In-House or Agency?
The number of public relation professionals is growing by the minute. The competition will be getting pretty steep fairly soon to find a job. Unless one's plan is starting one's own independent public relations firm, one will most likely end up in-house or an agency for one's future career. For the in-house, one basically eats, breathes and sleeps the company. For an agency, one juggles multiple clients through various campaigns. Here are some differences between the two types of PR work.
The first difference is with self-reliance. For in-house, one has to maintain everything by themselves. At an agency, you have more people to turn to for advice and there are a lot more resources at your disposal. So the direction one goes for one's career relies on how much one wants to be self-reliant when working. A second difference is one's attention span. If one can only work while focusing on one thing, in-house may be the direction one should head. In-house one will also have to deal with office drama since it would be a small group of people and everyone will know each other more. While, if one can work on multiple things at once, agency work may be the direction one should go towards. Someone's attention span plays a big rule in deciding where one want to go with one's career. Another difference is with company culture. For an in-house, one needs to make sure one's moral codes are similar to the company's since one will most likely have to be the face at some point, and if one doesn't mesh with the company's views, one won't enjoy working there. In-house work is far more enjoyable when you get along with the people you work for and with. For an agency, it is usually too big to form a lot of relationships and for most people, one will not be the face very often.
The first difference is with self-reliance. For in-house, one has to maintain everything by themselves. At an agency, you have more people to turn to for advice and there are a lot more resources at your disposal. So the direction one goes for one's career relies on how much one wants to be self-reliant when working. A second difference is one's attention span. If one can only work while focusing on one thing, in-house may be the direction one should head. In-house one will also have to deal with office drama since it would be a small group of people and everyone will know each other more. While, if one can work on multiple things at once, agency work may be the direction one should go towards. Someone's attention span plays a big rule in deciding where one want to go with one's career. Another difference is with company culture. For an in-house, one needs to make sure one's moral codes are similar to the company's since one will most likely have to be the face at some point, and if one doesn't mesh with the company's views, one won't enjoy working there. In-house work is far more enjoyable when you get along with the people you work for and with. For an agency, it is usually too big to form a lot of relationships and for most people, one will not be the face very often.
Choosing a place to work if a very difficult decision for someone to pick. One really needs to sit down and think about what type of experience one wants in one's career. If one wants a friendlier office experience where one works on one client, then in-house may be the best option. If one wants to work with many clients and always having something to do and is well organized, then an agency would be the best option.
I definitely go back and forth on where I think I want to end up. I see benefits to both, but I just can’t seem to know until I try them! I definitely think there are some new agencies that give a smaller feel to them which could be interesting in contrast to bigger agencies where you might be working in larger spaces with many departments.
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