All About My Public Relations Major in College! (Courses, Jobs/Internships, Salary)

What is public relations and why did I choose it as my college major? In this video we discuss what industries you can work in with a public relations degree, starting salaries for public relations professionals, the classes I took at USC to earn my public relations degree and what I plan to do with my degree in public relations.

Hey, guys, it's Joi here. So today, we are doing a video all about my college major. As you guys know, I am a student at the University of Southern California and graduate in May 2020. So I wanted to do a few more college videos before I'm officially done with my undergraduate experience. So I hope you guys like this video and let me know if you have any other college videos you want to see below.

Overview

In today's video, we will be discussing what public relations is because many people ask me what PR is and what it's like to study it. We're also going to talk about what I plan to do with a major in PR and what industry you can get a job in PR. Also, we're going to talk about what it's like to study PR in college. So a lot of you guys might be choosing a college major or interested in changing your majors. I'm going to talk about what it's like to study PR at USC, one of the top public relations schools, and the types of classes I've taken. And lastly, we're just going to talk about jobs and internships, how to get internships in PR, and how to secure a career in the industry finally.

Make sure that you are subscribed to my channel and turn on your notification bells to join the journey. I'm going to be doing a couple more college-related videos in the upcoming week. So make sure you subscribe, so you don't miss those. Also, I have a whole college playlist that kind of shows all my college journey if you're interested in learning more about my four years at USC.

Defintion

So I'm going to go on Google and search what PR is so you guys can get the definition from the Oxford dictionary. According to Oxford, public relations is the professional maintenance of a favorable public image by a company or other organization or a famous person and has the state of the relationship between the public and a company or other organization or a famous person. So that is the book definition.

What PR really is…

But PR is so much more than that. So NPR, some PR professionals that you might know, include publicist for celebrities, you might think of PR when you think of a politician running for a campaign, their campaign manager usually does a lot of things regarding PR, or you might think of a company that had a crisis recently. And then they say have an apology statement. Their PR team probably worked on that. And more recent times, there are way more jobs in PR, for example, influencer marketing. Many PR professionals who work at agencies are handling influencer campaigns, or they might just be managing cool activations, events, and tons of other things.

PR is a very broad industry because you can work in PR in any sector of your interest. Let's get into, let's get into some of the sectors you might be in if you decide to go into PR. So like I said, there's politics, there's entertainment so that you could be working for a TV studio, an individual or a celebrity. You can also just be working for a personal brand, someone who might not be a celebrity, but has a personal brand, that they want their image and brand management. You could be working in the healthcare industry, and you could do in tech, work in consumer goods, and retail. And that can entail fashion, beauty, fitness, literally anything, any industry you can think of. There's most likely a communications team, a marketing team, or a PR team working for that company.

That's the great thing about PR that if you're someone like me who has a ton of different interests, but you have an interest in writing, you are interested in communications and possibly visual communications. PR is an excellent industry because you can work, and you know, change industries, but still have that same title as a public relations professional.

How I will Integrate PR for my Career

Let's talk about what I plan to do with my degree and what things I took classes on while in school. So I am taking a full-time job in marketing at Google. And I study public relations as my major in Spanish as my minor in school. So I did three internships during school. I interned at NBC News in a journalism capacity. I also interned at Elle Magazine in journalism and PR mix, and then I interned, Google in a marketing capacity. So as you can see what that major, I was able to go into the news, I was able to go into tech, and I could also go into fashion and beauty. So just as an intern, you're able to do a lot with a PR degree, especially if your degree is teaching you a lot of essential skills that employers are looking for.

Essential Skills

Speaking of those essential skills, let's talk about some of the classes I took during my time at USC as a PR major. So usually you have entry-level courses where you learn writing skills and visual communication skills. So when I say this, you might learn how to write press releases, you learn how to write media alerts, you'll learn how to write BIOS, and basically, all those essential foundational skills that PR professional should have.

Additionally, PR is becoming increasingly more visual. So I also took videos that included graphic design, video, and even some website creation. So we did a lot in my PR classes. And we'll do things that include the writing skills so that you might write a press release, but you also have to, you know, upload it to a website. You include photos or videos or additional assets that make it come together into one all-encompassing thing.

