When people ask me what I do for a living

It has been quite some time that I have been working in the PR industry. Story-telling and making conversation should be my strongest suits. That is bread and butter for Comms people. However, every time anyone asks me what I do for a living, I find myself in a very awkward position - trying to look for the perfect answer. 

Say if you are an engineer, people wouldn't probably get into your KRAs. But, when you say you've studied media/mass communication, first off it is taken for a fact that you're a journalist. I, myself, had come to know of the various other scopes of the stream like advertising, PR, media planning and buying etc. much later while graduating. Now, the moment I say that I work in a Public Relations firm, most people want to know more about it because it looks like a fancy foreign concept that is unheard of. My usual resort is to say that I propagate and sustain the goodwill of my clients. Then they ask me how do you do it and I would say - usually through the news and other cross-media integrated campaigns too. To this, the one follow-up question that comes for sure is - 'So if you write news for them, why do we not see your name on a newspaper or portal or channel?'. Okay, it hurts a little to say - Because we are like the background dancers / unsung heroes that the audience doesn't care about - so I rather keep it to myself. I am pretty sure that some people take this as a concocted tale and think that I do nothing for real. And, I feel so much at peace with their thought. At least it saves me the hard explanation! 😃

Actually, the majority of our fraternity are sailing on the same boat. I have heard stories from many colleagues on how they face the same challenge with their family, friends and simply anyone they come across. While some say Mummy mai Manager hoon ek MNC mein, bas yahi jaan lo....some would say Mai secretly khabar supply karti hoon isiliye mera naam nahi aata kahin pey... 😅 I feel really amused at the irony of the profession, really. We can communicate simply anything on the universe for our profession, except for explaining what the profession actually is about. I have personally spent 3 + 2 years studying and specializing in this line of work. Innumerable books were read, tests were taken and scores were earned, yet we couldn't find a layman explanation for what we actually do for a living!