
PR Careers: Benefits of Working In-House, at an Agency or as a Freelancer

The public relations industry is a vast and unpredictable landscape. Any brand from any sector can hire a PR specialist or team to guide them through a business milestone, share funding news on their behalf, or leverage the power of the press to help share their message with the world.
According to this survey, as of 2023, 28% of business owners and marketers were utilizing PR and media outreach as a means of content promotion.
There’s a lot of opportunity to chart your own career path in PR. Our roles can span from in-house specialist and advisor roles, to skilled agency positions managing several clients at once and solo practices for freelance practitioners. For rookies at the start of their careers or those facing a career change, it can be difficult to decide which path to choose. Luckily for you, we’ve seen it all!
In this blog post, we’ll break down the different PR career paths one might take, to get you up to speed on the differences.
A PR Agency Fosters Learning & Career Advancement
Whether a firm has 1,000 people on staff or 10, a core benefit of the PR agency setting is that it unlocks access to insights from other professionals, at different stages of their careers. On a truly diverse team — the best ones to work with, in our opinion — team members across departments can can strategize together and bounce ideas off of one another. If one person encounters a challenge with a client account, a tricky pitch, or a media target, another person on the team might have a different set of insights or experiences to help resolve it.
An agency will generally require an ongoing minimum monthly retainer, which supports the entire account team’s work. The best PR agencies will stretch a client’s monthly budget further by leveraging team members at multiple levels. For example, a junior team member whose hourly rate is low might support important administrative work, helping them to build fundamental PR skills while also freeing up time for senior practitioners to dedicate more hours to high-level consulting work. The result is a varied learning opportunity for junior staff and more room for senior leaders to guide the team through challenges or creative projects.
At a PR agency, the client roster is always changing. New clients come onboard, existing clients expand their contracts to introduce new services and, occasionally, brands will pause or terminate their contracts. The result is a busy work environment with a lot of moving parts between onboarding, account maintenance, meetings, brainstorming sessions, and strategic deadlines.
If you want to learn quickly, be scrappy, diversify your skills and experience, and advance your career — an agency role might be your next move.
In-House Lives and Breathes the Brand
An in-house PR position is exactly what it sounds like: a role working inside of the company/brand. An internal PR team lives and breathes the company, without any other brands on the roster. Because they are in the trenches every day, they understand all aspects of the company from the mission and work, to the clientele and culture. Additionally, if some team members have a keen awareness of how media works, they can double as built-in journalists, picking up on newsworthy angles to leverage in press outreach.
However, on the opposite end, if the in-house team consists of just one or two people, they may quickly run out of ideas or burn out. In-house PR professionals will often join industry networking groups for additional resources and insight. Becoming too entrenched in the day-to-day operations of the company can also impair a publicist’s ability to act as a fair “third party,” able to see around corners for potential reputational pitfalls or communication issues, or sometimes not seeing clearly whether a story angle the company wants to push is actually relevant to the media.
Freelance Offers Easy Commitment with More Investment
For the entrepreneurial publicist, freelancing can be an excellent career option. For brands, the financial commitment and terms of an agreement with a freelancer are generally lighter, as opposed to taking on a full-scale PR agency. For freelancers, this can make for an attractive business opportunity, combining the flexibility of working for yourself with the varied client experiences of working at an agency.
Unlike the agency world, however, freelancing typically involves an hourly rate. In this scenario, a PR practitioner is often paid only for the hours of work they can track, which is far less predictable than having a standard salary. Freelancers also tend to have fewer clients, because they do not work with a team to spread out their workloads and tackle difficult projects on their own.
For the same reason, freelancers also wear all of the hats for any given campaign. They are their own business development director, sales coordinator, copywriter, media relations specialist, tax preparer, bookkeeper, and more.
As a publicist, when deciding which option is the best fit, consider what works for you and your lifestyle. If your goal is to provide direct attention to one client while earning a guaranteed salary, an in-house option may be best. However, if you desire a support network, a chance to learn from one another and work with different clients, a PR agency could be the best match. On the other hand, less commitment offers a freelancer more opportunity to pick and choose the clients they want to represent, although they are responsible for finding them all, while simultaneously giving them more flexibility with their schedules.
Interested in learning about career opportunities in agency PR? Reach out to us here.
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