I wanted to share in a separate post Harold Burson’s observations about successful public relations professionals. At one point in his career, he wanted to create a test that would be able to determine whether you would be successful in PR. He hired a firm to help him through the process. They asked that he pick the top 15 people he would “want to clone” and they conducted interviews with all 15 of those employees. In addition, they conducted “360 degree interviews” of all the people around those 15 including their managers, direct reports, and clients.
From those interviews, the research firm determined that there were four qualities that these top 15 employees shared:
1. SMART They were all smart but this smartness wasn’t correlated with a high GPA or great SAT scores. In fact, two of them didn’t even attend college. The thing they had in common was that everyone around them described them as highly intelligent.
2. ENTREPRENEURIAL These people were all self-starters who upon completing a project were looking for the next project.
3. STRONG WRITTEN & ORAL COMMUNICATION They also had presence.
4. WORKS WELL WITH OTHERS These people were just as effective as a member of a team as they were as a team leader.
Burson said an inability to work with others was the top reason that they let people go. He said that in certain situations, when someone is truly a genius, there’s the option of sticking them on a floor all by themselves.
PR Sugar 