Road Trip Careerists

In the rush to tie up loose client ends before the Labor Day weekend, I’ve been hindered in bandwidth to pop out a pithy post.

So I checked out what others in the PR punditry were up to and stumbled across (or is it stumbled upon?) Kevin Dugan’s link to Prof. Robert French’s OpenMic Project connecting PR students, teachers and practitioners in a Ning-powered micro-focused social network – to borrow a term from Chris Anderson.

Summer has ended, and thanks to our lame leaders in Washington, the job market for new college grads stinks. In fact, if my memory serves me well, I bet many are feeling a tad panicky right now as August slips away.

If it’s any consolation, it took me six months after graduating before landing gainful employment — if you call it that. I lasted three years (a record) at a NYC PR entertainment boutique over which time I had a total of one week’s vacation. (Be careful what you wish for.)

Nevertheless, I thought the timing was ripe to resurrect a previous post in which college grads will find a number of helpful links to PR-related job boards. Happy hunting:

It was good seeing Council of PR Firms Kathy Cripps at the PR Week Awards dinner last month. For the uninitiated, the Council is the trade association for the PR agency business.

As such, it tends to tend to the pedestrian needs of that still-flourishing piece of PR’dom. While not every agency belongs, those that do represent a sizable chunk of the industry’s billings.

The Council’s website contains some decent information on industry ethics and issues, advice for selecting an agency, and other tidbits, including, as of yesterday, a new jobs database for those contemplating a PR career or PR career change.

The Council is not alone in the PR job board game. PRSA has one, as does , PR Week, Bulldog, PR News, Work in PR… I’m partial to (via mediabistro.com) and Paidcontent.org (for the digitally inclined), and I’m sure I missed a bunch. Feel free to add links in the comments section.

A quick scan of the myriad job postings tells us something about the vitality of the industry: it’s booming! So with college graduations fast approaching, the entry-level crowd has few excuses for not finding a niche in the PR biz.

If you’re feeling especially antsy, visit my buddies Nate & Mike at Road Trip Nation or Penelope Trunk, that Brazen Careerist, for inspiration. Tell them I sent you.