Does every fibre of your being have to shout “PR” for it to count as a passion? Certainly not. Your first word did not need to be “virtual reality”, “newsjacking” or “cloud”. But if a well-written press release, an enthusiastic journalist or a technology trend you have explored gives you a buzz, you may have found your field.
Discovering what makes you happy to get up for work is not easy in any industry. During your studies, terminology comes at you from every direction, and you are expected to choose a career before you understand how working life operates. Once you have your diploma, how do you find your passion? Pay attention to your instincts. When you find work that interests you, it can be difficult to imagine doing anything else.
How do you end up in IT and technology PR? It may not be the specialism you dreamed of beforehand, yet in practice it can be a wonderful job. Let me challenge two stereotypes.
“Technology PR is only for nerds”
If you picture technology as a closed world of people who code all day and speak only in incomprehensible terms, you are missing how much it touches ordinary life.
Think of the photos you keep in the cloud, interactive games you share with your children or conversations with friends on the other side of the world. Those are technology applications that people can immediately relate to.
PR translates the technical side into language that users understand and find relevant. The skill lies in creating a dialogue between specialists and the people who use their products. That is what we work towards every day.
Turning technical information into an accessible story and successfully communicating it is enormously satisfying. It is a reason to keep doing the work.
“Nobody outside the industry cares about technology”
Is technology covered only by a handful of specialist magazines discussing hardware and software? Look at product reviews, comparisons of cloud services or discussions about the technology behind social media. Technology is part of everyday conversation.
The challenge is to make information about products and services relevant to the people who encounter them. Finding an engaging angle can help a story about software or storage reach a wider audience. Finding that connection is what working in technology PR is about.
Do you enjoy looking at things differently? Do you explore beyond the obvious solution? Does making a technical product understandable to a broad audience feel like an achievement? Then technology PR may suit you. Your instincts may already be telling you so.
Céline
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