Awareness Actions

Make PR a career destination. The industry needs to better inform young people early on about the career opportunities, perhaps even as young as elementary or middle school age, and to better educate students through high school and college on the profession and its opportunities. This can be done through speakers’ bureaus, professional information on web sites and informational literature that explains PR in easily-grasped and interesting language geared to students.

Create a recruitment campaign that focuses on diversity. In keeping with increasing awareness, the PR industry needs a campaign geared towards multicultural students, demonstrating that PR is an attractive and professionally viable career path for people of diverse backgrounds. Creating a CD-Rom or DVD that explains the profession and career opportunities, featuring multicultural practitioner testimonials, is one way to reach a broader multicultural audience of prospective practitioners and get the message out.

Industry Recruitment Actions

Respondents agree that diversity efforts lie primarily with organizations that hire practitioners. As such, there needs to be a clear commitment to make diversity a major organizational objective that can be monitored and measured. HR departments are an integral part of this process, working in concert with senior management, to expand efforts to hire more diverse practitioners. It should be noted that respondents stressed the need to maintain high standards, but urged the industry to aggressively draw from multicultural venues when recruiting. The following are suggested steps.

• Make diversity recruitment a priority for the organization. While survey respondents strongly advocate against setting affirmative action quotas to recruit multicultural professionals, qualified and competitive multicultural practitioners are available. HR professionals must make a special effort to find multicultural practitioners through new outreach initiatives that go beyond traditional approaches.

• Seek out and be genuinely open to recruiting multicultural practitioners. Do not create a policy of quota hiring for its own sake. Forget about hiring “token” minorities. Hire the best qualified candidates while fostering a corporate culture that values and supports diversity.

• Improve the treatment of current diverse employees. Improved treatment will assist in recruiting other diverse employees because current employees can serve as spokespersons for the organization. However if multicultural practitioners feel under valued or mistreated, then they will not spread a positive message about the company and will be more likely to leave the organization. Those departures or lack of positive words will likely hurt future recruitment efforts.

• Hire more people of color to do recruitment outreach. Focus on building multicultural middle and upper management ranks with key positions, not just entry-level trainee jobs with no support. To recruit entry-level practitioners, the industry needs senior role models, not just those in support and entry-level roles.

• Partner with multicultural professional organizations, such as the Black Public Relations Society and the Hispanic Public Relations Society on recruitment and outreach efforts among their membership

• Advertise job openings in multicultural publications/media. Internet and traditional media exist that target potential multicultural public relations professionals.

• Actively recruit at colleges with large multicultural populations and at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Create partnerships with career counseling offices at these institutions.

• Seek out applications from PRSSA student members, many of whom are multicultural. Post entry-level jobs with the PRSSA membership website.

• Contact college career placement offices at multicultural institutions to include recruitment of multicultural students in majors such as English, history and social science, in addition to communications.

• Create alliances with communications programs at institutions with high multicultural enrollment. This could include mentoring, career days, internships and professional development training.

Actions to Create Opportunities for Multicultural Practitioners

Many respondents remarked on the need for the PR industry to create special initiatives to bring multicultural practitioners into the profession through mentoring and internship programs. The following are ideas to cultivate young multicultural practitioners.

• Aggressively offer internships and mentoring programs for multicultural students/practitioners. Partner with local colleges with diverse student bodies that offer communications programs. Advising students one on one and arranging group on-site visits are two excellent ways to acclimate students to the workplace and to familiarize them with the professional skills they need for success.

• Actively hire multicultural practitioners for senior and executive level positions, and encourage qualified applicants to apply.

• Assign mainstream projects to multicultural practitioners. Put qualified multicultural practitioners on visible accounts. This was seen as especially important for practitioners, who often feel relegated to more menial projects. Visibility is key to helping practitioners feel they are not being treated like second-class citizens.

Actions to Retain Multicultural Practitioners

One of the most pervasive concerns revealed in both the survey and the discussion groups is the perceived poor treatment of multicultural practitioners in terms of equitable pay, career advancement, and the experience of not being fairly treated in the workplace.

Respondents offered many suggestions to address these issues. Among the most important were those that dealt with the need for consistent mentoring at every stage of their careers, including at the senior level, and for creating an understanding that multicultural practitioners do not necessarily feel on an equal footing with their white counterparts in the workplace. And while many white practitioners may think they are treating their multicultural employees with all due respect and fairness, results indicate that most multicultural practitioners do not experience their workplace as supportive and rewarding of their contributions.

Multicultural practitioners also stressed the need for significant effort to be devoted to retention of practitioners, especially at the senior level, where they serve as role models to recruit and mentor other multicultural practitioners. Organizations should not assume that mid and senior level PR practitioners with years of success feel they are on an equal footing with their white counterparts. They, too, may benefit from mentoring and guidance in moving up the corporate ladder.

• Make diversity retention part of the institution’s main objectives. Diversity retention needs to move to the top of the industry’s agenda, not only for its own sake, but because it’s good for business. Retention will help build a positive reputation regarding diversity and aid in future recruitment.

