Accreditation: To Be or Not To Be

PRSA accreditation is not well known to many businesses. But why?

Having PRSA Accreditation, or Accreditation in Public Relations (APR), means simply that you are committed to public relations and the ethical practice of public relations. It shows that you have a broad knowledge, strategic perspective, and sound professional judgment. If you are accredited, you are bound by strict ethical guidelines, have demonstrated your desire to succeed and commitment to enhancing the profession, demonstrated skills and abilities necessary in today’s public relations executive or manager, and have successfully completed a challenging review and examination process. More information on APR can be found at the PRSA website.

This accreditation can easily put you above another PR practitioner at a job interview. However, if those managers and business owners don’t know about APR what is the point in paying hundreds to be accredited? On the other hand, shouldn’t a business know about APR if they have that position available? Shouldn’t they want their employees to be as ethical as possible? PRSA is not who should be held completely accountable. The businesses should be the ones to do their research. If they have an open position, they should know all about that position, including accreditations.

A few ways PRSA can help, however, is by getting the word out, posting constant reminders or blogs on their accreditation, and possibly even having representatives go to businesses to teach managers and business owners about APR and the importance of APR. If business owners and managers know more about it, they will look for it when doing interviews and in turn more PR practitioners will want to be APR certified.

Their website is fairly well known. Many PR practitioners constantly go to their website. If PRSA were to put up constant reminders about APR and the importance of APR, many of those practitioners will see that and possibly decide to become certified or even spread the word and tell co-workers about becoming certified. Through their website, they could even start a blog specifically for enlightening practitioners about APR and having practitioners tell their stories of how being certified helped them get their jobs. Since blogs are becoming more and more popular, this would easily sell the idea to many PR professionals.

Additional to spreading the word, PRSA should hold seminars or go to businesses to help spread the word. This method can hold many options.

The first is having open seminars for businesses to voluntarily learn about APR accreditation and why having employees with this certification is important. The downside to this is that not all business owners or managers will voluntarily go to these programs.

Another option is having a PRSA representative go to businesses to teach them the value of the certification. This is a somewhat better option because the owners and managers will not have to physically take time to go to a seminar; the seminar will come to them.

Finally, the businesses that have PRSA representatives already working with them should teach them about the APR certification. PRSA cannot be held accountable for teaching all businesses around the world. If practitioners help spread the word, eventually more and more people will know and want to be certified.

If PRSA and the practitioners who follow them help get word out to businesses, eventually being certified will be something that most businesses will be looking for when doing interviews. This will help keep the profession true and ethical.