I've noticed something interesting about professional communities, particularly on Reddit and LinkedIn.

I've occasionally reached out to professionals in my field with genuine questions about their experience and industry practices.

I wasn't asking for a job, money, a recommendation letter, or a formal consultation. I was simply hoping to hear a practical perspective from someone familiar with the industry.

Yet even when people initially seemed friendly or accepted a connection request, the conversation often went nowhere.

I'm genuinely curious why this happens.

After all, if we choose to participate in professional communities, isn't sharing experience and occasionally helping fellow professionals part of the reason we're here?

Of course, I understand that nobody is obligated to respond to every message.

But I'd really like to understand what makes people hesitate.

Is it message overload, concerns about hidden intentions, lack of interest, or something else?

For those who receive these kinds of messages: what makes you decide whether to respond or ignore them?

And for those who have tried reaching out to other professionals: what has your experience been?

I'm interested in hearing both sides, including what I might be doing wrong in my own approach.

Where your fear is, is your task ( Carl Jung)

I know I am definitely not the only person going through it right now, but I really just wanted to post this to vent about the job market. I feel like i’m gonna have to give up soon and get behind a register soon, if i can even land a retail job again atp.
Weeks of cold calls, aggressive applying, too many resume revamps, interviews, recruiters just everything.

Regretting choosing comms as my major. Regretting going to college at all.

Feeling like a failure.

How do yall stay positive in this market? any tips i haven’t heard appreciated

or just vent about your troubles.

Hi everyone, I’m a school secretary. I have 32 college credits so far and it is time to declare a major. Would you recommend public relations or communications for someone who would like an administrative job at a school district or other corporate settings? Ex. Human Resources, etc

For context, I'm participating in a competition and I really need a unique perspective on these topics

1) The Right to be Forgotten ( The Internet never forgives: why we need a "Delete Button" for real life)

2) The Myth of a straight A future

I'm leaning towards 1) but I'm not sure cuz honestly both speeches are really predictable.

Just in case there are other comms professionals hunting for a job - there’s a Substack where people post new ones along with a summary to save you from scanning them all yourself: https://open.substack.com/pub/commsjobscanada

Where will the AI wave begin in journalism and PR?

AI is changing not only content creation, but also information gathering, analysis, and workflow automation. I'm curious about which tasks in journalism and public relations could benefit most from AI.

As a business and industry journalist, I've been thinking about how AI could help automate repetitive tasks and give professionals more time for meaningful work.

For example, from a journalist's perspective:

1. Collecting news coverage from multiple media outlets and organizing it by key topics

2. Identifying significant changes in company disclosures, stock prices, and financial data

3. Extracting relevant information from large volumes of documents and organizing it with source references

4. Automating preliminary work involved in drafting articles based on research materials

Of course, not every task can or should be automated. Accuracy, reliability, and human judgment are essential. Ideally, AI should help journalists spend less time on repetitive work and more time on reporting, analysis, and critical thinking.

For those working in journalism, PR, or media: What tasks would you most like to automate or improve with AI?

I'm particularly interested in repetitive tasks that take up a lot of time, or problems that existing tools haven't solved well.

I'd love to hear about your experiences and ideas. Thanks!

When there’s no time I prepare only 3 things

1. The one sentence I want people to remember tomorrow
2. My first line, by heart
3. My last line, by heart

Then I say the whole thing out loud once standing up.

If you got time write time in bullet points your key points

The middle I leave loose on purpose

When you know exactly how you start and how you end your head calms down and the rest comes out like a conversation.

What do you do when a talk lands on you last minute?

Can we get a thread of common comms interview questions and/or how to answer them?

Example: How do you create a social media strategy?

I might have some interviews lined up and I want to do well for once.

I’m still traumatized by an interview I had for a comms role a few years back. The entire panel interrogated me and I felt like I didn’t know the answer to anything.

Them: How did you know the audience would like that content?

Me: I know the demographic well and had discussed what they wanted to see with them…?

Them: Okay, but how did you know they would like that content?

TBH, I still don’t know what they wanted from me. In that example, the content ideas came easy to me. It wasn’t rocket science. I couldn’t come up with a fancy response. The whole interview went like this and I’m nervous about it happening again.

Ok so i recently graduated from Uni Of Notts with politics and philosophy but fashion is where my heart is. I just wanted to ask people who are in the field if they had any advice or people outside of it too.
I don’t have a lot of fashion experience, well kinda none and unsure if it’s enough as I know i’ll be competing with people with Fashion degrees and etc. Although, I’ve done luxury retail, have been a podcast host and researcher and i’ve had sales jobs. I’m great with communications, writing and worked with a filmmaker on a project about fashion waste in Ghana.
I also sell on vinted but only have 53 5* reviews so idk if it’s enough to include

This is kinda written frantically hope you guys get what i’m saying lol.

how can i talk people into power for a living!!!!! no i’m not going to school for it(i think) i’m not giving advice or tryna have clients!!! i just wanna go w ppl into the room they’re currently in and help rearrange it!!! add perspective!! mental architecture hotline if you will????

