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What Can Agency Experience Do for Your Career?

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What Can Agency Experience Do for Your Career?

Written by Lucy McCulley, Head of Agency

VMA GROUP’s impressive roster of clients sees household names of the consumer world sit alongside multinational organisations of the corporate. With consultants working on both in-house and agency roles, we have established a solid understanding of the skills to be gained in each.

The PR derby
Where you’ve stood in the agency vs in-house debate has probably come down to which side you’ve been working on when asked. This is because any PR professional worth their salt will be able to recognise valuable skills that can be gained in each. In fact, experience in both formats is much needed nowadays in order to hone and boast a top class skills kit. With over 10 years’ in recruitment, the head of our agency practice at VMA GROUP, Lucy McCulley, explains why we’re such advocates of agency experience for all comms professionals, regardless of sector, seniority or ultimate ambitions.

VMA GROUP have recruited for PR and comms agencies for decades. In that time, we’ve seen the industry morph and evolve through changing times and economic climates, creating different comms and PR needs. What has remained constant, however, is the breadth of application that agency experience offers. “Without a doubt, working for a PR agency gives you exposure to a diversity of projects within a timeframe that you just can’t get in-house,” Lucy says. “Working on more than one account at a time means that you have to adapt your voice and method for different audiences, usually several times a day. It stops you becoming complacent with one tone of voice and one tried-and-tested strategy. That’s not at all to say that in-house professionals will fall into that trap; it just means that, when working on multiple accounts, you get well-practiced at having to constantly re-evaluate the audience and market your approach in a fresh, innovative way.”

The rapid-fire variety
It’s this constant changing of tone that makes an agency a brilliant place for a junior to cut their teeth. One thing you can be absolutely sure of in an agency: you’ll never be short of variety. With no such thing as a typical day, any given morning can present an array of activities for the hours, days and weeks ahead: meeting journalists; working on a pitch; drafting a comms strategy; writing and releasing press releases; media training with clients; dealing with a new client crisis and making sure you’re prepared for the next – the list goes on! Not only does agency