PR is becoming a very competitive industry. The chase for talent is tremendous.

Being successful at university guarantees you a good degree, which is the first thing you need to be considered for a PR job.

Bear in mind that many PR agencies have started looking for talent with diverse backgrounds, so not necessarily people with PR degrees, but from more specialist areas such as finance or even healthcare.

For example, I didn’t study PR. I hold a degree in International Business, but I still pursued a career in PR – and I got it. It wasn’t easy, but I laid the ground while at university. That’s where success starts.

Based on my experiences, I would like to pass on my advice to you how to excel as a PR student and help you set the basis for a successful career in public relations.

Today, we continue with the second interview of my blog series, asking PR practitioners "Why do you want to work in PR?" and inviting them to share their experiences and advice around the profession. (If you missed the first interview with Richard Bailey, you can read it here.)

This time I got in touch with my first PR mentor – Pippa Hanson. I met Pippa when I was doing my first PR internship. She taught me so much when I was just getting into PR – from how to craft the perfect press release to how to pitch it to a reporter and secure coverage. 

Pippa has had an interesting career so far and I hope you enjoy reading more about it in this PR interview. 

Why Work in Public Relations: Interview with Pippa Hanson

1. As a short introduction, can you tell us a little bit about you and what you do?

I’m a PR consultant with in-house and agency experience, working with clients including Specsavers, English Heritage and the British Equestrian Federation. 

As 2014 is coming to an end, it’s time to not only reflect on what has happened over the past year, but to also have a look ahead and try to find out what the future holds.

I’m sure you’re thinking about what you would like to do, achieve and experience in 2015 and you’re setting your expectations, preparing yourself and making plans how to make that happen.

This is what companies and whole industries are now doing too. Not just because they want to identify trends and business opportunities, but also to mitigate risk and get themselves on a path to success.

As a PR student or a PR professional you need to be aware of what’s happening in your industry and what’s to come in order to acquire the knowledge and develop the right skills to excel in uni or in your job.

For students, it’s also an excellent way how to get started with a PR dissertation to give you some ideas for research topics. For professionals on the other hand, it can give you a head start and some solid ground when developing new strategies or campaigns for clients to create more opportunities for them.  

I’ve been asked many times “Why do you want to work in public relations?” To be honest with you, it’s a difficult question, partly because it is difficult to explain what PR is in the first place.

In my attempt to answer that question, I’ve written three pieces describing why I want to work in PR (if you haven’t seen them yet, you can check them out here, here and here). And I know that I recently kind of left the PR agency life by joining HubSpot, but my new role still has a lot to do with public relations. Why? Because it is based on building and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with my clients – that is very much how the PRSA defines the essence of PR.   

So for all you out there wondering why to work in PR, I decided to start a blog series called "Why work in PR: Advice from the Pros", interviewing PR professionals about their careers, reasons why they wanted to work in PR and their PR career guidance for you.

And what better way to launch these series than with an interview with one of the most well-known names in the PR industry in the UK, who’s been teaching and guiding the new generation of PR for years – Richard Bailey.

I recently talked about why you should write a dissertation about PR. Hopefully, I’ve managed to convince you and if so I think you might find this piece quite useful as it would give you some direction how to get started with a PR dissertation – by creating a plan as a first and most important step.

Writing a dissertation is a pretty difficult task. I’ve done it twice: the first time when writing my dissertation about PR and social media, and the second time with my dissertation about social media for sustainability communications. And both of them within a year!

So as you can see, I know first-hand how much time and effort it requires if you want to do it right.

The Vital Step for PR Dissertation Success

Perhaps the most important thing I learned from my dissertation experiences is that the groundwork for an outstanding dissertation is your initial plan – that’s the backbone of your PR dissertation.