Baek Byung-yeul is a journalist at The Korea Times focused on cultural content, including films and cultural events in South Korea. You can contact him at baekby@koreatimes.co.kr to share your insights.
PR agencies struggle to find talents
By Baek Byung-yeul
By Baek Byung-yeul
Prain, PR ONE, KPR and other public relations (PR) agencies here are struggling to secure talented workers as more and more jobseekers shun PR jobs because of heavy workloads and relatively low wages, company officials said Monday.
A CEO at a local PR firm, who declined to be named, said he is concerned about expanding his business for this reason.
“Our company is increasingly winning deals to promote new companies, so we are actively seeking talented workers, especially those who have years of experience in this sector, but it is not easy,” he said.
The CEO said his company pays higher than the average wage earned by employees working in big-sized companies and tries to let his employees pursue a good work-life balance. But the company has been suffering from a worker shortage and brain drain.
“Many PR firms are short of talented individuals because qualified workers in the sector prefer to work at an in-house PR team of big-sized companies not in small-sized PR agencies like ours which have to work hard to promote various kinds of companies,” he said. “We especially need workers who have a good command of English, but those talented workers don't apply for PR jobs.”
According to data by Korea Federation of Advertising Associations, Prain Global topped the revenue list among PR firms working here in 2018 with a sales of 29.3 billion won ($25.1 million), followed by PR ONE with 23.5 billion won and KPR with 20.29 billion won.
Prain also has the largest number of workers at 189 employees, while PR ONE had 150 and KPR 135.
An official from a local IT company used to work at a PR agency but decided to move to an in-house PR team because he couldn't manage the heavy workload.
“When I was working at a PR firm, I had three or four clients that I had to handle. As most of them are based overseas, I had to wake up early in the morning or stay up till late at night to communicate with them. To gain a work-life balance, I had to leave the company,” he said.
A manager at a local PR firm said the PR agencies should consider offering improved salaries and more flexible working hours to allow their employees to balance work and family life.
“Still, the PR business has been regarded as a great chance to expand their horizons because they have to deal with companies working in different sectors from different countries. But companies in this business need to focus more on offering improved employee welfare, she said.