Professional Public Relations Assistant Interview Preparation Guide

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Consumers will always find something to rip apart and send angry tweets about. Think about the recent US Airways PR Blunder. However, they will respect you more if you are honest and transparent. It’s good to send a prompt and genuine apology and to address all the issues and concerns without lashing out.

If the candidate responds in the vein of, “Because I like people,” that might be a red flag. While PR no doubt is a people business, the communications discipline doesn’t call for candidates to be chummy with their clients or media reps but, rather, how PR and communications align with corporate goals and financial objectives.

This is a more personal question, but it’s a chance for you to share some information about yourself that can help sell your candidacy. Without going overboard, tell the hiring manager that you’re great with people, that you enjoy problem-solving, that you have great analytical skills, or that you really enjoy writing.

This one is fairly straightforward, but it’s also a behavioral question. Talk about the problem or issue you faced with the client, the steps you took to solve it, and the eventual outcome. If you have numbers such as how many more followers you gained or how much earned media -- another name for press coverage -- you got from the effort, mention those numbers.

Public relations specialist maintains a favorable image of an organization or a person he is representing by creating press note or releasing documents to media personnel about their client or organization.

The in-house PR will act as a representative of your product to the outside world, and being an in-house PR, he can give a total dedication for branding of your product.

These types of "behavioral" interview questions are aimed at finding out how you’ve behaved in the past, in order to get a sense of how you’d handle a similar situation in the future. As with all questions that touch on your weaknesses, briefly mention the struggle you had, but then dominate the conversation with more about how you worked to solve the problem and what you learned from it. In other words, turn a negative into a positive.

All of the panelists we talked to stressed good writing skills as part of an ideal PR job candidate. You need to know how to articulate ideas in a way that is undeniably clear, concise, and impossible to take the wrong way. Make sure to have writing samples ready or perhaps even an online portfolio from sites like Global Guideline.

Content plays an important role in public relations as it helps in promoting brand perception and creates awareness through meaningful content.

When a PR is able to create a sound content strategy, it becomes clear what media outlets, events, and social media channels work best for the promotion.

Content tells about the insights and observations about the customer life cycle, content gaps, competitive weaknesses, content types, and content maintenance. Through this the organization can improve its overall activities and achieve its business goals.

Public relations professionals also need to know whether their campaigns are working and where their clients’ traffic is coming from. Whether it’s Google Analytics, Yahoo! Web Analytics or another proprietary software, brush up on the tools you’ve used so you can talk a little about what you use and how you use it during the interview.

Situational interview questions are becoming more common as interviews move away from procedural and more towards conversational. If you’re a PR professional, this is somewhat of a blessing as you should be accustomed to chit chat. That said, if you spend too much time beating around the bush, you run the risk of missing the point and blurring the lines between knowing what you’re talking about and demonstrating that you’re only spouting off fluff. Get to the point, exude confidence, and rely on your experience to provide examples for reference.

This question evaluates a PR candidate’s mindset and approach to public relations. Because public relations can be broken down further, touching upon such areas as marketing, crisis control, or online community management, this question allows you to see whether a candidate’s perceptions of public relations are in line with your company’s philosophy. A PR pro should be well rounded, but a specialization can help your company move forward in the right direction.

This question is a bit similar to the last one except it stresses your work habits a lot more. Employers want to know how you would prioritize your tasks depending on what’s breaking. What sources do you look at first? Why are those the most important to check out before anything else? What do you do next depending on what you find in those sources? Give the employer an idea of your work habits and research tactics.

These tools make business posting and monitoring across different platforms easy

☛ Hootsuite
☛ TweetDeck
☛ CoTweet
☛ Vitrue
☛ Posterous
☛ Postling

Before your interview, you’d better have researched the company and found out what types of clients it serves, so you’ll have a good idea of both the specialty areas that the firm handles, as well as the strategies it’s employed for its various clients. To answer this question, you might list some of the firm’s top clients, as well as mentioning any noteworthy campaigns they’ve managed and what you liked about them.

Here is where you can talk about your research skills. Talk about writing skills as well if they have not already inquired about it. Cite past experience if you’ve done pitches at previous jobs. You should also make sure you know what kind of pitch they’re talking about. A pitch can be many things: convincing a producer to give you money for a new TV Show, pitching top executives a new product you want to roll out, reaching out to a reporter so they cover a story on your company, etc. However, there are shared ingredients. All good pitches give facts supporting why the idea is worth the investment of time and resources, why it is the best choice, and how the people helping you will benefit.

