Five years ago it was unusual for recruiters in the public relations profession to receive resumes from scientists, much less from Ph.D.'s. After 8-plus years of advanced study, why would someone switch to a profession where the typical participant has only a college degree? I have spent the past decade as one of the few Ph.D.'s in public relations, feeling like a misfit in a profession dominated by people with undergraduate degrees in English and journalism.
Suddenly the climate has changed. I receive resumes from several Ph.D.'s each week. Today, people seem more inclined to investigate alternative careers and move into professions that don't appear to directly utilize their graduate degrees.
For me, the realization that I could consider an alternative to further work in the field of psychology came when I was studying and conducting research at Harvard University. I saw my colleagues struggling to obtain even an entry-level job in a profession where they had spent 5 or more years studying at the advanced levels. These were bright people with a string of publications to their credit and short-term expectations no grander than landing a temporary adjunct professorship at a mid-tier state-run school.
My own hope of supporting myself with government research grants was cut short by the budding trend toward cost cutting at the federal and state levels. And so, my entry into public relations occurred not by design, but rather by the need for employment. In fact, when I received my Ph.D., I hardly knew the PR profession existed.
I found the route to a public relations career during a 2-year stint on Wall Street. I certainly wasn't the only Ph.D. (or degree holder of any level, for that matter) to be tempted by Wall Street in the early 1980s. We all thought that Wall Street might be an interesting alternative to research (to say nothing of the money you could make, significantly more than as a post-doc). None of us had much in the way of direct qualifications for being on the Street. The common wisdom was "if I can get a Ph.D., then surely I can do a spreadsheet." Besides, there were a few role models successfully practicing on Wall Street, many from among my group at Harvard. Why not practice along with them?
My personal role model was a practicing psychiatrist from Yale who headed up a major bullion trading company. Why did he leave psychiatry? As he was fond of telling me, "How much money can you make in an hour, $100? In private practice you are limited by the amount of time you can work. In business you don't have those limitations."
Although money was not my motivation, my role model's ability to switch professions, for whatever reason, made me realize that I, who had invested less academic time in my pursuits, might qualify for a career change consideration. Role models become important in switching professions because they give you a yardstick to measure yourself against. In academe or in the lab, you simply look at your colleague across the hall. In public relations, the only way that you find out about others' academic training is through asking. After a couple of years in what I now consider to be my second graduate degree, I found myself enjoying writing, research, and organization, three skills I needed to get my Ph.D. and three skills that are critical for success in public relations. The pay was poor at that point and not what I had fantasize-around $12,500 per year, not nearly enough to survive in New York City! But I liked the work and I was learning.
My first real introduction to PR was an undergraduate night course in public relations I took while I was on Wall Street. I applied what I learned in the course to my Wall Street job, and quickly realized I had found my calling. I could research companies, learn about a lot of different professions, write, and organize. PR turned out to be a profession that was stimulating, interesting, and that had job openings! For me, the ability to later work alongside of the health care profession, the very profession I had trained to become a member of, was an added incentive to make this move.
The professor of the PR course took me aside one evening and said I was wasting my time by working at a single private company and that to grow and develop in the field; I should work for a PR agency for at least 5 years. This would allow me to gain a variety of experiences working on several different accounts. She said I was talented, but that I really needed further exposure and she offered to point me in the right direction and write a letter of reference.
I took her advice and began to apply for jobs in the financial public relations field. Remember, I was coming from Wall Street and there were basically two specialties in PR: financial and general interest. At least I had a little experience to become a specialist!
I ended up at a small entrepreneurial financial PR firm that specialized in international companies. There we represented foreign companies doing business in the United States. It was a specialty that was being pioneered by the head of the agency.
Within 2 years, I saw this tiny agency grow to have offices in London, Brussels, Sydney, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. The rapid growth was a result of the leadership of the young CEO and the fact that the company had established a niche market. So, I learned lesson number one-put together a unique niche strategy that requires fairly high barriers to entry (in this case it was knowledge of world capital markets), specialize, then aggressively establish yourself in the field. With that important lesson learned, I moved on to gain more experience at other agencies.
I seemed to end up at agencies that were young, entrepreneurial, and in niche market areas. The agencies were all growing rapidly. Now there were more specialties such as real estate, health care, entertainment, and so on. I tried my hand at real estate, then at health care. By this time I had developed a real skill-I was good at organizing and I seemed to have a knack for understand the media-its needs, concerns, and politics. Also, I was good at putting a story together-seeing news when perhaps others did not, and more importantly, knowing when a story was not newsworthy or what elements it would need to become newsworthy.
But health care excited me. I was deeply interested in research and to have the ability to understand it, to synthesize it, and to place it in a broader context was a challenge. I had spent several years studying medical psychology at Columbia University and at Johns Hopkins and maybe now I could use some of that training in this new area of specialty. Maybe my life was coming full circle.
Then biotechnology was born. I had the good fortune to be working for an agency that had a biotech account (those were the days when there were only a handful of biotech companies). I began to pioneer a new area of PR: health care and biotech.
Success came quickly. I loved the work, I knew what I was talking about, and I quickly became one of the few experts in the field.
It was at that point that opportunity struck. My colleague across the hall, Susan Noonan, asked me if I might be interested in striking out-building a new firm with her. I realized that I had all the ingredients I needed to be successful: a skill, knowledge of medicine, and schooling in entrepreneurship from my previous positions. It was the beginning of the biotech movement and I was in the right place at the right time.
Noonan/Russo quickly established itself as a leading firm in this area. We were specialists and we circulated in the biotech and health care industries. And now nearly 10 years later, I have candidates for jobs, not unlike myself, sending me resumes.
So, what are the steps to break into the communications business, now that we Ph.D.'s don't have to be pioneers anymore?