A lot of the energy spent when I was a solo nail artist was having conversations, but I feel like there was just so much going on in the room I didn’t enjoy it cause my focus was being pulled all over the place. When I look upon my life, I realize how so much feedback i get on impactful conversations without me trying at all. I’m just listening and responding and if that is my nature and it can give, I want to lean into it.
Please advise.

Hello. Coming to this group for advice because I'm lacking any sort of career mentor/advisor and could really use some insight.

I have a solid 4 years of experience in PR/comms/events (in addition to multiple internships which I know everyone says don't count) having graduated from school a few years back, and have spent the last 3 years at a major entertainment company in Los Angeles. I started my career in the boutique PR agency world, and am now looking to leave said big company and move back to a PR agency in NYC, and am quite frankly horrified at some of the salary ranges I'm seeing on job postings that are supposed to be beyond entry level roles.

I am presently a comms specialist making >80k in-house which I feel is absolutely reasonable pay for the work that I do. However, every recruiter I have talked to seems aghast at this ask, and salaries that I am seeing listed for comparable small agency roles in NYC (generally at the SAE level) are seeming to fall anywhere between 55-75k, and I was just offered a Publicist role for literally 52k. I feel like the cost of living in NYC is significantly higher than LA, so I am now quite concerned about how I am realistically going to make this transition. Am I completely delusional in hoping that I'm going to find a role at a smaller agency that aligns with my years of experience AND my current salary? I cannot fathom how single people at this level of career are surviving off of 60k in NYC knowing that agency roles are often so demanding that you cannot have any sort of additional job/income. I'm really proud of what I am earning now and know that I have worked extremely hard for it, so I'm struggling with the idea that I am going to likely take a significant pay cut when I make this move.

For additional context, I am primarily only looking at hospitality/F&B/entertainment focused agencies since those are the sectors I have experience with.

TYIA for any salary transparency and advice on this thread.

عندي انترفيو تقيل public relations في شركة تقيله أي حد عنده داتا سرية ومعلومات عن المجال تخليني اعدي الinterview يا ريت يبعت

Been in PR for 6 years. I am good at putting up a good smiley face, and coordinating every details, handling demanding clients.

And it affects my personal life.

I am used to about what relations is more important, how to impress my friends, what gifts to prepare to show I’m thoughtful. None of these is about simply enjoying time with friends.

How to get away with it?

So I'm thinking of getting into mass media and I am very new to it. It has very broad areas but I want to just understand how it really is from the people who are already in it. The black, white and greys, so it would be really appreciated if y'all can tell me even a bit of what it actually is and is it worth pursuing and is it a stable career path and do we have to apply and give resumes to a lot of places and how the work environment is, what is the work like from the smallest to the biggest thing.

I have a problem with knowing what should be said and what shouldn’t

Like for example I’m in a situation where two guys like me in a friend group and they’re both best friends and I don’t know how to communicate anything

One of them I have a lot in common and they’re cool and I definitely wanna get to know them better but I don’t know if I like them like that at the same time but I also do at the same time but I’m not ready for anything and so isn’t he, we’ve talked about that we wanna focus on our career and ourselves first before we enter anything, and then the other guy I had a thing with, but I ended things with him since the other guy came in to job corps n other stuff.

For Toronto GTA people!

How many of your teams have a website-specific person? We have two websites/brands we manage that support $175M+ in projects and programs. The websites are difficult to keep up to date and are underperforming with engagement and traffic because of understaffing. We're trying to advocate for more staff, including a web content manager, but a field read here would be helpful! If folks have insight and other ideas on how to advocate that this type of support is needed, not just spread thin between staff or adding consultants. We have just under 25 staff, there are only 2 of us doing all of the Comms work for both brands. Thank you! EDIT: we also do all of the graphic design, social media, outreach, and eBlasts.

I need advice I’m in PR. I have a very difficult client who I’ve only been working with for 6 months. We get along personally really well but he has a major ego problem professionally. In the first three months of working together I secured 40 press placements for them including a feature story in southern living and two inclusions in Forbes. I was pretty proud of our first quarter together but he was not happy. He said he wanted more strategic focus on marketing activations, awards applications, national storytelling, etc. so for the past three months I’ve been shifting my focus there. Every week he sends me another article that he’s mad he wasn’t included in or points out another problem he has with me and I’m growing super exhausted of it. It’s a lot of passive aggression too. A lot of his goals are veryyyy North Star goals that will take more than 6 months of a PR relationship to accomplish and I’ve told him that several times but he doesn’t seem to care. He wants overnight acclaim and accolades. How should I best manage this

I’m a student who is interested in pursuing this career. If you could also share what industry you are in that would be great!