Many interviewers will ask this question to gauge your willingness to be on the job beyond the usual 9 to 5. A PR crisis or interview request can happen at any hour and you may be called upon at inconvenient times to save the day. My biggest media placement was a result of a phone call I received at ten o’clock at night while enjoying a hot bath. Believe me when I say – that was a call worth taking. In these cases, honesty is the best policy. If extra hours in the evenings or on the weekend isn’t your jam, don’t be afraid to ask the interviewer to elaborate on how much the position may stray away from a set schedule. It’s important to try and find companies that are in line with the pace that is right for you.

In any organization or agency, teamwork is a huge part of the overall success of the company. In an interview, take care to focus on how you rock at both. For example, you may say “When it comes to writing a press release or developing a winning pitch, I thrive in a solo environment that allows me to dedicate all of my attention to the task at hand. For ideation and strategy, I firmly believe that team collaboration is key.” This not only demonstrates that you can shine on your own, but it shows you’re a team player too.

The question will produce insight into how a prospect views digital media channels for one of the core elements of PR — media relations. The response should also reveal a good deal about the candidate and how he or she intends to meld Facebook, Twitter et al. with the personalized aspects of building relationships with reporters, editors and producers.

There isn’t a correct answer for this one. Just have a thorough explanation and make sure to talk about how you make the most effective use of the platforms. If you have lots of favorites, focus more on the ones most relevant to the job. Be prepared to explain niche platforms that the interviewer might not know about and do so in a way that isn’t patronizing or condescending.

Here are some skills that you must have as a public relations specialist when you are responding to client's message.

☛ Be a great listener
☛ Must have a good communication skills
☛ Be calm and have patience
☛ Be confident of what you are speaking about
☛ You may face some pressure but make it a habit to deal with them
☛ Use positive language
☛ Be a leader
☛ Behave in a friendly manner -Manage time
☛ Analyze problems as soon as you start speaking with a customer
☛ Negotiate and persuade

When faced with a question like this, you can say something like - “I find public relations an extremely attractive profession as it is so diverse, everything changes so fast and every day you work differently.

Working in a dynamic environment is what I like. There would be a little pressure and stressful environment but can multi task and deal with pressure, so I believe, I can do well in this career.

Some of the qualities you can mention are -
☛ Ability to write effectively
☛ Interest in researching, reading and staying up to date
☛ Curiosity and ability to learn quickly
☛ Like meeting new people from different backgrounds
☛ Good listening abilities with a desire to help people
☛ Ability to use social media effectively with a passion for new gadgets and technology
☛ Flexibility and adaptability with a passion to take up new challenges

If you are a public relations specialist, your job profile depends on the type of organization or company you are working for which can either be a public body, business or a voluntary organization.

Their work is to communicate important messages, often using a third party endorsement, to the target audiences in order to establish and maintain goodwill and understanding between the organization and their customers.

Below are the things that are commonly included in the job profile of a public relations specialist:

☛ Writing press releases for the media.
☛ Knowing your main clients and finding out the best ways to get in touch with them.
☛ Pitching out media people and taking out information from them.
☛ Looking after your clients while they communicate in public and helping them at times.
☛ Writing speeches and scheduling interviews with your clients.
☛ Working with advertisers for various ad campaigns.
☛ Design and launch email marketing campaigns.
☛ Promoting products and services through public relations initiatives.
☛ Researching about the media coverages and industry trends.
☛ Dealing with enquirers from the public, the press, and related organizations

The response should give PR managers a pretty good idea of how much the candidate appreciates the power of online communications, in which the Web can be a help (responding to a crisis in real-time) or a hindrance (deferring to the Web when the human touch is called for) to managing the crises that most companies will face at one time or another.

Social media press release should be like

☛ Main body should be the core of your press release, always write a press release in the third person
☛ Try to cover or answer for who, when, why what, where and how in your press release
☛ Try to avoid a sentence giving opinion
☛ Try to give a neutral viewpoint that delivers newsworthy content
☛ Try to limit your press release to one to two pages
☛ It’s always good to put keywords into your content but should not exceed the limit
☛ Give a referral to the statistics or sources relevant to your press release
☛ It includes videos, RSS and visual links to images