What does a PR specialist in Tatarstan look like and how much do they earn?

Who is a PR specialist and what does he do?

The concept of “public relations specialist” arose long before the standard developed by the Ministry of Labour appeared. This happened in 2003. Since that year, PR specialists have been celebrating their professional holiday every 28 July.

The Russian Public Relations Association (RASO) created a professional standard about ten years ago. The 18-page document contains all the criteria and requirements for working in a professional environment. Having read it, we can say that a PR manager is engaged in the formation and support of a positive image of an organization, product or person. This specialist develops and implements communication strategies to promote a brand and increase its recognition. He works with the media and social networks, organizes events, including press conferences and presentations, creates information materials and supports the company's pages on social networks.

An important part of the work is market analysis and monitoring of the information field, studying trends and tracking publications in the media. The PR manager also manages projects related to product promotion, controls the timing and quality of work. Another task is to work with crisis situations, quickly respond to problems and threats to reputation. Finally, this specialist ensures internal communications in the company, participates in the formation and maintenance of corporate culture. Sabantuy is a great example of ethnocultural PR

General Director of the communications agency ASV MEDIA, member of the Association of Communication Agencies of Russia (ACAR) Marina Yarovikova told Realnoe Vremya that a market redistribution is currently taking place.

“Before the coronavirus and the beginning of the special military operation, active players in the PR market were international companies that were ready to invest in promoting their information campaigns and meeting their brand needs. Now Russian companies and the public sector are entering the arena, loudly declaring projects and occupying a free niche where it has formed,” Yarovikova believes.

Speaking about projects from Tatarstan that are noticeable at the federal level, Yarovikova notes the Kazan State Circus and its project “notCircus”, recognized as the best in the nomination Cultural and Educational Projects of the Silver Archer — Volga Region award. The expert named Sabantuy, a Tatar cultural festival that has gone beyond the republic and become federal and even international, as an excellent example of ethnocultural PR. As well as everything that is done in the IT sphere, namely Innopolis, the IT Park and the IT cluster as a whole.

“It is impossible to estimate the market size due to the impossibility of obtaining data on all key market segments”

According to the expert, assessing the market size is a complex task associated with many objective factors. The main problem is the impossibility of obtaining data on all key market segments. Thus, public investments are characterized by the difficulty of assessing real volumes, the municipal sector also demonstrates the lack of clear indicators and open data, as well as the private sector is characterized by fragmented information and difficulty in collecting statistical data.

“The request with which they come to PR specialists is maintaining relationships with their target audience! Everyone is focused on their audiences, on targeting, and in terms of message delivery, and in terms of the content of the message, a major transformation is taking place — from mass communications to personalized communications, communications that are appropriate in a certain situation, a certain environment. In this sense, of course, social networks are often more successful than classical media. But classical media still have a huge amount of room for work: the fact that people trust more often, trust classical media more, and for higher quality, more verified, or more in-depth information they turn to classical media,” Faizutdinov clarifies.

I would go into PR, let them teach me

In Tatarstan, three universities prepare bachelors in public relations — Kazan Federal University, Kazan State Power Engineering University and Kazan Chemical and Technological Institute. The cheapest diploma will be at Kazan Chemical and Technological Institute — almost 154,000 rubles. At the Energy University — 168,000 rubles. For education at the flagship university of the republic, you will have to pay almost 250,000 per year. Here it is worth explaining why KFU is at the forefront of this area.

The University, together with activists of the specialized department, has been holding a professional conference Russian PR Week for ten years in a row. Perhaps the only one that could compete with it in terms of training quality and value of the specialists it graduated from was KAI. The author remembers the battles for the title of the best forge of PR specialists between KFU (then it was still called Kazan State University) and Kazan Aviation Institute. But the latter closed its training programme about 10 years ago.

There is a demand in education for an explanation of what is happening and why

At the same time, even having received an education at the best university, a PR specialist cannot stop. Artificial intelligence will not completely replace it yet, but it can compete.

“The first is critical thinking, the ability to comprehend, find relationships, highlight the main thing, make decisions. AI is still doing much worse than a person with this. The second component is creative thinking. And here artificial intelligence is catching up with us, so we need to improve ourselves in this, be able to see non-standard solutions, be able to approach various issues in a new and unexpected way. And, of course, the creative component. Yes, neural networks write music, paintings, but not one has yet created a real work of art. And in this sense, we, people, are definitely ahead. And, of course, a global, great skill is the ability to work using a neural network. Today, this is no longer a skill of the future, it is a skill of the present. And if you do not use neural networks in your work in any way, then consider that you have fallen behind and are already somewhere on the sidelines — you need to catch up,” said the founder of the New Media Workshop.

Maximum salaries for a PR specialist in Tatarstan “start” from 168,000 rubles

According to the online recruiting platform hh.ru , the labour market in the PR sector shows contradictory trends: with a growing demand for specialists, the industry is facing serious problems with staff retention. In Tatarstan, the number of vacancies published since the beginning of the year has grown by 12% and reached 40 offers. In this case, the republic corresponds to the federal rate. Since the beginning of the year, Russian employers have been looking for more than 11,000 PR specialists. This is 26% more than in the first half of 2024.

At the same time, against the backdrop of growing demand for professional personnel, the latter are actively looking for work. According to Yegorova, 62% of PR specialists are actively looking for a new job this year. This is an extremely high figure, indicating a crisis in staff retention in the professional field. Moreover, the main incentive for leaving is salary.

“A PR specialist is a multi-tasker, he must write a release and a congratulatory address”

According to the expert, the PR services market is constantly and significantly transforming, as is the information field itself and communication practices.

“There is one constant — PR is engaged in comprehensive management of relationships with all significant audiences through content, working with meanings. Therefore, most often a PR person is a true multi-tasker who must be able to simultaneously build relationships with anonymous Telegram channels and write both a release and a congratulatory address,” the interlocutor specified.