With the beauty PR industry brimming more than ever and so many keen minds looking to get their foot in the door, it is important to make sure you stand out and give brands/companies a reason to want to hire you. As simple as it seems, in a world where junior level jobs are hard to find, you have to try to give yourself that edge.
For me, my first step in beauty PR was given to me by the team in the Lancôme press office who were looking for an intern to assist them for a month. They tweeted, I replied, they ignored me. Did I let that stop me? No.
I got in touch with a journalist who was following me on Twitter and asked if she knew how I could get in touch with them. She then provided me with their direct line so I gave them a call and mentioned that said journalist had given me their details. They liked the fact that I had found a different route to get in touch with them so they invited me to meet with them and the rest is history.
Moral of the story: Don’t give up.
During my short stint at Lancôme I made a friend on another brand at L’Oreal who then recommended I get in touch with the team at Bobbi Brown after my internship finished as they were looking for an intern for 3 months. Armed with nothing but the one-month internship at Lancôme, I met with the Press Officer and was offered the position after a couple of days so once again the rest became history.
Moral of the story: Network. Network. Social Network.
After completing the three months at Bobbi Brown and picking up invaluable experience, I left the company and decided that Beauty PR was definitely for me however finding a job was not so easy. Countless emails and CV’s were sent as well as some intense interviews but I was offered my first real beauty PR job after two months of hunting on social media and all of the PR-related websites you can think of. Going back 3 years, looking for jobs on social media wasn’t very popular but making the most of my 1000 Twitter followers, I figured that if I could get a tweet retweeted by at least 5 people to their 1,000 followers then I had already reached 5,000 people who I may never have been able to get in touch with.
Moral of the story: Utilise all networking channels and the contacts you have.
The most important thing to remember when applying for jobs is to be yourself and really make an effort to keep in contact with people you meet as you never know which company they may end up working for and be able to help you out. Beauty PR is an industry where people are forever moving around from in-house brands to multi-client agencies so it can be easy to lose track of them, which is why you should try and build personal relationships with people. Whether it be on Twitter or LinkedIn, the whole job process has gotten a lot easier so put yourself out there and you’ll reap the benefits in no time!
Amrita