public relations, relationships with priority stakeholders are the most important asset you can create for yourself: they’re valuable, unique, and hard to imitate. 

Why a Job in PR is a Great Place to Start Your Career 

As a young professional a year into my career, I can confidently say that PR is a great sector for communications students to start in. The variety of industries to work with and different flavors of PR to choose from—social media, events, executive comms, media relations, and more—means you can play to your strengths and discover new paths. 

The gap between the classroom and the workplace is real, but it’s smaller than it seems. A little initiative, a lot of curiosity, and consistent practice can bridge it long before your first job offer.