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Leeds Met students to work with leading PR trade body
The Leeds Business School students will be working on a live project to determine how leading public relations consultancies can attract and retain the brightest and best young people within consultancies and in-house departments in the UK, irrespective of race, creed or gender.
The PRCA has over 350 agency members from around the world including the majority of the top 150 UK consultancies. The PRCA also represents over 150 in-house corporate communications teams, including many of Europe's leading corporations and UK public sector organisations, as well as individual and freelance PR and communications practitioners.
The PRCA and Leeds Business School are keen to build awareness and work towards achieving greater diversity in the industry especially people from black and ethnic minority (BME) communities.
A 2011 report "Maximising Opportunities: Broadening Access to the PR Industry", commissioned by PRWeek and the PRCA, showed that recruiting talent is the number one concern of CEOs in the communications industry, yet the industry is "overwhelmingly white, with few disabled role models"¹.
"The PR industry has a duty to ensure that PR recruitment is a level playing field in which candidates in currently underrepresented groups understand the career options and can access the industry. We need to do this by widening the appeal of the profession to new talent to recruit and retain a new generation of PR professionals", said Robert Minton-Taylor, senior lecturer, Leeds Business School.
¹"Maximising Opportunities: Broadening Access to the PR Industry. An Independent Commission set up by the PRCA to remove Barriers to Entering the PR Industry", 2011