Public relations has again been ranked among the most stressful jobs. In fact, it moved up the list this year from #7 to #5 in a survey done every year by CareerCast.
“Public relations executives are masters of damage control, thus need to be able to think and act quickly under stress,” the report says. “The profession lives in the public eye, and it’s also one of the professions attracting the most college students, which makes landing and keeping a good job that much more difficult.”
As in the past, I've had problems accepting CareerCast's rankings. Yes, our field certainly has stress, caused by things like crazy deadlines and success for tasks like story placements often being out of our direct control.
But I think we should feel less stress than, say, a police officer, ranked at #10 on the list. A cop's life is always on the line anytime, anywhere. And I think they got it right by listing as the most stressful jobs military enlisted personnel and military officers, followed by firefighter and commercial airline pilot. I'm just not so sure that PR belongs up in those same ranks. What about surgeons and nurses?
Valid or not, it makes for fun reading.
I've never understood this high ranking of stress for PR professionals. Angst, maybe, when you have a press conference, but stress! Even in my many years of handling disaster relief would I ever rank stress that high. Your blog was right on the mark.
Posted by: Rocco Sacci | January 09, 2013 at 01:32 PM