What type of person suits a job in PR?

The case of Richard Saville-Smith being dismissed by Visit Scotland is a worrying one for the PR sector. The Express covers the story here. In this case a person with a mental illness has apparently been dismissed by Visit Scotland as their in house PR manager. Clearly we have no knowledge of this particular case and therefore would not want to comment on it, but it does throw up some interesting issues. PR is a high stress, long hour’s profession and to be successful you have to throw lots of energy into both internal and external relationships. It really is a 'people' profession, in the true sense of the word. It’s not like accountancy, or HR, or even marketing where, if you are having a bad day, you can justifiably bury your head in an excel document and ignore the world. In PR, you have to be at the top of your game, or pretty close to it most of the time. But is this the reality of life, and does this requirement of PR partly explain the huge levels of drop out from the sector? (Circa 30%, depending on who you ask.) Unfortunately, the reality is that if your job requires you to be constantly sociable, outgoing and charming, if you are having an episode, or are experiencing problems at home, or are just tired because your baby has kept you up all night, it is bound to affect your persona and therefore will affect your ability to do your job. What’s the solution? Well that’s pretty tricky and needless to say different approaches are appropriate for each situation. Presently PR agencies are positioning themselves as understandable, ethical employers. This can be witnessed in the race for The Times’ and The Financial Times’ Best Places to Work rankings. Whether this is done to attempt to get a step ahead in the recruitment battle, or as a benchmarking exercise to assess how well they are treating their staff is debatable. That said, gimmick or not, a race to treat staff well cannot really do much harm and should therefore be applauded. Of course, it does remain questionble how beneficial a free monthly massage will be if you are having a breakdown! Currently the approach of PR agencies and large corporations is to position themselves as a “best place to work”, and be ethical in how they deal with each incident. Fair enough. But in the end, it comes down to an individual’s career of choice. And PR is a tough career, enjoyable at times and not without its rewards, but it's long hours and tough targets. So, while all things are possible, if someone has the correct personal skills and decides PR is for them, with sufficient employer understanding and personal sacrifice, there is nothing to prevent people having a successful career. That said, life is there to be enjoyed and there are plenty of alternative careers out there. Perhaps that lack of work life balance is one of the reasons for that 30% drop out within the PR sector.