Gear Up to build skillsets for your future team

Go back a decade or two in your professional life’s and try to picture the day you began your first job. Instead, think of the time you were struggling to get a job. Imagine the nightmares to showcase that you had the skillset, the company was looking for. And the need to project that you could learn everything there is to under the sun. 

This hunger, drive and passion today might get coloured with years of experience, but it should never stop us from grooming others in the field of communications. Today, when everything and everyone is indispensable owing to unpredictable and changing circumstances – one needs to be running a mile ahead of what is required in the job or role. And it’s not easy, unless the right mentoring and training are imparted to the candidate with potential. 

I have probably said this a thousand times in my life, but everything I learnt in my career is what my teachers taught me in those initial 3 years of my work life. The need to fight and prove yourself, definitely has to be inherent, but then you need someone who keeps pushing you incessantly to a corner, where you can do nothing but perform. 

As we embark on a new year, lets work hard towards instilling better training modules for the fresh batch of professionals who enter this business each year. Digital Media is constantly evolving and PR skills need to change with every new paradigm shift. And probably our education system can’t teach everything that’s practically relevant for the job. So why not help create better resources for our community!

Let’s try something new and help the newbees learn differently:

1. Evaluate what each individual’s strengths are and what interests them, maybe then enhancing their skillset would be a better way to start
2. Don’t forget to still teach them the traditional methods of building media relationships and learning to know the person behind the newspaper byline
3. Let’s keep importance on research going, but at the same time, ensure the new methods or platforms are not missed out
4. Sometimes a dipstick helps to unearth new perspectives and at-times it can give you nothing, hence pushing you back to the drawing board. But never stop experimenting
5. By hook or by crook, just get everyone enrolled in reading clubs or book clubs and just motivate them to read all genres, not restricting to one category – because cross pollination is what creates ideas
6. Write, write, write!! If we can’t express differently, then how will we share the stories of the brands we represent? So, go back to your pens and papers and write, and don’t worry about the writers block
7. Maybe unlearn little bit of the technical jargon and instead learn the appropriate and correct modes of reports. If your reports cant showcase how you add value for the brands, then how do you communicate the potential of your communication campaign?
8. Thinking out of the box doesn’t necessarily mean something different all the time. It can be a simple idea just executed differently. It’s going to be all about what and how you want the consumer to see 
9. Client is always right, yes, no doubt about that. But recommending the right approach – that’s on us. So, teach the new generation that yes and no are not the only approaches, but defending an idea with the possible solution, is what will be a game changer
10. Lastly, know that your work will always speak. So let’s go out and remind everyone, how their word and actions matter. Thus, be careful of what we intend to deliver for our brands or for that matter even the media platforms that we work with

Let’s honestly build a better foundation and help individuals to enhance their skillsets. How we groom the next generation is what will decide how well the baton of PR is carried forward.

Pooja Trehan

Pooja Trehan, VP, Communications & Public Policy.

Building brands through story-telling is what keeps me going! Having spent 18years in this industry, I am far more excited to experiment on what's next to unlearn. Worked with industries across FMCG, Oil & Gas, Technology, Fashion, Telecom, Media House, F&B and now Sports, my curiosity to craft a narrative only gets deeper. Marathons, Black Coffee, learning about Scotch and Malts, reading everything i can, travelling, are few of other personal passions that I happily pursue.