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Career Advice on How to Become a Public Relations Manager

General Career Information

Selecting a great career is why you embark on a job search in the first place. With this in mind, you have to select a career that is right for you as a person during your career planning. Take a career in public relations, for example. For the most part before you start to seriously consider such a career, you need to ask yourself, how much do I like lying? Do I like lying all the time? 
 
If we strip away the candy coating, lying is what public relations managers will be doing, at least part of the time. Manipulation of facts and yes, lying, are most certainly part of the job. If you have heard otherwise, it’s due to the fact that a slick and clever public relations managers has already worked you over.
 

Career Facts:

If you are comfortable with “shaping facts,” then a career as a public relations manager might be your cup of tea. Often these “hot shots” are called in during an emergency situation, when a person or a company has been “caught with its pants down” (and yes, sometimes quite literally). The public relations manager manipulates the media with great skill to reshape public perception. He or she works towards manipulating opinions to be more in line with that which the employer wishes public perception to be. Sometimes the targeted area is not the public, but shareholders or other groups.
 

Another activity that public relations managers can engage in involves evaluating advertising and promotions campaigns. The public relations manager will examine these campaigns and make sure that they are in line with overall company or client goals.

 

Career Opportunities and Job Outlook-Good:

As of 2006, there were about 50,000 of these “opinion shapers” working over the minds of Americans. Good news for those of you who find thoughts cumbersome and time-consuming, a robust seventeen percent job growth in the industry is expected by 2016.
 
Job Outlook is Good
 

A Day in The Life:

Much of the work of a public relations manager is spent working within a given company helping employers with all aspects of the public image. This work ranges from preparing speeches, to interacting with the press. When scandals or problems arise, the public relations manager is often on the front line, trying to look cool, collected and in control, no matter how grim the situation may be.
 

Average Salary:

So what does a public relations manager make per year? About $82,000 a year is what all those tall tales cost.

$80k - $85k

 

Career Training and Qualifications:

The qualifications for a public relations manager are quite interesting. Many employers prefer their candidates to have a bachelor’s or a master’s degree in public relation or journalism. The emphasis on a degree in journalism is quite interesting, and rather telling, in terms of how the job is perceived. Course work for those entering the career often focuses on public affairs, political science, advertising and business administration.
 
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