• Create a work environment that is not only tolerant, but also supportive of diversity. Diversity initiatives do not mean “affirmative action.” They mean understanding that multicultural practitioners will not automatically “fit in,” and may require mentoring at all levels. In fact, survey and discussion group feedback stressed the importance of appreciating and nurturing all PR practitioners, regardless of ethnicity, to help them advance in the workplace.

• Create an HR-led initiative that educates all practitioners in an organization – junior account executives to senior staff – about fostering good working relationships. Such program will help address the perceived subtle and overt racism that still exists in the industry. Many of these problems stem from a lack of managerial and interpersonal skills.

• Demonstrate your commitment to multicultural employees by giving them comparable pay and due consideration for senior advancement in the company. Many multicultural practitioners perceive there is still a glass ceiling when it comes to promoting them. They need to feel as though their efforts are also rewarded. Be clear what expectations are and then give on-going feedback to employees on their performance and meeting those expectations.

• Establish a strong mentoring program to support multicultural practitioners that begins “Day One” and continues throughout their professional advancement. This mentoring may be one of the most important initiatives an industry can undertake. Good mentoring can make all the difference in someone’s success at a job.

• Promote multicultural practitioners to highly visible leadership posts to serve as role models. Entry-level practitioners need to see high-level multicultural practitioners who are valued and rewarded by a company.

• Assign multicultural practitioners to high profile, high visibility accounts or projects. The perception remains that multicultural practitioners often feel relegated to the background and are perceived to be a liability when given a prominent role interacting with clients.

Actions for PR Industry Associations

Public relations professional associations have a special role to play in promoting diversity. As the professional umbrella for many organizations, firms and practitioners, associations such as PRSA or IABC can be major advocates for multiculturalism in the profession as a whole and provide leadership and guidance to their member firms. Having a strong multicultural presence and agenda in the associations themselves is essential to these associations being credible advocates for this initiative.

• Recruit more people of color to visible leadership roles within the associations. These individuals represent a successful diversity initiative and can serve as role models to current and potential practitioners. Likewise their presence will demonstrate that multicultural practitioners are accepted and play a significant role.

• Set up a speakers’ bureau of multicultural practitioners to increase diversity outreach. This is especially important for high school and college awareness and for professional opportunities.

• Use membership drives to actively target multicultural practitioners. Recruit through related fields or specialty/expertise areas such as health, public affairs, marketing and technology. Groups such as the Black and Hispanic MBA groups may be good resources for membership. Consider building formal membership alliances with racial/ethnic specific PR professional groups.

• Co-sponsor activities with racially based PR member organizations to help create networking and professional development opportunities. Since dues are a major barrier to multicultural practitioners joining a mainstream professional organization, organizations need to find ways to partner with racially-based PR organizations by providing discounts on professional development and networking opportunities.

• Cultivate professional alliances with other non-PR multicultural organizations, such as the Urban League, to better understand and to be proactive in advocating about diversity issues.

• Create an awareness campaign for the PR profession, including high visibility of multicultural practitioners, geared towards high school and college students. Make attracting diverse practitioners a major focus of the campaign. Make PR a career destination like law or medicine.

Actions for Multicultural Practitioners

Respondents offered significant feedback about the obligation of multicultural practitioners in making diversity initiatives a success. Their feedback highlighted the need for multicultural practitioners to hold themselves to a high level of professionalism in their interpersonal interactions, attitude and quality of work. Respondent stressed that it is important for multicultural practitioners to be proactive in understanding their corporate culture and make every effort to adjust while maintaining self identity.

A majority of respondents noted that multicultural practitioners are likely to be held to a higher standard than their white counterparts. Many indicated that they experienced subtle forms of racism, as well as overt discrimination, and encouraged practitioners to seek out support either within an organization or through outside professional contacts.

The following suggestions are in fact relevant for every professional’s career.

• Do your homework on a company/agency before interviewing for or accepting a job. Find out how long it generally takes to move up through the ranks and what is required for advancement to gauge your expectations.

• Visibly and consistently demonstrate your value to the company through your professionalism and productivity.

• Find a mentor in the company to help you understand the corporate culture and give you advice on how to advance. Be proactive in seeking out the best person to help you.

• Observe what makes other people successful, and try to emulate the positive qualities—dress, verbal, interpersonal and professional presentation, Think about every aspect of yourself in a professional light. It is not unlikely that you will be judged more critically than a white counterpart.

• Seek out human resources for support if experiencing overt racism. Employment laws and regulations prohibit any form of racism, sexism and harassment. Practitioners should know their rights, document such incidents and report them according to the organizational policies and procedures.

• Seek additional support outside your company through other practitioners, perhaps through a race/ethnicity-based professional organization, and through other mentors.

Action Steps for Academic Institutions

Academic institutions, schools and departments with high multicultural enrollments can be proactive on behalf of their students to forge alliances with PR businesses and companies to aid in diversity recruitment.

• Develop strong internship programs with agencies and corporations.

• Create mentoring programs that pair students with PR professionals.

• Work with your school’s career office to encourage agencies and organizations who hire in public relations to actively recruit on campus.

• Create opportunities for students to visit PR departments and firms. Exposing students to the real-life practice improves their likely to understand and decide if public relations is the right career for them.

• Discuss how to handle scenarios that might lead to problems. Problem solving, coping and interpersonal skills are critical skills needed for success in public relations.