AI Will Change How We Recruit, Train & Develop Our People. It’s About Time!

In this guest post, Icon’s director of technology, David Radestock (lead image), argues AI is set to fundamentally change how we recruit, train and develop junior staff…

Almost everyone in PR over 30 (ish) has a story of how they started, which is unrecognisable today. For me, it is laminating coverage reports before client meetings. I hated that laminating machine. For others slightly older, the most common seems to be cutting out print coverage and faxing it to clients.

For today’s generation of juniors, those stories may include building media lists, typing out pitches and press releases, or spending hours on end pulling together research for new business pitches. All of these tasks are being disrupted by AI, and may soon be a case of a quick proof before moving on to the next thing.

The issue, of course, is that these tasks take up a lot of time for junior staff at PR agencies. They’re often billable, which helps pay an employee’s salary, and they provide a good grounding of the basics, which then inform the higher value work consultants do later in their careers.

If they’re largely automated, what replaces them for the next generation of talent? The typical answer is that AI opens up more opportunities for high-value work – undoubtedly true, but less relevant for those fresh into the industry, without the experience or knowledge to immediately do that higher-value work.

So how to ensure a strong pipeline of talent into the communications and PR industry without leaving them with little to do and even less hope of learning the skills to serve them in the coming years and decades?

The answer is a complete realignment in how we recruit, train, and develop junior staff. Simply tweaking the existing model only throws up more challenges. Reimagining it, focusing initially on three aspects, is much more likely to secure the future of the industry.

Look for diversity of backgrounds

This isn’t about diversity of gender, race, or class, although these are certainly issues to be confronted in the PR industry, but rather the skills and education expected of junior staff. Demonstration of creativity, strategic thinking, and even an ability to sell should be prioritised over more traditional ‘PR skills’.

Most conspicuously, this means moving away from PR degrees, and perhaps degrees altogether. Education that teaches those abilities above, as well as softer skills around empathy, people management, and collaboration, should be prioritised over vocational courses or an impressive institution.

Design recruitment to test what AI can’t do

I was recently asked at the end of a new business pitch what the purpose of a PR consultant was, now AI could write press releases and pitches, blogs and social content. After a brief pause where I considered the value of my entire career, I explained that while AI can effectively summarise information that already exists, the value of communications professionals was crafting new stories, of finding the tiny sliver of space not already flooded by language and narrative.

It is this ability (to craft an original story, not ramble through an answer substantiating your professional existence) that should form the foundation of junior-level PR recruitment.

Rather than ask a graduate to draft a press release, pitch, or influencer approach, we should be asking for a short story, a small collection of poetry, and a half-page biography in the style of Joel Golby. We may need a ChatGPT detector (it does a great job of that final one, in particular), but it would at least provide a different perspective on candidates.

Change training and pathways

When new junior staff members have been recruited (ideally having completed both a 6-week woodworking course and a dystopian novella), simply throwing them into the same old environment won’t cut it.

Training and upskilling need to focus on consultancy, not execution. Account Coordinators need to understand client service, strategy, creativity, and audience insights from day one. They’ll also need to know how to proof an AI-generated press release and confirm the automated journalist management software hasn’t misunderstood a command, but this will form a much smaller part of their role.

This will do more than shift the onboarding process. It could, and perhaps should, disrupt the entire structure of PR agencies, with less linear pathways and junior staff having the opportunity to play more senior roles in a specialist area much quicker than they do today.

For those who have spent decades building a career in the communications industry, working long hours on some of the most boring tasks known to humanity, this can appear confronting. But it is the reality, and the sooner we embrace it, the faster we can benefit from it.