Get That Job Daily: How to be a games PR

Every working day this month, as part of our New Year, New Job 2014 special, Develop brings you a game industry professional to explain what their job involves and key advice to help you follow in their footsteps.

Senior PR Executive

Team17’s senior PR executive Bethany Aston offers an insight into her job working as senior PR executive at the Worms developer, and how you can obtain a similar role.

What is your job role?
Hi there, I’m a senior PR executive for Team17. My role includes interacting with both the press, maintaining and generating content for our official social media platforms and representing Team17 products at both trade and consumer shows.

How would someone become a senior PR executive?
Personally, I started off my career with Team17 as a QA Tester back in March 2011. QA is a great foot-in-the-door for the game industry and where a lot of Team17’s staff have worked their way up from; it really is a great place to start.

From there I made it clear what direction I wanted to take my career and jumped at a PR & marketing assistant vacancy when it became available a year later.

What qualifications / experience do you need?
From the academic side I’ve got a degree in English Literature, which helps with the communication side of my job. However, experience wise it is all about being personable and putting yourself and the brand out there to gain valuable connections.

What do you look for when recruiting a new PR?
We look for people who are confident and have excellent communication skills. Someone who has a real passion for the industry and a deep-rooted knowledge of gaming helps when it comes to understanding the market, trends and people.

What opportunities are there for career progression?
There are lots of great opportunities, starting with being an assistant way up to being head of a department. Team17 is a company that is very focused on career development and internal staff development, which is great.

Why choose to follow a career in your field?
I get to interact with fab, talented people on a daily basis, whether that’s in the studio with our internal staff or at a show talking to press and our fans. Being able to present our games directly and instantly see the enjoyment and fun they bring is really fantastic.

If you’d like to get involved with Get That Job Daily, contact aaron.lee@intentmedia.co.uk. You can take a look at all the available design vacancies over at our Develop Jobs section.

This feature is part of New Year, New Job 2014, Develop’s month-long guide to games recruitment. You can read more at www.develop-online.net/jobs2014.