PR Masterclass: Students should develop more human skills like compassion & communication

At the e4m PR & Corp Comm ‘PR Masterclass’, industry leaders engaged in discussion on ‘How emerging professionals can balance and leverage AI & Automation’. The panelists include Abhi Mahapatra, Independent Consultant, Anindita Mookerjee Sinha, Head GCC Client Communication, EY, Pooja Pathak, Founder and Director, Media Mantra, moderated by Ritika Upmanyu, exchange4media. The panellists started the discussion by explaining the key areas where AI can be a big helping hand for the professionals. 

“Previously, writers used to write the copy then, we, as a head of Department used to review it, rewrite or tweak it, and then it used to go for proof reading and then the graphic designer had to design it. Now things have become easy with applications like banana tag and staff base through which you just write the copy there, put the photographs and go to your email where you have already installed it and just disseminate it,” Anindita explained how AI has made things easier.

To this, Pooja took us back to the COVID times and explained how AI has transformed the industry work, “In our industry, we thought that we could never operate out of homes; we could never operate in a work-from-home or a flexible kind of working model. But, time really taught us how to manage that, and we completely understood how to even use technology.”

She then explained how we can leverage the power of AI and compound our growth, “I would like to see AI as an opportunity-building area, as an enabler, rather than really thinking that it's an elephant in the room that needs to be addressed. I feel it actually makes your work easier when it is treated like a coworker. So, it's very important to take that as a learning and see how we can look at that as an enabler for us—to utilize that, and, and for the groom ourselves to do other multiple things, develop our own skills, develop our connections with people, look at meeting people, relationship-building meetings. That's very imperative—to know how we can utilize AI and not really get threatened by it.”

Next, Anindita shared her perspective and a personal anecdote, “I have a team where there's a boy who has given something. He always says, ‘I'll just give you, let me go and ask my assistant.’ So, at times, I feel that he has humanized the AI tools and treats them as someone reporting to him. Whether it's drafting a press release, or other tools like Grammarly, there are so many things we use for CRM, for ORM, it has definitely made our life easy.” Furthermore, she elucidated its drawbacks as it is making the users a bit lazy because many times they don't go for a verification validation of it and it can spread lots of misinformation. 

Abhi came forward and talked about his beliefs about AI, “I have always believed that more than AI being a disruptor, I think it's an enabler for communications. The key skill sets that students will need is more of skills that are human skills—courage, compassion, communication. The decisions will always lie at the human end, is what my firm belief is. AI will enable us to provide more options, more solutions, and more tools to become more efficient.”

Moving ahead, Pathak shed some light on the skills students should develop to sustain and gain long term success in the industry, “It's always the softer skills that are required to sail through whether it's resilience, whether it's connection. Next, attention is very important, whether it is attention to detail, attention to listening, attention to everything, or just attention to being present where you are. But the fact is, how we want to sail through is in our hands. I think the main thing is, how hungry are you for your own success? That is very important because if you take yourself seriously, then everyone else will also take you seriously.”

“I think CNBC had this study out, which talks about how there's the end of the knowledge economy and the ushering of the innovation economy. And this transition is actually led by AI. This can be seen through the lens of that transition that is happening globally, including in our industry, from knowledge to innovation,” Abhi emphasized, discussing the most valuable skills students should learn to sustain more while balancing the use of AI in their professional career.

Anindita shared, “There are beautiful courses now that have come up by many management institutes. It's up to you to select exactly what is required for you—whether you want to go for generative AI or if you are into designing. You have to choose the right course based on your interest, whether it is content-specific or related to advertisement, and determine which part of AI would be useful for you and next is openness to learn.”

Lastly, Mahapatra shared some lesser-known AI tools that can help professionals, “I think Jasper is a great tool. Brandwatch is amazing for sentiment analysis. DETM, Synthesia, and Canva.”

Pathak advised students to go back to their roots, read newspapers, and do media rounds and said that AI tools are just enablers, but the main thing is to be curious to learn the real-time things.