The Canadian Public Relations Society defines public relations as the “strategic management of relationships between an organization and its diverse publics, through the use of communication, to achieve mutual understanding, realize organizational goals and serve the public interest..”This — maybe — sounds like a dream job and is not exactly what I do. Take last Monday for example; I wrote a memo, answered emails and went to a long meeting about a major website redeployment … Okay, forget last week. But trust me, I don’t interface with diverse publics on a daily basis. Well, I guess I kinda do. It’s complicated.
The biggest challenge we face in PR — besides earning public acceptance and understanding all day long — is explaining just what we do to confused friends and relatives.
The CPRS definition doesn’t mention anything about being friendly and chatting with people. Nor does it mention anything about planning fancy parties and mingling with the beautiful people. Sure I enjoy this this, but not because I work in PR.
My job is actually quite technical, but I get to use my writing, organizational and leadership skills daily.