4 skills PR newbies should possess (if they want a job)

First, here’s a piece of advice—you have the rest of your life to work, take the summer and explore the world if you have that luxury. That’s something I wish I had done; I started my first job the day after graduation.

For those of you that need to get a job—you know, like, yesterday—here are the skills most employers are looking for in a PR hire. The reality is, if you’re a recent grad and don’t have these skills, you’ll have a harder time finding that first job. If you’re an undergraduate, learn from this post so you’ll be in a better place two, three, or four years from now.

1. Writing skills

No matter what you’ve heard about all that sexy social media stuff, you still need to know how to write in PR. Ideally, you majored in journalism (or English) or your PR or communications program had a heavy concentration of writing-related courses. You should be able to walk into your first job interview with any (or all) of the following:

• Sample articles you wrote (bonus points if you had them published). The best examples are newspaper articles (online or print) and magazine articles (again, bonus points if you have both consumer and business examples).