Workplace reviews and discussion: 科技產業專案執行(AE)_精英公關集團

Elite lost a number of senior executives last year, so I can only share my experience for reference. It would still be better to verify the actual situation with the manager during the interview.

I joined this company about four years ago, with a starting salary of NT$32,000 (with a university degree). Six months later, a manager on the team resigned, so I was promoted and my salary was adjusted to around NT$40,000. After experiencing other transfers, I was promoted to Supervisor after about two years with the company. At that time, I was probably one of the young people around 25 years old mentioned in the first-floor comment. Later, considering that I needed to gain other experience, I left for an in-house position at a technology company. I am now in my fourth year in the workforce, with an annual salary of NT$1 million.

In summary, I would say that if public relations is your calling, spending two years at Elite offers a very high return on investment. Here are some of the benefits:

1. Foundational marketing/PR concepts and skills: The ability to plan issues and campaigns is the most valuable skill you can learn. Basically, after completing the training, most people will be able to develop topics that can attract coverage from mainstream media or pitch to top-tier business media. This becomes a competitive advantage over people without PR-agency experience, as well as one of your key professional skills.

2. Opportunities to work with leading brands: Because the company was established relatively early and is also fairly large, many leading international brands are its clients. After two years, when you move to another company, you may find that you are one of the few people there who understands brand reputation management.

3. Management experience early in your career: Whether this is useful depends on your future career plans. Generally speaking, after two years of work experience, you may be required to manage a team of four to six people. You will be responsible for everything from the company’s operating costs, client relationships, and project progress to the atmosphere within the team. For people who do not need this capability, it is an additional burden; for those who do, it is a testing ground.

Of course, there are also many difficult situations at Elite. Here are the ones I encountered:

1. Working yourself to the bone: If your team happens to be short-staffed during proposal season, the overtime can be brutal. The most I personally worked was 90 hours of overtime in a single month, and on average I was busy until 11 p.m. every day. (The compensation was roughly a little over NT$10,000 in overtime pay.)

2. Monster managers: Where there are many trees, there are bound to be some dead branches. Given the industry’s already high turnover rate, the reasons for employees leaving at the junior level may not necessarily be investigated closely, inadvertently providing a haven for monster managers. A word of caution: the person interviewing you will most likely be the manager of your future team. Please carefully assess during the interview whether they have the ability to earn your confidence. While they are interviewing you, ask a few questions to test their PR expertise, industry knowledge, team-management abilities, and values. A poor relationship with your manager will definitely significantly undermine your accumulation of experience.

3. Specializing only in traditional media PR: In terms of professional skills, media relations is definitely Elite’s strength. However, Elite had very limited knowledge—at least at the time—of digital media tools, social media operations, and similar capabilities. This may also restrict your subsequent job options to some extent.

Overall, treat it as an experience for quickly acquiring workplace skills. Go in with a goal, and once you achieve it, move on to the next place. At the beginning, the most regrettable thing for an AE is to bury themselves in an ocean of execution work and then forget the goal they originally joined for. Doing all of an AE’s work well does not mean you will automatically be promoted. If you perform every AE task at 100 points, it only proves that you are well suited to continuing as an AE. Conversely, if an AE completes the main tasks at 110 points, scores only 60 on less important items, but already has 60 points in planning and strategic ability, that person will definitely be the one promoted. Find a way to take over your manager’s most important responsibilities. There are only two ways to advance quickly: either propel your manager upward or drive them out. Try to imagine that you are already in their position; this will help you acquire the skills you want more quickly.