Public Relations Assistant Interview Questions And Answers

Part of PR is promoting your organization without deceiving the public. This is another situation where honesty is important. You don’t have to tell consumers every single detail of what the organization is doing but you should always report what is relevant to them with as little bias as possible. If you’re part of an organization you believe in, stating the facts in a positive way will be more than enough.

Here’s a great opportunity to talk about your experience, what you’ve learned, and what skills you took away. Be prepared with specific examples or anecdotes about how you communicated a message for a client in the past. Stress your writing skills and other communications skills, especially if you have video production and editing skills.

Public relations is a profession that looks after the reputation of a personality or a company. public relations specialists work with the aim of helping the company and its customers earn mutual understanding. PR is a planned and continuous effort of establishing and maintaining goodwill of any organization or person.

This job is created to provide positive publicity to a company's clients and enhance its reputation. A perfect PR must have the knowledge of some important factors such as persuasion, information, communication, public opinion and public policies.

Public relations is more about building your client's reputation but at the same time you need to be honest at some places as you cannot cheat your audience. A customer does not require each and every information of your organization but he should be given what is in his interest.

Advocacy is more about presenting information in a transparent manner. So, being a public relations specialist, you need to be transparent wherever it is important to be, but you need to remain objective at times too, as it is stated earlier that your audience does not require every detail of the company. It is all about balancing the reputation without compromising on the facts.

PR crisis is the situation that arises when an organization or individual is facing a challenge to its reputation. It can happen because of an unpredictable event threatens can seriously impact an organization's performance and generate negative outcomes.

If I would be in any of such crisis I would follow the steps that are mentioned below.

I will be finding out what exactly the crisis is and will note down every detail of it.
Base on the happenings there has to be plan of action. So, I'll evaluate my requirements and options.

Based on these, I will address the relevant audience.

The organization should accept their mistake if they went wrong somewhere as public is more willing to forgive an honest mistake than a calculated lie.

It is important to be demonstrative because the media as well as the public will have their own assumptions if no information is given to them by the organization in crisis.

I should show my concern to the public as they must know that we care because people will be more forgiving if it is clear that the organization cares about the victims of the crisis.

Maintain two-way relationships as it is important to know the status of public opinion by listening.

A press release is a short news story written by a public relations professional and is sent to different media houses.. The press release must have all the essential information including answers of the 5W and 1H (who? what? where? when? how? and why?) for the journalist to easily produce his own story.

Public Relations are a higher level of communication strategy where in we take our client's brand ahead by being activists and consultants. We understand the client’s product and industry where he wants or decides to grow and this is achieved through various tools. The most important of the tools, being media which includes the following: Print, broadcast, online and now digital.

Public Relations is a non paid form of communication that will create and enhance the reputation of a company to the world especially stakeholders, investors, dealers, suppliers, customers etc.

The response will reveal a lot about the candidate and whether he or she has a realistic outlook on what a pressure cooker PR can be and how the candidate approaches time management.

☛ Public relations specialist must be aware of the newspaper or websites that enable you to reach your target demographic most effectively
☛ And public relations specialist should have experience with both old and new media

Usually, a press release is written in the third person while a pitch letter is directly addressed to journalist. It starts with a striking opening that alerts journalist to take immediate interest in the topic.

With this question, the hiring manager may be polling you to find out what social media platforms you’re most knowledgeable about and how you use them. Answer the question by talking about how you used social media platforms and more traditional forms of media to spread the word about a past client, and what returns you’ve seen from each platform.

Public relations is a passion of mine. I have known it was what I wanted to do since my early college days, and it remains all I can see myself doing in the future. However, I am still a novice in many ways and need time to strengthen my skills and gain more experience. For the foreseeable future, I plan on learning under more experienced mentors. Once I am ready, I hope to open my own public relations firm and pass on what I have learned to the next generation of PR managers.

Don’t make the mistake of saying "no" when asked this question. Come to the interview prepared with some questions of your own, such as how you’ll be integrated in with new clients, for example, or what the hiring manager’s ideal candidate looks like. Don’t talk about salary just yet, but it is OK to ask about the next steps in the process.

While I like to find a good work-life balance, I understand that there are often time-sensitive issues that arise in the PR world, and a crisis can happen at any moment. The public never sleeps, and neither does PR. Knowing this, I am willing to do what is necessary to ensure that the job is done well, and if that means working occasional nights and weekends, I am on board.

Yet another reason you should know who the firm serves. You might be asked about how to handle a certain client. If you get stuck being asked about a company you know nothing about, you’ll do well to answer this question by saying that you’ll take time to get to know the client and their needs, and you’ll spend more time delving into the client’s past campaigns to find out what worked and what didn’t. And if you do happen to know the company and do have some ideas about how to change the image, share a few vague ideas that will have the hiring manager wanting more.

