Succeeding in PR takes four things: a tolerance for pace, ownership of the client's result, a personality that holds up under pressure, and a habit of learning every year. I wrote the first version of this guide in 2006 after talking with a new 5WPR hire from a slow-paced corporate job, and those four traits still decide who lasts in an agency career.

How is agency life different from corporate communications?

Agency life differs from corporate communications in its pace, its accountability and its rewards. An agency runs at a tempo most corporate departments do not, the client's outcome is the account team's outcome, and the people who take on that weight tend to move up faster.

The 2006 conversation that started this piece was with an employee who had come from a slow-moving corporate environment. The question was whether the agency's cadence fit him. In my experience, the fit matters more than the resume.

Which traits decide who succeeds in a PR agency?

Four traits decide who succeeds in a PR agency: drive, curiosity, resilience and ownership. These are my observations from hiring and managing agency staff, not findings from a study.

  • Drive means working at the agency's pace without being asked to.
  • Curiosity means learning each client's category well enough to pitch it with specifics.
  • Resilience means taking a rejected pitch or a hard client call and returning to work the same day.
  • Ownership means treating the client's result as your own, including when it goes badly.

Not everyone wants this kind of job, and that is a fair answer. The people who do want it tend to build careers that last.

What has changed in PR careers since 2006?

PR careers now cover more ground than they did in 2006. Agency work then was earned media, pitching, press release writing, crisis response and client management. Today it also includes digital channels, measuring how AI search tools describe a client, and speaking for named executives.

The measure of success changed too. PR teams once counted share of voice, the portion of coverage that mentioned a brand. Many now also track Citation Share, the percentage of AI answers that name a brand. A new hire should learn both. The traits above did not change.

What should a PR professional do to build a lasting career?

A PR professional should build one category specialty, one channel skill and one habit of steady learning, then keep adding to them. These five steps follow from what I have seen work.

  • Pick a category such as beauty, food and beverage, technology, entertainment or financial services, and learn it deeply.
  • Work directly with founders and executives, since writing for a named person teaches more than writing for a brand.
  • Learn how AI search tools describe your clients and how to measure it.
  • Connect PR, digital, paid and influencer work into one plan instead of five separate jobs.
  • Plan for a long career, because the senior years of agency work reward people who stayed and kept learning.

Where can you read more about PR careers?

These pages cover the PR career path from first job to senior roles.

Which guides cover getting started in PR?

These pages help students and early-career professionals find a first role and understand what the job title means.

How do PR agencies and clients actually work together?

These pages cover the daily reality of agency work, from client fit to how a PR team spends a week.

What do definitions, ethics and the future of PR look like?

These pages step back from daily work to ask what PR is, what it owes the public and where it is going.

Frequently asked questions

What does it take to succeed in PR?

Succeeding in PR takes pace, ownership of the client's result, resilience and steady learning. Agencies reward people who show those traits early and keep building skills in a category and a channel.

How is agency life different from corporate communications?

Agency life moves faster and holds account teams directly responsible for the client's outcome. Corporate communications usually runs at a slower cadence inside one organization.

How long does it take to build a senior PR career?

In my experience, senior agency roles come after about 10 to 15 years of steady work, when an operator can run several clients across several categories. That figure is my own observation, not a published benchmark.

Originally published March 24, 2006. Rewritten October 2026.