The Kind of Classes I Took

After you have your basic classes and your skills down, you'll also get into campaign management. Many of my upper-division courses aren't just sitting in class. Like taking notes, I will go into groups because most PR professionals work in group settings at work, whether on an agency or working for a brand, you're always working with other people. So our professors usually break our class up into groups, and we all get actual real-life clients. For example, I took a personal branding class, where we all got professionals in different industries who wanted to build their brand. And for the whole semester, we work with that professional to help them develop their personal brand, whether that was a website, their social media, or maybe just refreshing their bio for their LinkedIn. We help them build whatever aspects of their brand they wanted to, you know, get a little bit more polished, and establish a presence online that reflects who they are in real life.

I also took classes on business and legal and ethical foundations of public relations. So the business course, you have to understand how the entire company works. If you're going to be a communication professional, anything can happen in any company area. Whether that's finance or product managing, it needs to be communicated to the public or internally to employees. So you have to understand how businesses work to be a great PR professional.

Additionally, I mentioned taking a legal and ethics class. That's because you want to make sure that you are always standing on the right side when making decisions on communicating with the public or employees of an organization. So you still want to make sure you're doing that from an ethical and legal standpoint.

I got to take some fun electives, which I got to choose on my own. I took an influencer relations course, which was awesome because I am a social media influencer. So I learned how to manage influencers from the agency and brand side and just learned a lot about the psychology and history behind using advocates and brand advocates to get the message out about your brand. So that was an excellent course.

Another fun course that I took was my personal branding course, where we learn how to build our personal brands from a PR standpoint. So at the end of the day, all of these courses were helpful, especially because USC values guest speakers in the PR program. So we would always have almost every class a guest speaker come in from different industries, whether that was entertainment, tech, beauty, whatever industry, they will come in and talk to us about how they're using PR and their profession every day.

Advice for PR Enthusiasts

The last thing I wanted to talk about is jobs and internships and PR to give you guys some advice on taking that route. If you didn't major in PR or are already working and want to switch to PR, just some tips on that. So I do have videos on essential resume and interview tips that I'll have linked down below or in the card. So go check those out if you want information on that. But when it comes to PR specifically, you want to make sure that you are a strong writer. You want to make sure you have writing samples, whether that is work from previous internships or work from your class. It's nice to have that all in an internet portfolio.

At USC, we made a website to like house all of our work, but if you don't do that in class, maybe making your website on WordPress or Wix or Squarespace or wherever you want to do it. Make your website and a half off. Have your classwork and internship work linked so that you can show that to an employer in an interview or even just linked in your resume or cover letter.

Another tip for PR is getting experience in various industries. This can help, especially if you're planning to work for a PR agency. You will manage multiple clients, usually an agency. For example, a client who's like a Tesla Motors whose cars and you also might have Ulta beauty, which is, you know, makeup, you might be managing people in entirely different industries. And suppose you can get internships in other sectors. In that case, this will help you become more flexible and comfortable working in communications with different types of people, different kinds of industries, and various kinds of standards.

Post- Grad Entry

My last tip for PR majors is to know that PR is not a very lucrative field, especially right out of graduation. I feel like there are only specific industries where you can find good salaries post-grad. And that's one reason I decided to go the tech route when I decided to go into PR. I think that the average entry-level PR salary is $35,000 to $40,000 as of 2020. So that is not a lot. But it does align with the kind of like the average wages of college grads, which is around $40,000 to $50,000 a year. But there is a ladder in the PR industry where you can work your way up and have your salary build the longer you're with companies. Some agencies and corporate positions have more traditional ladder structures where you have to go through every position. But there are different ways to get around that if you can find startups or start your agency going the entrepreneurial route or just, you know, doing your primary job and having consultancy on the side. So there's a lot of options when it comes to PR. I think it's a great major.

Final Thoughts

I switched my major from journalism to PR during my sophomore year of college, and I am glad that I did that. I didn't see myself being a reporter. And there's more of that in my YouTube video. I talk all about why I switch my major from journalism to PR, so I'll have that link also. But that is all that there is to know about a major and PR. If there's anything that I've missed, definitely leave a question down below. I'd be happy to answer it. And let me know if there are any other college videos you guys want to see. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye.