BYU is finding new ways to improve the marketable skills of its future professionals when it comes to preparing its public relations students to enter a highly competitive and global workplace.
Public relations firms across the U.S. are expanding more and more their service to foreign regions, which represent profitable markets. According to the Omnicom Group, which public relations holdings include Fleishman-Hillard, Ketchum and Porter Novelli, worldwide revenue increased by 11.6 percent, from $11.3 billion in 2006 to $12.6 billion last year.
“In my opinion, if someone wants to be competitive and marketable in today’s world, it is imperative to understand and be familiar with different cultures and at least master a second language,” said Karine Hachon, a senior from Paris, France and previous resident facilitator in the BYU Foreign Language Student Residency (FLSR).
“In terms of public relations, understanding different cultures is extremely important when you begin to craft targeted messages or build relationships,” said Dave Schefcik, president of the BYU chapter of PRSSA. “In an increasingly global market, many communications employers are looking for international experiences.”
In order to address this issue, BYU has developed various programs to help students improve their understanding of the new global marketplace. The FLSR program, for example, offers students the opportunity to learn eight different languages with the help of native-speakers living in each apartment. These languages include Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
Through daily practice and interaction with the resident facilitators, students become fluent in their target languages and gain a better understanding of these different cultures.
“The FLSR helped me gain real world experience with real people from other cultures,” said Joshua Molina, a senior from Jersey city, New Jersey, majoring in broadcast journalism. “It helped me interact with interesting people that gave me different ideas on the stories that I wanted to do and broadened my understanding of different cultures.”
Many public relations leaders are actively looking for future professionals with a broader vision of the world and ability to not only communicate fluently in a different language but also to comprehend cultures other than their own.
“You will be working in a more global world. The ability to speak a second language fluently and understand other cultures will be a requirement. Therefore, I would recommend that you take a foreign language and achieve fluency,” said Richard Edelman, president and chief executive officer of Edelman, during his address at the PRSSA conference held in Salt Lake City two years ago. “English alone is not sufficient for the PR leaders of tomorrow.”