☛ Post in Twibes groups (Twitter groups)
☛ Post on Facebook corporate page as well as other relevant pages
☛ Post in relevant professional blogs
☛ Post in relevant LinkedIn groups
☛ Post in corporate Twitter Account
☛ Post in Digg, Del.icio.us and other sharing groups

Bit.ly shortens your website long URL into a short link, and that link can be used for social media. Also, it can be used to track

☛ Number or clicks
☛ Clicks frequency and its time
☛ Track referral websites
☛ Track regional clicks

☛ Good communication skill
☛ Ready for travelling
☛ Person who are enthusiastic, confident and understanding
☛ Willing to work according to client or organization schedule
☛ Good judgement
☛ Outgoing personality
☛ Creativity

For this question you need to do your homework well about the company you are appearing for. You must know what kind of PR activities that particular company is into and even what kind of services they provide. Check out the their record on activities they have been carrying out in last 6 months. Answer to this question differs according to the company.
Important terms used in PR Industry:

☛ Affiliate Network - It is a technique where other publishers and websites will promote the brands by allowing it in their network. It acts as an mediator between publishers and brands so that you reach out more number of audience.

☛ B-Roll - It is the extra footage captured to provide the background of the story to have greater flexibility when editing.

☛ B2B - It stands for business to business that means a business that markets to another business for an example a manufacturer marketing to a retailer.

☛ B2C - It stands for business to consumer that means a business that markets the products to its customers.

☛ Boilerplate - There is a section at the end of a press release, before the media contact info, that tells about the company, business, product, brand or event discussed in the main body of the press release.

☛ Gatekeeper - He is the one who looks after the flow of information from the media to the public.

☛ Pitch - It is a way of reaching out someone in a formal way either through mail or a phone call.

☛ Placements - Stories that are popular in media are called placements.

☛ Press Kit- It is a packet of materials given to the media that contains contains backgrounds, bios, photos, and news releases.

☛ Reach- It is the number of audience connected to the media through print, broadcast or online medium.

☛ Journo- It is the abbreviated form of journalists.

Public relations:
☛ 1. Your job profile is to get free publicity for the company and also promote their products and services.
☛ 2. You don't have any control on media over how the media will present your information as they are not obligated to do so.
☛ 3. The PR exposure you receive is only circulated once. An editor won't publish your same press release three or four times in their magazine.
☛ 4. A third-party article written about your product or service is read by the customer assuming that you are not paid to write positive things about the product.

Advertising:
☛ 1. Here you are paid for the ad space and you know exactly when that ad will be aired or published.
☛ 2. You have paid for the space so you have a creative control on what goes into that ad.
☛ 3. Since you pay for the space, you can run your ads over and over for as long as your budget allows.
☛ 4. Consumers know when they're reading an advertisement they're trying to sell a product or service.

Finding relevant contacts and sources is quiet easy now-a-days with the help of social media and Internet.

☛ Get email notifications directly to your inbox whenever journalists tweet or link to articles matching your search term.

☛ Contact directly through their email.

☛ You can keep an eye on which journalists are following or sharing your content on social media.

☛ Maintain a list of media people and include private notes from past campaigns to make your upcoming outreach more efficient.

☛ There may be a situation when you may not have any contact or source of information of a particular media house; so you can search for their website and the contact us section has contact number of the important people of the organization.

As the field of communication is growing, public relations is more than press releases and press conferences. Social media and Internet are the recent trends for PR strategies, and here are some trends to watch.

☛ Change in the traditional forms of press releases - the old forms are mostly filled with texts and it gets boring for the reader to read so much without illustrations. Through the Internet and social media these documents will be more appealing to the readers with images and videos.

☛ Public relations specialists will be required by every corporate office - With The growing trend of Internet and social media the pressure on businesses to be transparent and practice open communication, has increased.

☛ PR will be more about building relationships - Social media will be used by public relations specialists to deliver relevant information to the public and get connected to them. Followers are not just a number of people, in fact they are opportunities to build stronger relationships.

You should be following outlets relevant to the job and industry you’re interviewing for. If you’re interviewing for a tech start-up, make sure you’re following places like Wired. Don’t just pretend you follow them either. Do some serious research since interviewers are usually smart enough to know who is genuine and who isn’t. However, you shouldn’t pander or be dishonest. If you’re interviewing for a job at CBS, don’t lie and claim you get all of your news from CBS. They won’t be flattered.

Just be honest here and have something interesting to say. If you’re passionate, it will be apparent in your answer. You’ll be able to show off your knowledge of the industry and the importance of PR. If you’re not passionate, maybe you shouldn’t be doing the interview in the first place. The last thing interviewers want to hear is “Well, it just seemed like a practical job to get.”

Being a public relations personnel you must know the techniques of making an effective pitch. Here are some common ideas to put a pitch together.

☛ Choose your target- Your target must be according to your requirement, so that it actually fits.

☛ Go through the writer's previous articles- Before you make any pitch you must go through the writer's articles and know about their interests, styles, and know the ways you can promote them further along their lines.

☛ Plan your pitch in advance- Plan out your pitch on the basis of what the story would be. You can make your first pitch through an email and then, you can call.

☛ Speaking to the point- While making a pitch you must speak to the point and let the reporter know what the subject is and what your reasons are for taking the interview. And at that point there is no sense in buttering them as they must know your interests are sincere.

☛ Be specific about the purpose of the interview- If you are not specific about the purpose of the interview, reporters may entertain you once but not from the next time.