Taking a trip back to university…

Last week, two members of the Babel team had the opportunity to return to university. But this time, our trip to UCL just around the corner, wasn’t to study or write a dreaded dissertation. Instead, we were there to take part in the School of Management, Science and Innovation’s careers afternoon, aiming to educate students about careers beyond consulting, banking and finance.

Speaking among companies such as P&G, Sky, GSK, Nestlé and Unilever on a panel, we had the opportunity to tell UCL’s students about what it’s like to work in PR, particularly the technology, telecoms and media sectors. Given the subjects they were studying, it’s potentially not a career path they had considered and it was our job to persuade them to walk the PR road.

It’s sometimes hard conveying to people who don’t work in the industry about what we as PR professionals do on a day-to-day basis. As the saying goes, the cobbler’s children often go without shoes, however we do hope that we managed to educate and inspire students at the event about what it’s like to work in our industry. It was our aim that at least a few people walked away and went and considered PR as their first post-university job.

I think in general it would be great if careers departments across the country managed to get even more PR departments to speak at universities, it’s sometimes a misunderstood industry with outdated stereotypes and a complete misconception of what we do.

We’d like to say thank you to all those who came along and stayed after the panel session to have a chat, we really enjoyed meeting you. From our point of view it was really interesting getting to meet students and also hearing from other professionals on the panel.

Babel’s Graduate Scheme should be open towards the end of the year, and we look forward to hearing from you all and finding the next generation of Babel PR talent. Keep an eye out on our website for the application details.